Execs
- Setup is flawless
- App is superb
- Wonderful High quality
- Nicely designed
Cons
- Filament waste might be a difficulty
- The “poop flinger” will not be good design
Disclaimer: Early variations of this printer have been recalled because of a possible hazard with the print mattress cable. My evaluation unit confirmed no signal of the fault because it appears to occur solely in particular circumstances. You have to be free to buy a brand new A1 with out this concern any more.
It has been a tremendous few years for 3D printing. The arrival of a brand new breed of quick 3D printers that may supply very good high quality at an affordable value has opened the door to many new individuals. These printers are technically glorious whereas being simple to make use of by individuals with out technical potential.
The A1 Combo is probably the perfect instance of a contemporary 3D printer that I’ve seen. It’s — and I say this with no hyperbole — the perfect shopper 3D printer I’ve ever used, and it is as near an ideal 10 as a product will be. Only some small points hold it from that excellent rating, and none of them ought to deter you from getting one.
The A1 required no technical talent to place collectively. When you’ve got ever arrange a paper printer or put collectively a flooring lamp, you have got the talent wanted to arrange this 3D printer. All it took was to take away a plastic cowl, put the bottom in place on the gantry and screw the screws into the holes marked in inexperienced. The ultimate half was to attach some plastic tubing and the ability from the AMS coloration system and the printer itself. Extremely easy.
The software program setup is sort of as simple. Bambuslicer is straightforward to obtain and never too tough to make use of, and the Bambu Useful app is obvious and simple to comply with. I really like a great companion app, particularly when it is not flooded with ads. Bambu Useful lets you monitor the print because it occurs — it could actually even document time lapse because the mannequin prints — and allows you to browse Bambu Lab’s Makerworld, a repository of fashions you may obtain and print.
Bambu Lab A1 Specs
| Construct Quantity (mm) | 256 x 256 x 256 |
|---|---|
| Nozzle sort | Fast Swap chrome steel |
| Max nozzle temperature | 300C |
| Construct plate max temperature | 100C |
| Official max pace | 500mm/s |
| Typical pace | 200 – 300mm/s |
| Supported materials | PLA, PETG, TPU, PVA |
| Connectivity | WiFi, USB |
| Slicer | Bambu Slicer |
Whereas the A1 Combo at $549 is my suggestion, it is potential to purchase them individually. The A1 is a strong printer by itself and is probably the perfect funds 3D printer round at the moment. Its $400 price ticket makes it a bit of costlier than a few of the others in that class, however it’s nonetheless definitely worth the value. The AMS Lite is an extra $250, so whereas you should buy them individually, it will price you an additional $100 in the long term.
The A1 specs are on par with the present crop of greatest quick 3D printers. The structure is Cartesian — the mattress strikes ahead and again because the mannequin prints, as a substitute of CoreXY — the mattress strikes solely up and down – like the corporate’s different printers (the P1S and X1 Carbon). The print quantity is 256 x 256 x 256mm with an official print pace of 500mm/s. At no level can this printer really print at that pace although. The quickest it could actually go with out wanting horrible is round 300mm/s, which remains to be sooner than a number of the competitors.
High quality with out compromise
High quality and pace are sometimes at odds. The sooner you go along with a 3D printer, the extra the standard suffers, and this has been true for the final decade. Bambu Lab helped change that premise with the X1 Carbon and P1P and has continued the pattern with the A1 mini and now the A1. Now you can get the identical high quality print from this $500 printer at 300mm/s as you’d have gotten from a $900 machine at 75mm/s three years in the past. It is a tremendous leap, and one which I welcome.
The A1, even with out the AMS, is able to beautiful prints at excessive pace. I discovered the candy spot to be round 200mm/s for the very best quality. You may go sooner, but when the mannequin is tall, you run the chance of it shaking off the construct plate or when you’re printing in coloration, sooner speeds may cause layer skipping. As you may see from the Aztec dragons from Fotis Mint, the small print stand out in sharp reduction. I’ve printed in extra of fifty fashions on this machine by now and they’re virtually universally glorious.
