Hey, I received my bambu lab X1C + AMS on 31/07. It’s been 14 days.
I’m only printing PLA, at 220° bed 55°. Nozzle is 0.4mm (except for drawers in 0.8mm vase mode). I always print in 0.12mm (0.4mm respct). Textured PEI only, no glue as bambu says it’s not needed and I didn’t want to damage my sheet.
I start all my prints with bed levelling. I cannot use flow calibration on textured pei if I’m not mistaken.
I’ve only edited three things : 3 walls / arachne walls / 15% gyriod infill
I rely on bambu knowing the best settings for speed/bridges/overhangs/…
When I use support they’re trees at 20-30% and the rest to default settings.
I don’t use different layer heights. I know I can and I can even gain more speed but I just want to hit slice and print.
I didn’t do flow calibration as bambu said it’s not necessary
I by chance missed the firmware update mess and went straight to the latest release which looks good to me.
My printer currently shows 160h of prints which is 11.4 hours a day, not bad.
Why I wanted X1C :
- Someone mentionned the prusa reddit community was respecting x1c, which to me can potentially say a lot.
- The youtube printers review and comparisons. The fact that bambu listen to feedback. I’m in Quality Assurance, this is of utmost importance to me, and I love that bambu seems to be like that as well. Also why I’m sharing this now.
- This is the definition of state of the art at hobbiyst level for me. It has been up for more than a year so QoL and v2 improvements are already there. It’s not next-gen, but it’s currently the best in its gen.
- I want something reliable and consistent. I want easy bed levelling, ai, sensors, and core xy stability.
- Webcam / phone app / monitor is something I and planned for my ender and wanted to have by default on a new printer.
- Orcaslicer was already very good with my ender, I trusted with its native printer, tweaking settings would no longer be an issue. I didn’t want to spend 1 hours and 15 slices before finding the only result that works.
- Speed would allow me to not have the printer running during the night. Noise being the issue for the cat and me.
Why I waited :
- I don’t enjoy the possibility of bambu recording my webcam or listening to my traffic. I don’t like giving away my data without choice and for free.
- I was scared I will not be able to use my random spools with AMS. Since then I printed 2 sets of sunlu adapter and used all my leftover filament.
- I was scared by the lot of shipment issues, hardware issues, support issues I read about. Didn’t encounter that yet and I’m so grateful for it, crossing fingers. To be perfectly frank I even dropped the top cover from like 15cm yesterday and it didn’t break or have any marks. I’m f-ing blessed. Except that bambu still didn’t reply to my “before I order” ticket with my concerns.
- It will always be the better move to wait, but it’s also the one were you never profit/have fun on the way.
- Bambu Lab A1. I went through trademark recordings, analyzed them a bit, I believe something entirely new is coming. And if I buy X1C now I won’t buy the new gen for another 4-5 years.
- Scared of nozzle replacement after seeing you had to glue stuff and such. Little did I know you can buy complete hot end and it’s 9x times easier than switching nozzles on ender.
- It’s expensive. But as a small minded people, if I see sale I’m thinking hey it’s no longer expensive, look it’s -2% discount !
- What about K1 ? same features and bigger bed §!§. But not bambu quality.
- Youtuber reviews with design issues or flaws like the carbon rod thing. I want something that will indefinitely work. Not something that will be dead as soon as manufacturer/servers goes dead.
- Heard you cannot use the full bed size. That is correct (but you can with a bambu mod), but I didn’t need that extra space so far.
Pros :
- This thing is ridiculously fast. Ender hasn’t been powered up since I got received X1C. I recorded the first print (benchy) and giggled the whole time.
- I appreciate the slightly bigger bed that I had before. I’m even convincing myself that 300×300 is too big. Prints of that size will last > 12 hours and make it so I can’t do it during the day. I want to avoid that so I’m not even tempted now. I did a dice tower for 16 hours btw but I want this to be rare.
- Supports are very easy to remove. They do leave some traces, I think my interfaces are not perfect (default settings), but I’m no longer afraid to use them and potentially ruin prints. There’s been a single model where the supports failed, twice. A cult of the lamb print with a floating sword, the supports didn’t stick to bed enough to hold the bottom part I think. Or weren’t solid enough.
- I cut my fingers so many times trying to remove prints from my previous glass bed. This is an issue of the past and my right thumb is very happy about it. I discovered that freezing it made it easier, but way too late.
- It works. I hit slice and print and it works 95% of the time.
- I already have accomplished so much, it changed the way I view this hobby. Time is no longer the bottleneck, I have found my mental sanity back. I no longer plan prints to see how much I can fit in a day while still being able to observe first 10% and make sure the print will be fine. I’m no longer scared to let it run for one hour without me regularly checking. It’s a gamechanger that I wanted, have, and I’m so happy to have found.
- AMS used up all my spools, cleaned up a lot of space. Downside is I now see how much filament this uses. Instead of one project per week, I can fit 2 in a day, I have to select my models more wisely. It adds to the “less mental charge”: I’m ok with not printing something now, I know I can do it in two hours if I really want to, but I realize I don’t really need that one so it’s ok. My current bottleneck is PLA and thus money. That barrier will hold my hobby in check.
- I was scared of multicolor, with AMS and X1C speed it’s not really an issue. Except if the model is in one part where paiting could be better anyway, I can print one plate per color and not going through the ok but still painful process of switching filament. Or by object.
