I’m starting to run up against the printer’s small build volume. This is my first 3D printer, and I was attracted to the easy out of the box experience. I actually intended to buy the A1, but got its smaller cousin by mistake. I could have sworn I clicked the right button, but everything from the emailed receipt to my order history on the Bambu Lab website says I ordered the mini.

I decided to keep the printer even though I knew I’d eventually outgrow it. I told myself this was my toe in the water for this hobby, and I’d re-evaluate in 6 months to a year whether upgrading to a larger printer would be worth it.

I bought the printer in November, and since then Bambu Lab has begun the enshittification of their products[1]. If I upgrade, it will have to be to a different brand.

So I like the A1 mini’s ease of use and no brainer setup, but don’t like its small build volume, the new restrictions placed on it by the manufacturer, and the fact that the printer is not enclosed. A better camera is a nice-to-have but not necessary. Any suggestions for an upgrade?

  1. Follow-up question so as not to double-post, IIRC the A1 mini was not included in the initial enshittification rollout earlier this year. I put my printer in LAN mode and blocked outgoing traffic from its IP on my network as a precautionary measure anyway upon hearing the announcement. Have the changes made to the other products trickled down to the mini yet? Can I safely upgrade still or should I keep it isolated? ↩︎

  • Bluewing@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    First, leave the mini on the current firmware if you enjoy using Orca. Mine is locked to 1.04 and on LAN.

    I’m a Prusa fan boy, so I would recommend the Core 1. If I was starting over, that’s what I would buy. But there a some other good choices out there.

    Qidi often gets over looked, They have the Plus 4 and now the Q2 both can be used with the Qidi box, their ams knockoff.

    The Elegoo Centari Carbon has been more good than bad it seems, but it seems there have been complaints about the klipper version it runs is locked so vanilla klipper won’t run on it. And Elegoo won’t release the open source parts of the code to allow it. YMMV

    The new Snapmaker is interesting, but I would be wary until it gets out into the wild and the great unwashed masses start breaking it before I would invest.

    Crealty has upped their game, but I’m personally still wary.