Even if you aren’t interested in a Voron 2.4, I thought this was a helpful video:
I’m not sure why Stephan is comparing the 2.4 to the Bamboo X1 Carbon, when they’re really different printers and the X1 Carbon isn’t available yet.
Because there are roughly 5,000 kickstarter backers talking about our X1Cs, generally positive, and the most of the posts on YouTube and Reddit from people who have neither a Voron or an X1C have been excessively focused on “which prints better.” Or so I would assume, I’ve not actually asked Stefan.
Mechanically, they don’t seem to be all that different really. (I have to say “seem” because I’ve never seen a Voron in the flesh.) Very different Bill of Materials, of course, and they’re certainly not identical, but they do seem to be pretty similar.
I’d say that tackling the “X1C or Voron” question directly was a good idea, because the answer to that question isn’t “which prints better” but “do you want to build a printer or just buy one?” (Well, once the production catches up, obviously, but then the inability to get Pis right now somewhat complicates the Voron’s availability too.)
Personally, I wouldn’t consider the Voron 2.4 and the Bamboo X1C to be competitors.
The Voron has a much larger print volume, is all open source and I would call it “industrial” in terms of use with the expectation that it will run for several thousand hours per year. It is not a first printer but one a user gets when they know enough to have an opinion on the configuration of they printer and are able to customize it during assembly the way they want.
The Bamboo is closed but with (web) interfacing and control, I like the multiple colour capabilities (In use I would probably run it with three spools for colours and one spool for support material and maybe replace one of the three colour spools with TPU - although I have no idea if this is possible in the X1C due to different materials having different optimal temperatures) and I’m going to be suspicious of the robustness of the printer after my experience with other printers with sophisticated hot ends. I would be surprised if it runs more than 500 hours in the first year and I doubt it will be used in many printer farms. It looks like it will be an excellent first printer that the customer pulls out of the box and starts using without regard to the fine points that we discuss on forums like this everyday.
It’s the last point in each of the paragraphs above that makes me wonder why talk about the two printers in the same breath? I don’t see the customers for either of the two printers to be the same person.
I wish you luck - you have a very interesting product and I hope it’s very successful for you.
I don’t see the customers for either of the two printers to be the same person.
I very much agree with you on this. (Although, Bambu Labs certainly intended for the X1 to be a constant-use, print farm machine; they claim to have put in hundreds if not thousands of hours on the pre-production machines. And I doubt there’s many people running print farms who can afford to spend both the money and the time to put together a Voron; I’m sure the majority of print farms out there are running Prusa Mk 3s if they can afford them, and Ender-3s if they can’t. At least two people on the Kickstarter were agitating about not being able to get multiple X1s for print farming, too; as for reliability, well, only one way to find out about that.)
That doesn’t change the fact that every single YouTube Video on the X1C is riddled with “should I get this or a Voron” comments. For people seeking a fast, accurate printer, there’s only a couple choices, and many folks don’t seem to be very good at recognising the Voron and X1C have very different target markets.
It would work fine, unless you were trying to print TPU and something else in the same print. The AMS is advertised as being for multiple colours, but honestly I think it’s actual value is having different materials ready to go, and nearly automating loading. I’m personally waiting until they implement filament runout failover, so that when one spool runs out the printer just drops to the next, before I invest in an AMS, because I usually print large projects in one filament at a time.
There are quite a few print farms around running Vorons. They’re not hard to find if you do a bit of searching. Are they the best for the task?
If you are printing large pieces and have experienced people running the farm (who aren’t afraid to innovate), I would say they’re quite ideal for the process - I would expect the assembly process would be streamlined to the point where assembly time per printer would be definitely less than 20 hours and maybe 10 hours would be possible. You can save a lot of print time and assembly work by not printing the skirts for the printers and save a few bucks by not having a display on the Voron’s rPi.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody hankering for 16 colours in their 3D printer - I agree that there is more value in different materials although I’m not sure how you would do that with a single nozzle.
A filament runout “fairover” would be nice - do you need really something like a X1C to do that or could it be added to any other printer that has enough space for two spools (wheels are turning in my head with this one)?
A filament runout “fairover” would be nice - do you need really something like a X1C to do that or could it be added to any other printer that has enough space for two spools (wheels are turning in my head with this one)?
I really don’t know. Probably, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys the tinkering and coding, it could be worked out.
What I know is I wanted the X1C because it seemed to be a printer that would print ABS without me having to fuck around with enclosures, and that would just work without me having to fuck around with tramming it every spool or so, and that didn’t have a mulit-part nozzle that I’d have to fuck around with trying to get properly seated whenever I had to change the nozzle, and that in general would be a printer that I would have to waste time fucking around with trying to get it to do it’s JOB, so that I could spend that time working on my actual hobbies of building droids and gaming props.
And so far, it has been everything I wanted. ABS adhesion isn’t perfect, but my parts are less warped off the X1 than they ever were off the Ender-5. An active chamber heater might be helpful, especially in winter, but if it comes to it I can stick the heat-lamp-in-a-box I used for the Ever-5 on top of the X1C. I spend twice as much time making the Ender-5 go as I did actually printing on it. With the X1C, it’s so reliable I’m leaving it switched off for days until I have time to CAD the next thing I want to print!
Anyway, my point was that for me, I don’t need multi-material enough to bother with an AMS. Bambu has said they’re working on the runout fail-over, and if they get that working, then the AMS will probably be worth it. But not just for multi-material/multi-colour; the X1C by Itself would have been worth the kickstarter price, is probably worth the retail price, and was defintely worth the early bird price I actually paid. But the AMS didn’t seem to fit my needs, so I didn’t buy one.
Sounds like you made the right choice and will now be spending a lot less time fucking around.
I hope the X1C works like that for a long time.
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