3D Printers of Choice?

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

I started with an Ender 3 pro and switched to a Bambu X1C. Pretty psyched on the Bambu now.

[Anthony Kreher Kreher Guitars]

That’s an awful lot of printers to be new at 3d Printing! I got my endet Neo in October. It opened up all kinds of doors. I’m having a blast with it. But now I have seen what these bambu printers do from Ian, and the cool guys at StringPluckery, the speed and print quality is unmatched. If you can fork out the moolah, get that. Sell all three of yours and buy it. It will Probly still be faster

[Tim Henrion Henrion]

Starting out in 3D printing, I made a “conservative” choice and bought what was supposedly one of the “top of the line” printers from a well-known printer vendor: the Creality CR-10 Smart Pro. I figured with this printer, I’d be “good to go” for some time. I was wrong. It was borderline “junk” that I had to gut and rebuild with many 3rd-party components. I probably spent as much money rebuilding the printer as I paid for it initially.

If you’re just getting into 3D printing, be prepared for a lot of learning, frustration, and gray hair. Be forewarned that most 3D printers ARE NOT “it just works” kinds of devices. Using them requires experimentation, tweaking, and much time spent/wasted doing so.

To anyone getting into 3D printing now: Save your money and get what I bought for my 2nd 3D printer: a Bambu Labs X1C. It’s one of the few “it just works” printers on the consumer market. I also HIGHLY recommend getting it with the AMS filament management system, as you’ll likely want to switch between different filament types as you get up to speed.

Beware of cheap printers, as they’re likely to be built with cheap commodity parts that you’ll end up replacing/upgrading anyway. The X1C works out of the box, does a lot of tweaking automatically that you must manually do with other printers, and will save you a lot of gray hair.

If, for whatever reason, you don’t want to purchase a Bambu X1C… at the very least, buy a printer that runs Klipper open source firmware out of the box. Klipper is much more capable and customizable than vendor-customized versions of previous generation firmware (like Marlin) and is constantly updated with bug fixes, new features, and add-ons.

[Andrew Alexander]

I am looking at getting my first printer as well – I was about to watch Ted Bergstrand’s latest appearance and see if it added on to anything not mentioned in this thread https://dev.loothgroup.com/post-type-videos/3dc-ted-bergstrand-returns/

I was leaning towards the Bambu P1S but the X1C might be worth it for the integrated carbon filter and heated bed for drying.

dev.loothgroup.com

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[David Brown – Tavella Guitars]

I’m brand new to 3D printing and dove in this week on the Bambu X1C. It arrives tomorrow.

I got thru a good amount of to Ted’s session today while I was at work and it answered a lot of questions I had.

I’ll be getting thru the rest of it and referencing back to it often to get a head start on the learning curve. I’ll take a look for the list of references and affiliate links Ted mentioned and use to get additional accessories and try new filament recommendations that were made.

Thanks for the help and guidance, Ted, and Loothgroup/Loothprints team. I’ll be following along.

[Andrew Alexander]

The P1S Combo (including the AMS system) is now $750 until December 2nd.

From their site – https://us.store.bambulab.com/pages/black-friday-sale

Promotion Time:

• From Oct.21st 2024 05:00AM (PDT) – Dec.3rd 2024 00:00AM (PST).

us.store.bambulab.com

Black Friday Bambu Lab Deals 2024

Bambu Lab Black Friday 2024 deals are coming: enjoy lowest prices of the year.

[David O'Shaughnessy]

I don’t know if this is helpful but it came up in my email feed… Seems Like the X1C is their pick but wondering if the budget pick would do?

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-home-3d-printer/

nytimes.com

The Best 3D Printer

The Bambu Lab A1 Mini is the fastest and easiest-to-use 3D printer we’ve found that is also compact enough to fit on a desk.

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

I hear this unit is quite capable. If you’re toe dipping this is a great one. I’ve thought about getting one just for banging out pla stuff that doesn’t require vents, so I can keep it near my desk.

[David Foster Fostino Guitars and Ukuleles]

I am a beginner at 3D printing and purchased the A1 combo. I’ve been happy so far and the price point was nice. Although the biggest expense has been all the colorful options with filament. I would recommend just going with the basic Bambu filament if you do get the A1 combo as it automatically registers the color and type of filament is on the spool. Theres a bit off learning curve but not too hard.

[rwillett N/A]

I have two Prusa MK4s now.

I started with an Ender 3 Pro and grew out of it and brought a Prusa MK3S+, brought a second one.

Like the speed increase and nozzle changing ability in the MK4’s and now have two of them.

Can’t see the benefits of the MK4S so not upgraded.

The closed nature of the Bambu completely put me off and still does.

I’ve made 6-7 bass and guitars and have kept three. The first four were learning. The headless bass and a p90 inspired Telecaster Deluxe are nice guitars and I play them as much as other guitars and basses I have.

I am trying to work out how to get a 560mm x 500mm x 80mm printer to print out guitar and bass bodies in one go. Voyron and RatRig are at their limits and none of the others fill me with confidence that they can do it at acceptable quality and cost. Flex is the issue. RatRig use larger extrusions but aren’t doing custom configurations at the moment.

[Lauren Molnar Shadow Cat Guitars]

I got my first 3D printer in July 2025 – an Artillery Sidewinder X4+ and my second in September – an Elegoo Centauri Carbon. The CC is my daily driver, and definitely is the higher quality and more versatile in terms of different filaments it can handle, but the SX4+ does a decent job with PLA and PETG, and is larger format. I’d like to add a resin printer to the stable but my apartment is small and I’m concerned about the reputed smelliness!

[D. J. Williams]

What are the current 3D printer recommendations? If there is a sliding scale on the “affordability ladder”, that would be helpful.
Thanks

[Lauren Molnar Shadow Cat Guitars]

I think it depends so much on the combination of use case and budget. I actually just watched this video, and I think the creator did a really good job of going over the details in an assortment of the current offerings. https://youtu.be/AtSk9hzuba4?si=hYRU84Rl3mTDLnT9