I bought something last week, which I'd considered (but couldn't justify buying) since I saw it on Kickstarter... but so far I am having few complaints about my Bambu Labs X1C. Yeah I know, "You still haven't finished the Voron, and you bought an X1C!?!". It's not that bad though, the Voron is going to get completed, and will become my "big" printer, it's just that my Ender3 and CR10S Pro, which are good printers when I'm not tinkering with them, are being left in the dust by the newer CoreXY printers on the market today. And the best of them so far, at least when it comes to the feature set, is the Bambu X1C with an AMS. While it's true that the P1S is $500 cheaper, and does most of the same stuff, and the Creality K1 Max is bigger, right now I just wanted a printer that works, that I don't have to tinker with much.
It's not all sunshine and roses though, I'm not stoked that my dollars went to a company which is moving 3D printing away from opensource, and I have no excuse for that one. I'd have much preferred to give my money to Prusa, since they have given a lot back to the community, but it was not to be. Although I was fully aware of it going into the purchase, it still bugs me that the X1C is cloud centric, and Bambu seems pretty opaque on what they collect in their encrypted log files. I didn't go full Grant Posner and isolate it to the LAN without firmware updates, but before I even connected the printer, I had to set up a way to isolate it from the rest of my network. Adding to my reservations is the very closed nature of their hardware and software. Practically, that means if I have a problem, I better hope they will sell me the parts, or provide some basic support to locate a fault. Finally, in my limited time using the printer, it initially told me to lube up the Z screws after initial calibration (which was easy, but what's up with that, eh?), and there have been a few disconnects from wifi (however I'm going to try boosting the signal from my router).
So now that the bad is out of the way, the good is that UPS did not destroy it, and it was safely delivered. It even printed great out of the box, including a couple multicolor prints with the AMS, which is a huge achievement for a 3D printer! It's also not as noisy as I thought it would be based on reviews, though it's located in a room which is not often used (or maybe my hearing is going out). Overall I'm pretty impressed with it, and I can see that the LiDAR will probably become more useful over time (although it seemed to work well enough for the 4 spools of random PLA I tried). The touchscreen is also something I consider a requirement these days, and the one on X1C is actually very useful. I'm hopeful that the X1C can be my goto printer for smaller things, and that I can get proficient with OrcaSlicer (or possibly BambuSlicer). My plan right now is to use those tools with the Voron, and maybe other printers as well. And again, the Voron is going to be finished ("he had to tell himself" - Morgan Freeman, get out of my head!). To use a car analogy, the Voron is gonna be like a Camaro, which gets driven to the track every weekend, while the daily driver 2023 Honda Accord (X1C) will be doing the milk runs to the grocery store.
And because I can't help myself, there will be a few things which I am going to add to the X1C. The small carbon (only) filter included with the printer is pretty insufficient to rely upon, so I'm working on a design which I hope will help clean up the air blown out the back of the printer. I also have plans to add a duct with a booster fan to it later (waiting on parts for that though). Further down the road I am considering a better lighting solution for the printer. Although it has a light inside, it's just adequate to see what's going on using the camera, but very hard to see through the tinted glass door.
Below is a pic of the filter I'm working on. It will get posted to Printables once I can confirm the filters fit (and I get it printed). There are several versions, the two on the right use M3 screws (which requires tapping a few holes), and the one on the left uses 8x3 magnets to hold it in place. I will update the blog when it's posted, with some more pics of it.
Updated 8/30/2023: Adding some pics of the filter, which is not yet posted.
Update 8/31/2023: The fan filter needs more work, the filter being used is too much for the weak chamber fan to deal with.
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