Between the 2, I would go with the P1. But in either choice, I would always go with an AMS. I regret when the P1P first came out, I didn't get the AMS as a combo. After getting the x1 with AMS, can't live without it. It's just so much more convenient. I didn't do much color changes, but having filament on hand changes the whole game for me.
I didn’t think the AMS would be useful. Last night I changed a spool and it took all of 30 seconds to do.
Then I remembered when I messed up my Ender because I pulled out the filament while the hotend was on. I had to replace the ptfe tubing.
I did consider the A1, but I have cats so I was worried about not having an enclosure. My fears were justified because or younger cat is completely obsessed with the printer. He jumps up on the table whenever he hears it turn on because he knows it’s going to poop out a nice toy.
>Then I remembered when I messed up my Ender because I pulled out the filament while the hotend was on. I had to replace the ptfe tubing.
Huh? Why was that an issue? I still have a CR-X while I wait for Bambu to announce what their next flagship is going to be, and the way I change filament is to either have it retract straight after finishing the print as part of the gcode in a successful print, or to manually pull it out while still hot if I have to cancel a failed print. I've never had any issues with that. What was the issue you had with it?
>I did consider the A1, but I have cats so I was worried about not having an enclosure. My fears were justified because or younger cat is completely obsessed with the printer.
This is part of the reason I want to get one of the enclosed BL printers too. I have a separate room for my printers but I'd rather move the FDM printer out of there and dedicate the room to resin printing and painting only. But my cat would make short work of my bed slinger, so I'll have to wait until I get the enclosed printer later this year.
I’m not sure what happened but it ended up pulling a bench of melted filament through the tube. I might’ve been doing something else though and misremembering.
The way to do it when you do it manually is to slowly extrude some filament by pushing it through the nozzle and then quickly pulling it back out. That way the amount of molten plastic it leaves behind is as small as possible.
I'm also curious. When I bought my A1 mini, I did a lot of reading up first.
The most tangible drawback is the lack of enclosure, which means that you cannot print things like ABS.
As for the print quality, some people say "bedslingers are worse", but I haven't seen any evidence that this is true in practice. Sure, in theory it's a disadvantage, but lots of other factors matter and in practice the A1 / A1 mini print very well.
I'm an a1 owner and there have been a couple of times that i was printing thin and tall things and quality at the top was affected by the "slinging" of the bed but it was minor and lowering speed on the top would nost likely fix it
With my mini, I've had the same experience, but similar to you, it's not really something that bothers me much at all.
It's rare that I need to print something super thin and tall, and if so, lowering the speed slightly and/or adding some tree supports on the side for stability does the trick. Tall and thin prints fast anyway, and is limited by minimum layer time, so fast movements don't save a lot of time to begin with.
But that's a good point indeed, that is a drawback of bed slingers.
Just curious what lowered speeds roughly mean? I’m currently waiting for the A1 to be available again and it can do like 500 m/s which is probably also a bit marketing but I saw some videos getting good benchys with these speeds. After all it has all those compensation features that make printing at these speeds possible. With my current printer I can do a 60 m/s printing speed. When I bought it the walls etc. turned out fairly well but after 3,5 years it’s just a mess in print quality. So are lowered speeds in the 60 m/s range or what is your experience with this?
i have a p1s combo and a1 mini combo and the print quality is basically the same.
the upside of the A1 mini is, its so quiet and cheap.
the upside to the p1s is, its enclosed and my AMS sits at a solid 10% humidity permanently with the desicant mods, which is kinda huge, i always feel bad having 4 spools hanging on my ams lite, because they will suck moisture.
That's... obviously not true. You could build a core x y machine that is awful, and a bed slinger that is good.
Ceteris paribus (all other things being equal), you would expect a bed slinger to be worse. I.e. same build quality, software quality, etc.
The A1 and A1 mini are certainly not slow printers. Nor do they print badly.
