I am looking to buy a 3D printer which will be used in my small business size of about 20 people. We sometimes need little parts made for holding littles pieces of equipment and after seeing a similar lab to us use 3D Printing to make little holders for their antennas, we are looking at buying one ourselves.

What can you guys recommend? So far I have seen this video which suggests the Bambulab P1P, or the Prusa mk3S+ Kit.

I think we will most likely buy the Bambulab P1P as this guy suggests. However he did say that its not great for fixing. “Fixing or replacing parts does not appear to be anywhere near as user friendly or even possible in some cases”

How hard is it to build the Prusa mk3S+ Kit yourself in case we decide we want to have the Prusa given it is more easily fixable? We would prefer the Bambulab as it prints faster and is slightly larger, but might not get it due to the fact its not as easy to fix stuff.

  • @bigredgiraffe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1•11 months ago

    That looks like a really sweet printer, if I were getting another printer right now that’s probably what I would get. The only thing Bambu needs now is a reverse AMS hub so you can share a set of AMS with two printers haha.

    As for metal, you can’t really print metal directly on any hobby printers yet but there are a ton of metal impregnated plastics that work well. I have tried a few of them and the Protopasta metal filaments probably has the highest metal content. I haven’t tried heat treating it yet but just the regular prints are noticeably heavier and you can polish them so they are pretty neat, the iron filled one is magnetic and even rusts! They have samples on their site too if you want to test them. Make sure you get a hardened steel hotend for the P1S though as they are very abrasive.

    OrcaSlicer is just another slicer app. OrcaSlicer is a fork of BambuSlicer which is a fork of PrusaSlicer which is a fork of Slic3r and some others if I remember right. BambuSlicer is good but OrcaSlicer is better, they added a bunch of other printer support and it even has calibration prints built in! This is a video with information on all 3, there are other videos as well. The biggest thing for me is the UI in Bambu/Orca is much better organized and easier to use I think.

    Happy printing!