Having seen all of the hype about the bambu lab printer range i got out the credit card and pulled the trigger. I went to bambu labs home page set up an account scrolled to the printers section and added a bambu lab p1s printer to my basket.
I proceeded to go to the checkout page where i entered my card details and hit purchase, After the various security checks i got the purchase successful message. Now the excitement really kicked in, i would check my email and the tracking information regularly. To my surprise the tracking number showed up within about 2 hours – Happy Days!
Trying hard to contain my excitement i headed to my man cave and started 3d printing before i knew it the early hours had arrived so closing everything down i headed off to bed. After a good nights sleep i awoke and checked my phone the printer had been dispatched. throughout the day i would check the tracking number on both the courier website and bambu website and by the end of the day the printer was was tracking across Germany heading for the airport.
The following day i awoke to a message from the courier to say the expected delivery time would be 11 o’clock, sure enough 11.03 the printer arrived. I ordered the printer about 15.30 on Thursday it arrived 11.03 on Saturday morning. – Now that’s what i call service.
Off to the man cave i went with this massive box in my arms, I was like a kid on Christmas morning. I placed the massive box on my computer chair and proceeded to carefully cut the tape sealing the box.
The printer was very well packaged and there was zero damage to the box, i pulled the plastic bag that contained the printer out of the box to reveal the printer in all its glory, i then proceeded to remove the protective film from the glass lid and door, cut a cable tie holding the x carriage and removed the 3 screws securing the z axis to the bottom of the printer.
With the printer in its new home and bambu studio already installed on my computer i quickly scanned through the user manual plugged the printer in and powered the printer on. On the screen i was asked if i had removed the securing screws, clicked yes and was asked to enter my wifi credentials so that i could link the printer to my bambu account, once the printer was linked i was asked to run the calibration sequence which took about 15 minutes. Now it is time to insert some filament so back to the screen down to load filament button where the printer proceeded to heat the hotend, when the hotend was up to temperature i was asked to feed the filament into the ptfe tube where the printer started to bang and clatter as it went through the sequence of cleaning and purging the nozzle.
Onto the computer we go firing up bambu studio and loading an stl file, checking that the right printer is selected and the pla filament profile is selected i sliced the file and hit print. The printer went through the bed leveling process as well as the vibration compensation process and started to print.
Boy is this machine fast the downside to the speed is the noise, The printer is noisy as the enclosure is made of plastic which amplifies the noise and vibrations of the x carriage flying about laying molten plastic onto the build plate. after about 20 minutes i had the printed part in my hand and the print quality is second to none, the print looks very clean and the layer lines stack perfectly.
So would i recommend this printer?
Hell yeah it was a breeze to set up with very little user input and prints almost perfectly. From the box to printing in under an hour. I would say its ideal for the beginner, however should the beginner get a nozzle clog or extruder clog then they will need to do a lot of reading to figure things out. That said bambu labs have a very comprehensive wiki and tutorial videos that will take you though the process step by step.
Pros
The printer is a breeze to set up. It looks very clean in its design and is very easy to use, It prints fast and almost to perfection.
Cons
The noise, The plastic enclosure amplifies the sound. The led light in the enclosure is dim.