Bambu Lab P1P 3D printer

the_eon
2023-07-08T04:37:18Z

I don't intend this to be a sales pitch or anything, I just wanted to share my impression of the Bambu Labs P1P 3D printer in case anyone on here was curious and maybe considering buying one themselves.

I have owned a few Prusa FDM printers over the years but recently tried the Bambu Labs P1P after seeing tons of rave reviews, especially in terms of how fast it prints. Anyone that has done any 3d prints knows that print time is among the least enjoyable aspects of the hobby: lots of waiting.

Right out the gate, the P1P is a solid device with impressive construction given its relatively low price tag (I got it for $600 USD). And this thing easily rivals high performance machines in it's same "category", like the Prusa mk 3 and 4. And those are typically more expensive; the P1P comes 99.5% assembled at that price but a Prusa machine fully assembled is around 60% more expensive.

Most of the "assembly" is just removing packaging, like zip ties, that kept the unit safe and secure during transit. Then you connect the power cable, screen, spool holder, and filament tube. And that's it. The whole thing took maybe 10 minutes.

Getting the WiFi to connect is impossible for me at the moment, but I don't mind copying sliced gcode to the included microsd for printing. Sure, sending the gcode over WiFi would be super cool, but my Prusa doesn't do that so it's not like I've lost something. I'm hoping to eventually figure it out but that's not a deal breaker for me. I'm guessing I just need to temporarily move the printer next to the WiFi router but I haven't made time for it because I'm enjoying just printing off the card.

With the included 0.4mm nozzle (a standard size), it prints typically 2 to 3 times faster. Something that takes 23 hours might take 11. Something that takes 3 hours might take 1. For larger and more complex prints, you can get stuff done so much faster. For smaller and simpler prints, you no longer need to plan batches either first thing in the morning or overnight, you can just start them whenever. Whatever you printed before, you can print 2 to 3 times as many in one go in the same amount of time.

I don't have the AMS system but hope to get that at some point. If it has the same high quality build and performance as the P1P then I'm certain it will bring me simple multi-filament printing. And although I'm not nearly rich enough to afford more than 1 AMS, you can technically connect up to to 4 at once. Each unit holds up to 4 filament spools, so 4x4 means you could theoretically use 16 different filaments in a single print. The colors you could have! But each unit is like $350. Ouch.

I only have 2 real gripes with it so far. First, it purges way too much filament at the start of a print. I get why it does that, it absolutely ensures that your filament is always properly primed to assist in printing that critical first layer correctly, but it feels very wasteful to have a seemingly-excessive amount of filament thrown away with each print.

Second gripe is that the default spool holder is awful to access. You are likely to put the back of the machine facing a wall and that's where the spool holder will end up facing: the wall. You need to ensure the printer is a little more than two spool's width away from the wall - at the very least - so you can slide your spools on and off. Thankfully the bed doesn't move back and forth like with traditional fdm printers, thanks to the corexy technology, so you can more easily plan out where to put it and how much space it will need.

I haven't messed around with them yet but I just got additional hotends for it that I will be testing soon. The pack I got contains 0.2mm for prints that require very fine detail, 0.6mm for prints where detail is slightly less important than speed, and 0.8mm for when you want to go fast and don't care how much detail you get. Because they use a proprietary construction of hotend, you must use theirs, but the upside is that it's fairly fast and simple to switch them out. Most hotends, you just replace the tip, the actual nozzle. But because filament can gunk up the threads, you need to run it hot to unscrew the nozzle, which is very dangerous. With the P1P, you just pull off the magnetic faceplate, undo a few screws, swap the hotend, put the screws back, and pop the faceplate back on. In just a few minutes, you're done. And no need to turn on the hotend either; just unload your filament prior, let it cool down, and swap away. A much safer and more pleasant experience.

Overall, I'm in love with 3d printing all over again. It's the same feeling I got all those years ago when I did my very first 3d print. And sure, the Prusa is still great when you want high quality detailed prints. Going slow and steady wins that particular race still. But I get quality that is 90+% comparable to what the prusa gives me in exchange for literally 2x to 3x print speeds. That's an easy trade for me. And the slicer software estimates that some of my larger and less detailed prints could print in right 2/3 the time using the 0.6mm nozzle instead of the default 0.4mm. That translates to roughly 7 hours on my Prusa (0.4), 3.5 hours in my P1P (0.4), and 2 hours on my P1P (0.6). Given how much easier it is to swap out nozzles on the P1P, I can see myself actually doing that not frequently for certain prints that, like in my example, see substantial benefit.

I'm very excited to see how this machine holds up in the long run!

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