After seeing the Bambu Labs X1 Carbon, I almost bought one, and still may one day, since it looks awesome. However, in my view, working against the X1 is firstly the cost (but it is probably worth it), and secondly the proprietary nature of pretty much everything associated with it. I have mixed feelings about the walled garden they are building around their printer, since I know they had to make some design choices due to the tightly controlled design and simple user experience they are going for. But on the other hand, they have leveraged off many opensource projects, and aside from some updates to PrusaSlicer, it does not seem like they are doing much for the 3D printing community. They are just starting off though, and I know they will get big in time, so it's too early to judge. For now though, despite the awesome looking product they have created, I'm gonna pass, I'm too cheap to plop down that much cash at one time, and like to tinker with my printers - and be able to fix them too.
The X1 did get me thinking about something new though. I have always wanted to build a Voron, and the 2.4 is pretty much the best kit printer out there IMHO. When I saw a deal for this kit from AliExpress, which was on sale for around $735 plus tax after the coupons, I left it in my cart for a few days before deciding to go for it. It is not a smoking deal but if it comes with everything it says it will, then it will be a decent deal (though the price has gone up a bit since I bought mine). The kit is a for a 2.4 (R1), but I plan to build it out a a 2.4 R2 with a Stealthburner. I also picked up a Rapido UHF hot end to use with it, along with some extra parts. Since the functional parts kit was less than $80 (after the coupons), and I hate printing ABS, I picked that up as well.
As far as I know, there is no such thing as a "budget" Voron for most folks, and so I expect the costs will go up even more when I find things that need to be updated or modified, but the kit looks very complete. I expect that in the end, I could be close to the X1 Carbon territory for the outlay in cash, but the Voron is larger and I can at least work on it with readily available parts, and have tons of options to upgrade it if I want to. I hope for now though, that I can restrain myself from trying to add every possible cool mod to the printer before it ever see's it's first speed benchy. It's definitely gonna be a project, but hopefully worth it, and I will get to learn a bit about setting up kipper as well.
The X1 did get me thinking about something new though. I have always wanted to build a Voron, and the 2.4 is pretty much the best kit printer out there IMHO. When I saw a deal for this kit from AliExpress, which was on sale for around $735 plus tax after the coupons, I left it in my cart for a few days before deciding to go for it. It is not a smoking deal but if it comes with everything it says it will, then it will be a decent deal (though the price has gone up a bit since I bought mine). The kit is a for a 2.4 (R1), but I plan to build it out a a 2.4 R2 with a Stealthburner. I also picked up a Rapido UHF hot end to use with it, along with some extra parts. Since the functional parts kit was less than $80 (after the coupons), and I hate printing ABS, I picked that up as well.
As far as I know, there is no such thing as a "budget" Voron for most folks, and so I expect the costs will go up even more when I find things that need to be updated or modified, but the kit looks very complete. I expect that in the end, I could be close to the X1 Carbon territory for the outlay in cash, but the Voron is larger and I can at least work on it with readily available parts, and have tons of options to upgrade it if I want to. I hope for now though, that I can restrain myself from trying to add every possible cool mod to the printer before it ever see's it's first speed benchy. It's definitely gonna be a project, but hopefully worth it, and I will get to learn a bit about setting up kipper as well.
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