3v2 to A1
I have dabbled on and off over the past few years with 3D printers. My brother first got me into the hobby a few years ago when he got one and showed me what could be made. That got me interested. He has a group of Ender 3’s down in his basement which he uses to print everything from action figures and toys to tools and organization that is very cool. He has also added several accessories and upgrades to them as well. They were a good starting point so I picked a couple up myself. The ones I picked up were Ender 3 v2 series printers to start.
There are newer ones out now that are better and faster but they are the type of printer that if you like to tinker and tweek, do upgrades to and have a fair amount of patience they work for the most part. The problem that I found with them is that they tend to be finicky. You could have three or four prints come out fine and then suddenly the prints start to fail or maybe don’t come out as good as they once did. From there you then have to diagnose what the problem is and the problem could be literally anything. The problem could be bed springs (I highly recommend upgrading those), a dirty bed, plugged nozzle, bad feed gear, loose rollers on the frame, burnt bowden tube, or the filiment. I have had all of these problems happen depending on the symptoms.
Do I think the Ender series are bad? Yes and no. If you view the fine tuning of the printer regularly as a hobby then they aren’t bad. I have used mine enough that I can generally figure out the problem and get it working again but there is some trial and error to it. I don’t feel that they are as reliable as they should be for the amount of effort put into them. I’m sure others will disagree, my brother has very good luck with his. I just want something that I can just send a model to, it prints and I don’t have to wonder if the bed is out of alignment or some other myriad of things has gone wrong. You get what you pay for.
Enter the Bambu Labs A1. I bought this printer a little over a year ago and couldn’t be happier. The A1 is a bed slinger just like the Ender 3, is comparable in size and really easy to set up. The one I bought came with the four spool feeder so you can change out colors on the fly without having to stop the print. It seems to be reliable in my experience, prints stick to the bed, you don’t have to level anything you just load it, tell it what type of filament is loaded and it handles the rest. There is some complaint about the Bambu Lab slicer which I get, and it isn’t open source but for me I don’t really care, it prints and works for what I want.
The software is simple enough to use and functions the way I would expect. In terms of problems I have only run into two. The first was having to do with a piece of filament that got stuck in the extruder and plugged it when the spool ran out. I was able to unplug it but it didn’t print right after that so I replaced the nozzle which fixed the issue. The other was when the tension on the x-axis loosened up slightly and the printer notified me. It didn’t impact my print quality and it was a 3 minute fix to adjust it. That’s it in a year. Have I had prints fail? A couple but they were from no support or a dirty bed.
When it comes down to it, if you want a printer that just works without a lot of headache get the Bambu Labs A1. It costs more than the Creality Ender 3 but in my experience it’s worth it. Is the software closed source? Yes. If that is a deal breaker for you then you might want to avoid it but in my case I don’t really care too much I just want it to work.
Peace Always,
Lester