I just came in from reloading my Bambulabs X1 printer as it ran out of filament overnight. I was thinking about how much has changed since I got my first printer back in 2016 (a Lulzbot Mini).
Back then the thing I was doing, swapping out filament mid-print, wouldn’t have happened. If I didn’t hot-swap the filament while it was running my print was just going to fail. Of course, that got sorted pretty quickly but you did have other issues like power failures and things like that that you couldn’t recover from. I never wanted the printer to be a hobby in itself. I just wanted to tool to make parts. And a thing you can’t rely on isn’t much of a tool at all.
I’ve had both filament and resin printers. Neither of which has felt particularly reliable because I’m not shopping at the high end. When I buy a new printer I buy the bargain that everybody agrees is the best at that moment. And generally speaking I find myself spending a lot more time troubleshooting failed prints that I’d like. I just want the damn parts!
When I got the X1 I had a friend who had one. He was new to 3D printing and he was talking a lot more about the cool stuff that he was printing than the problems he was having with it - which seemed odd to me. Then, when I looked into it it turned out that this seemed to be the experience that most people were having with the printer. So, even though I didn’t have a specific need at that moment for another 3D printer, I bought one. It turned out to be a great decision.
My experience with the X1 has been what I’d hoped for from the beginning. I wanted a tool that made parts and that’s what this does. Do I get failures? Now and again. Mostly user error and rarely the kind of head-scratchers that I got with my other printers where I’m left to guess what might have gone wrong, try again and hope for the best. I’m fairly certain that in just a few months I’ve done more printing with my X1 than I’ve done with all of my other printers combined.
The weird thing for me is that because this isn’t a hobby for me and because I don’t have to money to buy a printer from each new generation as they come out I really don’t know if this reliability is unique to this printer/company or if printers in general have become this reliable. All I know if that I’m happy and printing constantly and it has added to my available income streams so it’s just wins all around.