The A1 additionally has fast swap nozzles that may assist you to print even sooner. With a 0.6mm nozzle as a substitute of the usual 0.4mm, you may push extra plastic via in a rush. There are even 0.8mm nozzles that you should utilize to make sturdy elements that needn’t look fairly and all of the nozzles take a couple of seconds to alter. It is one other means the A1 feels quick extra person pleasant than earlier than. You now not want a wrench and danger breaking elements to take away a nozzle. You simply unclip it, throw it away and change it.
Deliver coloration into your life
The A1 is an efficient printer by itself, however the AMS Lite system that comes with the combo is what elevates the entire to a near-perfect product. It is also, apparently sufficient, the most important purpose it is not an ideal machine.
AMS stands for Computerized Materials System and it is what permits you to print totally different colours on the A1. The Lite model that comes with the A1 would not have an enclosure just like the P and X collection AMS, however it works in an identical means. Utilizing the packaged software program, you may “paint” the floor of your mannequin, and the AMS will feed as much as 4 totally different colours into your printer to match. This offers you a number of scope for making prints that look completed while not having to color them.
I’ve spent a number of time utilizing the A1 and A1 Mini with the AMS Lite and packaged collectively they’re extremely highly effective. Just like the Mini, the A1 combo feels virtually utterly plug-and-play in a means that so few printers have earlier than. In all my years of utilizing 3D printers, nothing comes near the convenience of use that comes from these two machines working in tandem. The AMS might stand to be a bit of extra sturdy, and I feel the tubes between it and the A1 are too quick (it makes it arduous to load the filament), however it does work very effectively at making multicolor prints.
What a waste
The A1 Combo’s greatest promoting level can also be its greatest level of failure. The AMS, when printing a number of colours produces waste. This waste comes from purging the filament so that you simply get good transitions between the colours. This produces what is usually referred to as “printer poop,” and as you may see, it produces a number of it. On some prints, the waste outweighs the finished mannequin, and that is simply not sustainable. You may mitigate it by enhancing the values and perhaps printing one other mannequin utilizing the purged materials, however you may by no means really do away with it. If you’re printing with PLA, it isn’t so dangerous because it’s biodegradable when you compost it appropriately, however every other materials goes to create a number of waste plastic that is not going wherever.
The waste is not the most important concern although. In spite of everything, a business disposable lid manufacturing unit will seemingly make extra plastic waste than hobbyist 3D printers might ever hope to generate, however the waste does spotlight my least favourite a part of the machine: the “poop flinger.”
The poop flinger, or waste cutter to provide it the right title, is a ache level in each means. It is a tiny little blade that’s alleged to scrape the filament from the nozzle then a spring flings the bundle away to the left facet of the machine. Not solely is that this messy if you do not have a pot to catch it, however it’s additionally efficient perhaps solely 60% of the time. The opposite 40% of the time, the waste sticks to the nozzle and both will get caught on the purge tower — one other waste block that is required to paint print on the A1 — or on the mannequin itself. Having plastic the place it should not be is the key reason behind layer shifts and fails and equates to virtually all of my frustration with the A1.
The mannequin you may see within the picture right here was alleged to have 4 colours: pink, claret, gold and marble for the moon. As a result of the poop flinger is unable to appropriately clear the filament it stored knocking over the purge tower or inflicting layer shifts within the mannequin itself. By the point I managed to get an entire mannequin, I had used three-quarters of two of the colours and a few quarter every of the opposite two. That is round 2 kilograms, or 4 kilos, of fabric to make this one 250-gram mannequin. It was enormously irritating.
Nonetheless the perfect regardless of the problems
The issues highlighted above are irritating, however not sufficient to alter my outlook on this machine. Just like the A1 Mini Combi earlier than it, the A1 Combo is a 3D printer you can’t assist however admire. It is the bridge between these of us who like to tinker and already benefit from the 3D printing area and people who wish to attempt 3D printing with out the entire finicky engineering that goes together with it. With the A1 Combo, you may have beautiful prints with little or no effort at a value that is value each penny.
