Bambu Lab Printer (for discussion, not promotion)

HebigT

I'm not associated with the company, but I found the (alleged) features on this printer interesting enough to share.

A few notes:

'high-speed' printing, apparently inspired by MirageC's HevORT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFdfYn0DTUk&t=130s&ab_channel=BambuLab
3 force sensors + "mini" Lidar module for z-axis compensation
Lidar also used for pre-print flow-calibration and first-layer adhesion checks (they claim 7um resolution and say this data feeds into the linear advance parameters)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asXf7KNCerQ
Input shaping - vague on the details but mentions sampling frequencies for compensation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21RZwC-MD-I&ab_channel=Maker'sMuse

They posted to Reddit and drew a lot of skepticism.
https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/udry4b/we_have_been_working_on_this_lovely_monster_for/

Lingering questions:

Open-source firmware (my guess is no)

Software details - only seen screenshots but they say it will accept gcode from other slicers.

Consumables - this video seems to show a bespoke nozzle design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujR5moz5hHk&ab_channel=BambuLab

Here's their FAQ

https://blog.bambulab.com/faq/

The promo is very flashy, but I think the printer itself looks quite nice. We'll see...

oliof

@hebigt I tend to be highly suspicious of people that build printers with allegedly highly disruptive features and bring them to market via Kickstarter with no previous market or manufacturing experience at the intended scale.

If half of their claims are true, they'd be building a machine that's doing what Ultimaker does with their S5 and Material Station, at 25% of the price.

I'm usually naively optimistic, but this has all the smells of too good to be true.

(I've seen some 17 minute benchy in white plastic on Twitter, but a) the mostly sloped surfaces if the benchybot allow to crank up IS as much as you want, b) the photos were favorably lit, c) I have a bed slinger on the bench that can do 12min Benchies without breaking a sweat. Speedboats are like the gpu benchmarks of yore -- easy to optimize for without any relation to real world performance.

And before I trust any of the upcoming YouTube "reviews" I'd like to see the T&C under which these are done. The ones for Anker basically gave Anker full editorial control so they're not worth a second of attention.

mperdue

I've been looking at the information on this printer, too. It will be interesting to see if it actually lives up to the hype, assuming it is ever released.

The vibration compensation and LIDAR aspects of the printer could certainly be good things to have.

oliof

I've been spelunking a bit and followed Bambu Labs' PR. They seem to be heaviky funded by IGN, and have 150 people working on the printer and software surrounding it.

Since the engineering leadership hails from DJI, the LIDAR sounds much more feasible since it's a common component in drones.

Unfortunately, all their hardware and firmware is proprietary and has nothing in common with the reprap spirit. So they'll try to disrupt the market with race to the bottom pricing and the Open Source reprap community has little to gain from this.

elmoret

@oliof said in Bambu Lab Printer (for discussion, not promotion):

Unfortunately, all their hardware and firmware is proprietary and has nothing in common with the reprap spirit. So they'll try to disrupt the market with race to the bottom pricing and the Open Source reprap community has little to gain from this.

Citation needed.

https://mobile.twitter.com/garethlewin/status/1529644559214313472

oliof

@elmoret yes, the limitation to "non-commercial" is not in the spirit of the four freedoms of Open Source. So you provided the citation yourself.

elmoret

@oliof “ reprap community has little to gain from this.”

Company: “ Open source community are welcome to use any of our design/methods/tricks.”

Can’t say I see how those are the same thing.

oliof

@elmoret I can do selective quoting as well

"It will not be the same for commercial manufacturers."

For me, the Open Source reprap community includes commercial endeavors such as Duet3D. I'm surprised this is a point of contention.

breed

@oliof I agree with you but secretly hoping we are both wrong. The lidar scanning idea is super interesting to me. I've been thinking about camera vision being used to measure line width for a while.

oliof

@breed oh I am super excited about this machine as it tries to break some new ground. I'm actively holding myself off of justifying spending money on a Kickstarter machine[1] (-;

We'll see what happens.

[1] The only remaining reason would be for personal, uh, forensics reasons. And I don't have that amount of spare cash.

dc42

@breed said in Bambu Lab Printer (for discussion, not promotion):

@oliof I've been thinking about camera vision being used to measure line width for a while.

We've been doing that for a while.
https://www.duet3d.com/blog/duet3d-research-optical-measures-of-print-quality

Rushmere3D

New post on twitter tries to answer the question.

https://blog.bambulab.com/to-open-or-not-to-open-that-is-the-question/

oliof

@rushmere3d thanks for the link, that's quite interesting.

mperdue

I’ve decided to take a chance with this one.

breed

@dc42 omg how did I not know about this?

pjl

@mperdue our guys also gonna get it. From what Ive seen this is a solid kicker campaign for once.

Rushmere3D

@pjl

That's because it's not really a Kickstarter campaign is it, it's purely for marketing. They've got loads of money behind them already and sent loads of printers to influencers. Last time I just the campaign it was at £3.5m, will 4,000 backers they plan to ship all of these in July hardly at company that needs to use Kickstarter.

mperdue

@pjl It certainly looks like they have invested a lot of time and money into this machine. The number of demo units that have been placed in reviewers' hands bodes well for them already having the ability to make and sell the device.

martin7404

I Got one .
It is fast.
Also very close to experince like geting HP laser jet and runing it. Espesialy with PLA.
This thing will take away the good sleep of Prusa, ultimaker, Raise 3d etc

Blacksheep99

@martin7404 said in Bambu Lab Printer (for discussion, not promotion):

I Got one .
It is fast.
Also very close to experince like geting HP laser jet and runing it. Espesialy with PLA.
This thing will take away the good sleep of Prusa, ultimaker, Raise 3d etc

I got mine last week, Have to agree. Only going to get better as well.