Duet versus Bambu
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Hi,
I've been seeing a lot of videos of these Bambu printers.
For the most part they seem to be living up to the "hype".
What needs to happen in the Duet world for Duet hardware to perform on par with these Bambu printers but still remain open source?
Thanks.
Frederick
Printers: a small Utilmaker style, a small CoreXY and a E3D MS/TC setup. Various hotends. Using Duet 3 hardware running 3.4.6
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I think a lot of it was just that, hype. All the fancy tricks can't escape mechanical realities. I see a lot of ringing and other artifacts in the pictures posted online. And people still having problems with bed adhesion etc. Not to mention the cloud connectivity snafu causing printers to start printing in the middle of the night. Yikes.
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By now, I have experience with both (Duet more than Bambu). My opinion is this: Bambu Labs have identified the key areas to innovate where an FDM 3D printer has to be really, really good to make an overall good product.
- motion system that is not overengineered (Raise) nor underengineered (Ultimaker), focus on lightness, with intelligently engineered, custom injection molded parts.
- very powerful extrusion system (ultra fast ceramic heater, short filament path, light weight)
- hype-worthy features: the print speed that results from the above, and multicolor printing that really works due to the AMS which is cheaply made but also rather well engineered from a functional PoV. The Lidar is innovative for sure, I find myself not using it too often.
aside from that, they just made some smart decisions/choices in terms of which slicer(s) to fork, which build plate system to use, etc. And they seem to have a lot of experience in UI/UX which shows itself in the touchscreen interface, unboxing/setting up experience, extensive documentation.
All in all I'd say the printers live up to the hype for a great part, as Frederick says. They definitely didn't do themselves a favor with the online/cloud first approach, which albeit handy when you want to remotely access your printer, is still a nuisance first for me as a commercial user (my IT has great trouble integrating the printer(s) into our network, obviously using the cloud servers is out of the question, and they don't have ethernet). They are expanding on the "LAN only" mode which should have been perfected first, so I think they are listening to the community.
For Duet to "perform on par" IMO it doesn't even take too much, the features are mostly there - it's just a task to perfectly tune them to a specific set of hardware, which would also include programming a lot of macros and integrating a lot of sensors. I'd go a step further and say that with the CAN ecosystem including closed loop drivers and such, Duet has the better foundation to build a bigger and more powerful, industry-ready Bambu competitor. The thing I see myself envying most in other systems is a sleek, polished and functional touch UI such as the Bambu's or (from the looks of it) KlipperScreen.
Just my 0,02$!
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@sonderzug said in Duet versus Bambu:
it's just a task to perfectly tune them to a specific set of hardware,
Perhaps what is needed is a program that can run on the Duet hardware on a specific set of machine hardware and analyze the behavior and then generate the settings needed to obtain the best performance. Rinse and repeat as required.
Frederick
Printers: a small Utilmaker style, a small CoreXY and a E3D MS/TC setup. Various hotends. Using Duet 3 hardware running 3.4.6
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It's a bit like comparing apples and oranges -- I'm tempted to get an X1C or what ever they release next just due to the complete package.
Beside my Duet equipped FDM machine I also have an Formlabs Form3B+ and that thing is so much easier to use, you just import, support and send to print. That's it.
But you can't achieve that unless you control the entire process -- software, hardware and firmware.Duet can for sure improve the user experience with things that frankly should have been there from the start, like homing, filament change etc. macros. But they can't do what Bambu have done simply because they do not sell the printer, just what controls it.
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@Reine said in Duet versus Bambu:
things that frankly should have been there from the start, like homing, filament change etc. macros
no sure if you mean we should support these sorts of macros (which we obviously do) or that we should provide preset for them (which we do not given the variety of machines, but we have a config tool) or that we are the example of an improved user experience because these are possible on Duet?
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For me I feel the biggest gripe at the moment with the duet ecosystem is the PanelDue, sure it works.
But oh man it's starting to show it's age compared to the UI and options one see in the "new generation" of entusiast/prosumer level printers.
Don't know how realistic it would be, a more powerfull screen with a CAN-FD connection maybe? I'm pretty sure most would be fine with only one size option if it had all the bells and wistles one expect to see in a printer these days. Like a fully working model preview with pan/zoom feature, built in object cancel, better console and a new modern/up to date GUI.
And those who want a larger format screen would be able to get it anyways with an android tablet or whatever like many allready are.
Oh yeah, a better way to connect a camera would also be really nice. Talking as a standalone user, that is far from as easy as it should/could be. And a way to access it remotely (don't know if remote view/access is possible with a Bambu, but I suspect it is).
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@fcwilt perhaps duet3d and maybe with community input should design a full printer. Something that could be sold whole or kitted like a voron. Tuned to perfection by duet and the community. If you could get enough capable and identical printers out there the tuning could be made as perfect as possible.
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@Exerqtor I have to agree. I have a few people who run klipper and the screen does make me a bit jealous.
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@Herve_Smith yeah I was thinking cheaper. More in line with the K1 and p1p. The tool changer is a nice machine but it's getting pretty old. I'm very anti-cantilever bed at this point.
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@breed The toolchanger may be old, but the engineering is very solid. On mine I have never had to adjust the bed or create a new heightmap after the initial setup, unlike pretty much every other printer I've had.
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I think the biggest attraction for the Bambu is a) the AMS and b) the price point for a fully enclosed printer.
The latter has by now been copied (with varying success) by Qidi, Creality, Kingroon (Qidis looks like the most solid, but they built similar machines before so no surprises there. Creality and Kingroon did some questionable things so we see where the funding Bambu Labs has got spent). The former is still unclear.
For me the biggest deterrent is the encrypted telemetry data that gets sent back to Bambu for everything you print, and the closed source nature of the thing. I know some people are currently having fun with Ghidra and jtag pirates, but we really shouldn't need to do that. Unfortunately the target audience does not care until Open Source.
Looking that a hightemp printer like the Valkyrie can be built for about 1800$, with some industrial design and mass production approaches, a duet-based printer in the price range of the Bambu X1C might be possible (not so sure about the P1P/P1S). But I agree with previous posters; integration into the slicer and some fresh love for DWC and a display would be needed -- and that incurs cost that is not easily recuperated with a machine aimed at the cut throat margin consumer market as long as you pay EU salaries.
<>RatRig V-Minion Fly Super5Pro RRF<> V-Core 3.1 IDEX k*****r <> RatRig V-Minion SKR 2 Marlin<>
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Hah, I forgot to add that the Troodon v2 is close to a commercially available printer that can keep up with the Bambus of the world, running RRF stock (albeit on a custom board), for a comparable price.
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@oliof I think it's just a matter of time before someone either creates an open source ams from scratch or designs a board to replace the board in the Bambu ams so it can work with klipper and rrf. Board would need to have both USB and can fd. I don't know if the motors on the Bambu ams are even steppers. I figure next month when creality releases their code for the K1 and K1 max the klipper people will be hard on trying to get the Bambu ams to work with the creality machines.
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@breed AFAIK the Bambu AMS speaks CAN, so ... who knows, maybe it already could work with klipper machines and the secondary CAN bus on the Duet3 6HC (with some extra work on the latter) if you could figure out the protocol.
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@oliof pretty sure it's encrypted.
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@breed encryption can be broken. Allegedly there is a group of people armed with jtag pirates and ghidra looking at the inner workings of bambu. This is only third hand knowledge though, so I cannot comment on any alleged findings at this time.