- I’m positively surprised by the amount of waste. Ok it poops, but since I fail way less first layers or prints, I actually have way less waste. It was said by a few before I bought it and felt like good feedback to me. Now I can say I concur with that feedback.
- I only printed three mods : one for the ptfe tube, one to keep top cover opened, one for sunlu spools. I will not be printing more, soothes the mind.
- No stringing, retractation works perfectly, that is a huge relief.
- I will not afraid to try nylon/abs/petg with this. Though I didn’t find a good enough reason to use them so far.
Cons :
- I’m not sure if it’s a lcd defect or sausage fingers but I have a hard time selecting “PLA” in the dropdown list when inputting the AMS spool info. Seems to mostly happen in center/right part of the lcd which seems to me like lcd defect. But it’s not that bad, and my fingers still have a lots of cuts so I didn’t report it as it could also be that.
- Horrible bed adhesion tbh. My ender3 glass bed totally removed that issue, at worst I was using spray glue and didn’t have any issue. I’m using textured PEI black and it just doesn’t hold great. I washed it wish soap and water after each print and almost failed consistently parts of the prints. I decided to stop washing and use a scrapper to never touch the bed with fingers, it’s slightly better but all my failed prints are due to bed adhesion and that’s like ~10 prints now. (stopped immediately after noticing it)
Could also be because of bad filament that I stored for many years without drying as it didn’t happen for every prints and I did use all my old filament. But I had not so great first layers with a bambu spool too. - Bad overhangs !? My ender3 with two simple fans could print 72% overhangs without trouble. Here if I don’t use support I will have bad looking overhangs at 60% or so. I’m shocked at how bad they are frankly. Using arachne walls, maybe it could be that ? From my ender experience, overhangs is mostly about fans. But here I could see speed creating issues as well.
- Brims are not really brims ? It got better recently, but when I started printing, the brims would dettach so easily
- I did get a few blobs I cannot explain except mb weird hardware/gcode issue (hot end stops mid print before restarting, leaving oozing pla), or hotend stopping/resuming for nothing.
- I saw AMS skip a line or two before detecting end of filament. It turned out ok, it was a drawer I didn’t need it to be perfect, but it could have ruined it’s integrity.
- AMS got stuck 3 times trying to retract filament after a end of spool. I kinda want to blame my sunlu spools here not being totally compatible with AMS. But it got a bit hard to figure out how to remove the last part of the filament. Seems like something still bit into it and I never managed to find something to let it go so I can easily pull it.
- Multicolor models still look like a huge waste to me, but I have yet to actually try one.
- Dessincant indicator. It says if you open it you have to wait a full day for it to be accurate. Well bambu I’m using your printer so much of course I will have to open that AMS multiple times a day, so that indicator never seems right. I have a dryer so it’s not really an issue for me but it feel like bambu pushes me toward buying dessicant and I’m not sure I need it that much?
- Maintenance says I may need to lubricate screws and cleanup carbon rod. I did it once already, I did it another time yesterday, but the message didn’t go away. I’m not sure I understand that warning : should I do it because it found something weird or is it just a reminder after X prints or time ? I would like to have accurate info here. Bambu says to add lubricant every month if I read that right, it’s only been two weeks here. It once again feels like it pushes me to use consumable where I don’t really know if I have to.
- Since I use textured PEI, I think lidar is totally worthless for me ? Am I correct here ? I disabled first layer inspection and build plate position because of what the sheet says. But then I don’t see the point of lidar ? Isn’t textured PEI the best for PLA and bed adhesion?
- It is not magical after all. Yes 95% of prints end of correct. But they’re not perfect, small details here and there are not perfect. 0.8mm bambu actually prints worse than 0.8mm ender3 to me. I also don’t see a big difference in time between 0.8 and 0.4 and I cannot comprehend that. (damned arachne walls again?)
- It is noisy, more so when printing PLA that need to open the enclosure. I no longer have to have it next to me for monitoring so it’s in the other room and I don’t hear it. But it’s still quite noisy if I wanted to have it in the same room.
- When I look at the nozzle cleaning itself, it looks like what I would do if I tried to remove something hanging from somewhere without being able to use hands. It seems to have quite the same result. There are filaments under the bed or anywhere in the enclosure. When a print starts I can see filament still oozing a bit from it. I… don’t know how I would implement that, I am definitely not saying there’s a better way, I don’t know. But on my ender, I manually cleanup the nozzle after the first two lines. Here I can’t do that at the risk of losing a finger so I would like it to be as good. It doesn’t fail prints, but I think it’s partially responsible for some small defect I have.
- I do like brims and use them a lot. But I noticed the brims aren’t really attached to the piece. They dettach way too easily to my taste, I’m not sure I really trust them to help the piece adhere to the sheet. I trusted brims way more on my ender3, even if it was harder to remove them.
Overall :
I am not regretting my purchase, I’m very thankful I have a working one. It changed the way I view 3d printing, opened new paths for discoveries, made it more peaceful.
But I can see why bambu claims they’re at 55/100 with X1C. It has area of improvements, some I didn’t point out because I don’t care but people noticed. It can deliver amazing quality, but also has some basic defects you’d think wouldn’t an issue when it does so much better everywhere else.
I will now buy bambu spools and follow what they do. There’s a good chance my next printer will be a bambu.
Huge text, didn’t re-read myself much, there should be typos and mistakes, sorry.
I’m not saying I’m right. I’m even probably wrong on some aspects and would gladly be corrected to improve my experience.
