One Month with the Bambu Labs X1 Carbon

I have now had the Bambu Labs X1 Carbon 3D printer in the shop for over a month and I am liking it. Yes, I am still tweaking settings after a month of almost non stop printing, but that is OK. Why am I tweaking settings well that is because while the X1 Carbon supports PETG no definitive guide exists for what the settings should be to run Prusament PETG. Much different than the Prusa i3 MK3S+ which is optimized both from the printer and the slicer software for Prusament PETG. All of this tweaking has made me really appreciate how easy the Prusa was to get going. Yes, the first layer calibration is manual and sort of a per user dance of distance and perfection on the Prusa, but once that is complete the machine just runs.

This contrast between Prusa and Bambu is apparent. Prusa while a much slower printer without auto first layer it has been put through a lot of testing by Prusa and it is built to run. Bambu on the other hand is a very much figure it out and tweak a lot of settings. The figuring it out actually led me to Reddit where I read a bunch of posts to get me going in the right direction and then even started my own post (link).

What does this all mean and am I happy with the Bambu? Well that is a loaded question even if I asked it to myself. Yes, I am happy with the Bambu. It cost less than the Prusa to have the same functions and it runs 3x faster to do the same task.

Will I get rid of my Prusas? Absolutely not! While the Bambu is faster the Prusa is a stable in the market place and a great machine to bench mark against. As I type this post both machines are running printing two different parts and I love them both for their abilities.

The next really question is when it comes time to buy the next printer what will I buy. Now that question I do not have an answer to, but I look forward to having enough demand on my parts to have to figure it out.

Stay tuned for more…