3D printers, need guidance

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#3380214 3-Jun-2025 16:31

A big one is minimizing the number of colours you use. If you can print white and one other colour then print the white that will use less waste than 4 colours.

I find the finish not good enough to not refinish it with paint anyway so multicolor isn't something I've really cared about.

Richard rich.ms

Paul1977

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#3380407 4-Jun-2025 12:22

Silvrav:

My printer just arrived today and have picked up some pf my PETG rolls from PBtech. wont get change until Thursday to setup and start playing but have youtube a lot.

The key so far to taking your poop to a print is to ensure the poop print height is the same as what you are printing, otherwise you using more filament to complete the poop print and in turn you not actually saving filament.

But yes, ultimately color prints is going to waste a lot and I have come to accept that and rather look at ways to reduce this waste (poop prints, poop infill, orientation of the print, etc)

@Silvrav Let us know how you get on. The Hi Combo looks quite good from my very limited look at. The enclosed AMS looks much better than the AMS Lite you would have gotten with the Bambu A1. Capable of very big builds too.

I've gone down a rabbit hole of trying to get the Bambu P1S working completely disconnected from Internet and also on a separate VLAN to my PC. More on general principal around privacy and security than an actual need (and because I don't want it to beat me!). Bambu doesn't make it easy to work outside their cloud, and they just released a new firmware last night that makes it even harder (so I rolled it back). Having it on a separate VLAN is what's still tripping me up - strangely I can happily connect to it from OrcaSlicer from a different VLAN, but can't from Bambu Studio (I think they both use the same Bambu Network Plugin, so that baffles me).

And I can't get the video feed from it into HomeAssistant, even though the makers of the integration say you can. Maybe Bambu restricted that in a recent firmware update, not sure.

Works great for plug n' play users who are happy using the cloud services and Bambu Apps (which is probably 99% of users), but a bit of a pain for the other 1% like me.

I should probably spend less time trying to get my network perfect, and more time printing things!

olivernz

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#3380412 4-Jun-2025 13:14

Bambu all the way. I have a P1S.

Paul1977

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#3380423 4-Jun-2025 13:35

olivernz:

Bambu all the way. I have a P1S.

Yeah, the only bad thing I've heard/read about them is their seemingly deliberate measures to make working outside their ecosystem a bit painful.

Like you can't access the timelapse recordings from within Bambu Studio when using LAN Only mode... what would be the technical reason for this? I can access them over the LAN via FTP, so it just seems like they're adding intentional inconveniences to persuade people to use their cloud services who otherwise wouldn't.

But as far as the actual printing goes they are, by all accounts, top notch.

Silvrav

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#3380723 5-Jun-2025 13:04

Paul1977:

Silvrav:

My printer just arrived today and have picked up some pf my PETG rolls from PBtech. wont get change until Thursday to setup and start playing but have youtube a lot.

The key so far to taking your poop to a print is to ensure the poop print height is the same as what you are printing, otherwise you using more filament to complete the poop print and in turn you not actually saving filament.

But yes, ultimately color prints is going to waste a lot and I have come to accept that and rather look at ways to reduce this waste (poop prints, poop infill, orientation of the print, etc)

@Silvrav Let us know how you get on. The Hi Combo looks quite good from my very limited look at. The enclosed AMS looks much better than the AMS Lite you would have gotten with the Bambu A1. Capable of very big builds too.

I've gone down a rabbit hole of trying to get the Bambu P1S working completely disconnected from Internet and also on a separate VLAN to my PC. More on general principal around privacy and security than an actual need (and because I don't want it to beat me!). Bambu doesn't make it easy to work outside their cloud, and they just released a new firmware last night that makes it even harder (so I rolled it back). Having it on a separate VLAN is what's still tripping me up - strangely I can happily connect to it from OrcaSlicer from a different VLAN, but can't from Bambu Studio (I think they both use the same Bambu Network Plugin, so that baffles me).

And I can't get the video feed from it into HomeAssistant, even though the makers of the integration say you can. Maybe Bambu restricted that in a recent firmware update, not sure.

Works great for plug n' play users who are happy using the cloud services and Bambu Apps (which is probably 99% of users), but a bit of a pain for the other 1% like me.

I should probably spend less time trying to get my network perfect, and more time printing things!

Finally had some time to set up the printer last night - so far so good. I have not connected the CFS yet as the buffer is just stuck on with double sided tape and Creality released a bracket STL file recently for it. So printing that first before connecting the CFS.

Just went for it with PETG and my first prtin being the bracket, lol. Touch wood, so far so good but realised 20% in the default speed is high so the print might not look as good as it should. will find out soon enough.

Happy so far and after this print (taken about 3 hours and 60g of print) I want to print some toys for the boys. Maybe will do a multicolor print. Just have black and white now as the other colors are on back order.

I have played around with options to print and so far so good that everything is pretty easy and open.

tehgerbil

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#3380739 5-Jun-2025 14:38

For anyone else who looks at this thread - If I can spare just 1 person from the pain I've endured - Do not buy a Creality V3 SE for an 'entry level' machine.

As they are..

..Poorly assembled and often need immediate attention out of the box, such as tightening screws, tightening belts etc and best of all many screws need to be slightly loose but many screws also need to be very tight, but not too tight as many components are just attached with thread brass inserts melted into the plastic chassis and will pop out with ease with just a bit too much pressure.

..Hard to troubleshoot as they're incredibly unreliable and often 2 prints performed one after the other with no changes in between will result in discrepancies in print quality. Fixing problems is often playing whack-a-mole and you often just need to stop at 'good enough' if you can't find the source of some ticking, or slight wobble.

