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3D printing for beginners (eu.store.bambulab.com)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
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Hey everyone My sister wants to get into 3D printing. She has her birthday soon and we are thinking of gifting here a printer. What models wold you recommend?

What do you think of Bambu Lab X2D. What would you get for a beginer?

Edit: thank you all for the responses. I certainly did not expect so much engagement and such high quality answers. Will have a look at all the options you recommended. Hopefully our budget has enough room for a comparable morally righ choice.

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[–] 6 points 4 days ago* (22 children)

Despite their hefty price tag, Prusa still seems to be predominantly a "tinker printer" more than a "press-play" printer, so not necessarily the best option for a beginner if they want the printer as a tool and not a hobby in itself

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  • [–] 7 points 4 days ago* (4 children)

    I’ve been incredibly impressed and pleased with my Prusa Core One+, as a beginner, over the past several months. Assembled myself (I’m a beginner to 3d printing and modeling but not to technical topics) both for cost savings and to have a deeper understanding of how to take it apart if something goes wrong, but it’s been rock solid so far. I was happy to pay the cost premium over Bambu to be on the moral high ground with ethical corporate behavior and production.

    YMMV, but I was blown away by how good it was out of the box. I pressed play and it just worked, even with what I thought were ridiculous overhang angles without supports.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    They're selling pro-sumer priced printers, but both the MK4S and the Core One had issues that simply should not happen. Things that let customers paying a premium price be beta testers for the next properly made versions of the printer. They do make good printers worth the price...eventually...but only after they've released and sold a half-baked version. And this is my gripe with Prusa.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    Sounds like your advice to OP should be to avoid the bleeding edge Prusa stuff (like INDX), but that it’s reasonable to expect to be pleased with well-baked revisions. Another way to look at that is that they’re more than happy to support hardware for a while after release, with additional improvements. My take is that’s extremely positive, but you’re entitled to your opinion.

    I haven’t gotten the Gen 2 upgrade kit yet for my Core One+ but I’m excited about the idea that they’ve reduced bed warping and therefore eliminated the vast majority of the Absorbing Heat step before the flatness check at the start of prints. A gen 2 out of the box sounds delightful.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 child)

    I find it strange that people pit so much effort in to mental gymnastics to try and justify to themselves why it's OK that their potentially almost €3000 machine (Core One+ L INDX) doesn't work 100% out of the box without upgrades down the line to fix design issues. It's not OK to sell products that don't work properly right away (regardless of the company), especially so in that price range. Don't sell it until it actually works 100%, it's a really simple concept.

    The issue is that this is the pattern they have. They rush things (while somehow still delaying them) to market, charge customers a premium for their "quality" and ship them products that needs fixing to do what was promised. People shit on game makers for making unfinished buggy games with day one patches and instability for months, but somehow when Prusa does it with their printers is OK and a sign they support their products for a while...like WTF!?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

    It sounds like you’re new to consumer products. I have issues with my clothes washer, my dishwasher, my car, and many more expensive and supposedly durable goods that are supposed to Just Work but don’t. And the manufacturer never comes back with an upgrade kit.

    Ubiquiti is a great example of a company that sells supposedly prosumer gear with the possibility of firmware updates but actually delivers half-baked garbage and leaves people in the lurch, ignoring longstanding bugs and missing features for years. But their fanboys abound and they continue to sell lots of equipment. It boggles the mind.

    I remain thrilled that Prusa is committed to continuous improvement.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago (8 children)

    This hasn't really been true since the MK3. Even then, I have a MK3 and besides recalibration between filament changes, I have not had to tinker with it almost at all.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    The Core One line seems to require a lot of fiddling and the auto calibration features are far from consistent it seems.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago* (3 children)
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  • [–] 0 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    That is a filament problem from voxel labs filament basically, and because Thomas is doing a sponsored bit for them, the Prusa is getting the blame.

    look for anything from Canuck creator recently, he mixes different filaments on Indx equipped prusas and has no issues.

    So maybe in future Prusa will make filament profiles that work for INDX.

    I’ve got a core one L that I will upgrade in the near future and out of the box it was super easy to get started, first thing I did was some brackets in overture PETG, faultless.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    That's bullshit. Its not properly engineered if you can't use whatever filament you want. If it's a temp thing for that specific filament, it's a Prusa issue because they're not using filament specs you've entered in the slicer in their calibration process. Hard coding temps for anything is lazy and bad practice these days since it's variables that are ready straight from the slicer.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago

    Nero (Canuck Creator) called it out in tonight's livestream - Tom's filament was wet, he's convinced of that. Say what you like about him, or me being Prusa shill or some equally stupid bullshit, but due to Tom's stream a bunch of people now think Prusa&Bondtech's INDX solution is bad due to that filament only, so don't use Voxel filaments - so what?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (7 children)

    Nonsense.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago (6 children)

    No go check the billion issues people are having with the auto-calibration features on their printers, especially on the Core ONE printers. They require a lot of fiddling.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (4 children)

    Now go check Bambu ignoring their printers catching fire.

    Any 3D printer can (or rather will) eventually require manual intervention and maintenance, companies trying to sell you otherwise are liars or design garbage not meant to work longer than 2-3 years at all. Sure some people get lucky and don't have to do anything in the first two years, meanwhile others run into something immediately. That's just how it is.

    But other than with a bloody Bambu, on a Prusa you CAN fix basically everything and there are actual manuals how to do so. Bambus meanwhile are not built to be taken apart and full of proprietary parts, aside from specific things that'd fail way too often.

    To say Prusas require "a lot" of fiddling compared to Bambu is just a load of bullshit. They're just not marketing the printers as aggressively and are open about how to do stuff, making it look differently.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (2 children)

    But at least they cost a fraction. You can't (or at least shouldn't) sell a premium priced product with underwhelming performance.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    They cost a fraction due to Bambu being propped up by Venture Capitalists and the usual bad-faith attempts at dominating the market, trying to undercut competitors. Look at how Uber did it for cabs in the US, nobody wants that shit happening. The moment you let them they'd jack up the prices, introduce subscription nonsense and whatnot. They already fuck over customers for christ sake, buying something you know will fuck you over just to save a few bucks is madness.

    I genuinely don't know what the hell you're talking about regarding underwhelming performance either. We got Prusa's in our hackspace, they're great reliable pieces of hardware that you can trust and last for many years even with upgrade paths available. Other than Bambu.

    My god, I sound like a Prusa chill… but I'm pissed how people can seriously still recommend Bambu. How much shit does a company have to do so the majority finally stops looking only on the price tag?

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  • [–] -1 points 4 days ago

    I'm not talking specifically about bambu labs here, there's a boatload of other manufacturers that are less nefarious and still deliver printers with feature and performance parity to prusa at less than half. I bought a Qidi Xmax3 brand spanking new for €470, it does the same as the Core One+ L (without the INDX) which costs more than €1900 (I add filtration because the Qidi has that).

    I'm aware mine is not as easily repaired (although the full CAD of the gantry is released) but at almost €1500 savings that's kind of OK.

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