..And overall just poorly designed, cables are run too tight (notable the heater cabling is squished beside the bed level device and gantry frame, as it must come out, look back 180deg and go into the heatblock pracically right next to it) Cabling is too close to fans and QC is just quite poor so you can often get brand new items that fail basic tolerance checks - E.g. Y bed rails must be 8mm, but are often +-.2+ which causes permanent bed wobble.

The 250mms is impossible to achieve and only serves as a 'hypothetical limit for how fast it can move' not how fast it can extrude and print.

I've put thousands of hours through mine, the most reliability I ever get is by babying the print for the first 10 mins, manually adjusting the Z-offset.

If this is ok for you - Go hard.

If this sounds like a lot of work - Go with Bambu!

Paul1977

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#3382487 10-Jun-2025 14:36

Took a while to get here, but my 0.2mm stainless steel nozzle, 0.4mm hardened steel nozzle, 0.6mm hardened steel nozzle, and anti-vibration feet arrived for my P1S.

Have some rechargeable desiccant ordered for the AMS, and will print one of the desiccant holder kits for it. Should let me get a lot more desiccant in there, which I'm hoping will mean it takes longer to get saturated.

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mdf

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#3382503 10-Jun-2025 15:22

If anyone else finds this thread, some good 2025 era advice on a first/next 3D printer:

Paul1977

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#3382546 10-Jun-2025 17:24

Paul1977:

Took a while to get here, but my 0.2mm stainless steel nozzle, 0.4mm hardened steel nozzle, 0.6mm hardened steel nozzle, and anti-vibration feet arrived for my P1S.

Have some rechargeable desiccant ordered for the AMS, and will print one of the desiccant holder kits for it. Should let me get a lot more desiccant in there, which I'm hoping will mean it takes longer to get saturated.

Damn it, looks like I need to get the Hardened Steel Extruder Gear Assembly as well as the hardened steel nozzles for printing CF filament. Grrrrr.

neveR

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#3383076 12-Jun-2025 09:13

I have just Pre ordered the Bambu Labs H2D combo with the AMS 2 pro from PBTech.

I had been looking at it for a while to replace my very old PrintRbot that I have had for a decade, that really wasn't working very well.

Then on Friday the price jumped from $3800~ to $4550, is about $4770 else where.

I didnt want to order it online, and made it into a store yesterday, talked to them and they ran the preorder at the original price... so now I wait for this very expensive 3d printer lol..

has some cool features, like a larger print area than the p1s, duel extruders (meaning less waste and quicker multi colour prints) etc

Silvrav

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#3383083 12-Jun-2025 10:13

So far so good - PETG is treating me well and I just needed to dial it in a bit. Now that I have it dialled in (touch wood) I am starting to experiment with smaller layer heights for better quality. can get down to 0.1 with my 4 nozzle. It does blob a bit and I need to clean the nozzle so now playing with retraction settings.

I want to print some minis so pretty important I get this right. Also working on support settings to get a smoother support and easier to remove.

My other PETG color rolls are also ready for collection from pbtech, so need to go grab those as at the moment I only have black and white.

Paul1977

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#3383161 12-Jun-2025 12:25

neveR:

I have just Pre ordered the Bambu Labs H2D combo with the AMS 2 pro from PBTech.

I had been looking at it for a while to replace my very old PrintRbot that I have had for a decade, that really wasn't working very well.

Then on Friday the price jumped from $3800~ to $4550, is about $4770 else where.

I didnt want to order it online, and made it into a store yesterday, talked to them and they ran the preorder at the original price... so now I wait for this very expensive 3d printer lol..

has some cool features, like a larger print area than the p1s, duel extruders (meaning less waste and quicker multi colour prints) etc

I love the idea of the dual nozzle setup on the H2D, and also the active drying in the AMS2 pro. I did very little research before purchasing my P1S, so didn't know amount the copious filament wastage with multi-coloured prints. Even if I had I probably still couldn't have justified the cost of an H2D, so I'll just be a little jealous instead. Dedicating the second extruder to support material would be a good use of it too.

Maybe by the time I'm ready to upgrade they'll have a 4 extruder one. That would be really cool.

Paul1977

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#3383169 12-Jun-2025 12:45

Silvrav:

So far so good - PETG is treating me well and I just needed to dial it in a bit. Now that I have it dialled in (touch wood) I am starting to experiment with smaller layer heights for better quality. can get down to 0.1 with my 4 nozzle. It does blob a bit and I need to clean the nozzle so now playing with retraction settings.

I want to print some minis so pretty important I get this right. Also working on support settings to get a smoother support and easier to remove.

My other PETG color rolls are also ready for collection from pbtech, so need to go grab those as at the moment I only have black and white.

For little mini figures like that, would PLA be better? I've been mainly playing around with PLA and have done very little experimenting with settings. I just download the project files, slice, and print (but since I'm using full project files rather than just STLs I think someone else has done all the optimisation already). The little man on the top one is probably a similar size to your figure (the whole thing including mountain and tree is bigger though), the suspended man below that is considerably larger.

PLA Metal (doesn't actually have metal particles):

PLA Matte:

PLA Matte Black, Grey, & White. PLA Basic Green:

And hadn't even thought about 2D printing, but did this and was really impressed with how it came out (it's sort of 3D since it layers the colours so you get a raised textured finished that you can't see in the photo).

SepticSceptic

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#3383400 12-Jun-2025 22:44

Those are gorgeous prints..

The technology has certainly improved considerably over the recent years.

I have an old CubePro for occasional use, certainly doesn't do the quality prints as you have made.

richms

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#3383403 12-Jun-2025 22:56

SepticSceptic:

I have an old CubePro for occasional use, certainly doesn't do the quality prints as you have made.

Try some newer filaments. My old crealities do so much better with less stringing and blobs when I got thru my old first lot of bulk bought PLA onto some newer PLA+ stuff.

Richard rich.ms

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