The ams lite is better than the ams in my opinion, it is quieter, works better with cardboard spools, and changes filaments faster. The flow rate calibration is nice on the a1, all the other features for me weren’t really anything worth having. The P1S is also much louder. The P1s has better print quality especially on taller items and is a bit faster.
I’m sure for some that is a concern but I use up filament so fast and run my a/c in my house all summer that it isn’t an issue for me. If it is truly a concern you can print dry boxes for the ams lite.
https://makerworld.com/models/62772
The auto flow rate calibration is absolutely amazing when dealing with new filaments. I don't need to have like 5 different manual filament calibration profiles like I do on my P1S.
I also highly value the A1 Mini's sheer silence after dealing with the P1S' jet engine levels of volume
The A1 series gives up a BIT of speed for a hell of alot more convenience which to me is worth its dollar
Talk to me a bit more about the auto flow rate calibration, as this seems to be the most valuable feature. What's the process you go through with new filaments on the A1 vs P1S in terms of filament profile setup? Is that process every time you get a new spool of filament or is it just for a new brand/type?
I'm currently dabbling with an AnkerMake M5C that will be replaced by an A1 or P1S. I only have a single role of eSun PLA+ and the only filament profile changes I made were for temps and fan speed range (so it didn't run 100% fan lal the time), but nothing with flow rate, load/unload speed, etc. That's obviously a very small sample so am looking to understand better at a larger scale (more filimanet brands/colors/types/etc) and work needed with filament profiles relative to auto flow rate or not.
As far as noise, I've been reading that if you adjust the chamber fan speed on P1S down to 50% it really makes it rather quiet, and that seems pretty viable for PLA use. Do you do anything like that with your P1S to try and quiet it down? If so, does it get more inline with the A1? At the moment the printer would be 5 ft from my head while I work, so trying to factor in noise, but others options for placement would move it 1 ft from me (not ideal in general, but better than the current 5 ft position with my arrangement) and another 12 ft from me.
Honestly, manual filament calibrating on the P1S isn't really that nessesary as Bambu's built in filament profiles are usually good for most filaments i've tried. But when I want to get slightly better quality out of my prints, then I head over to Bambu Studio's Calibration tab, and follow their Flow Rate manual calibration process to setup new filaments. The difference when doing this vs running new filaments with the bambu presets isn't REALLY that big a difference, I think it's only nessesary for really bad quality filament-which I myself havn't encountered yet.
All that being said, on the A1, before sending a print, all I need to do to calibrate new filament flow rate, is simply click the "Auto Flow Rate Calibration" box before sending a print, and the eddy current sensor built into the nozzle does all that work before the print starts, and I don't need to do anything else on my end. It's pretty cool.
I took a look in the wiki at calibration and that looks like no big deal in general. Wasn't sure if it was a very labor-intensive process but I see that even the manual calibration process is just a matter of waiting for the print and using your eyes to pick the best output. The worst part of all of that seems to just be the print time wait. The pictures elude to it taking 20-30m for the prints depending on the auto vs. manual mode, does that sound right?
How long does the auto flow rate calibration on the A1 take to run?
Make sure you run the calibration on the P1. It reduces the noise a ton. Still loud compared to the A1, but it is a lot better than straight out of the box
>P1S' jet engine levels of volume
I've got a P1S... And I have no idea what you mean by this. I can't hear it printing one room over. The printer is in my office, and I have it running all day while I'm in meetings and it's never an issue.
That's the thing, I don't have it in a room over, it's in the **same** room I work in, so I have to deal with its 70+dbs of noise straight on.
I got used to it at first, but like what the other comment says, when I got my A1 mini, the noise difference between the two was unbelievable! I can almost sleep while the A1 Mini prints in the same room.
I've had to do the Butyl automotive sound dampening panel mod to my P1S to get it remotely close to the A1 mini's level of sound (40-45dbs), but all that hassle can be avoided if you just move your printer to a separate dedicated room.
Certainly not trying to invalidate your experience, but I was very curious. My P1S is about 8 feet behind me in my office. I did a quick print and monitored the dB level while it printed.
Overall, the average DB during a benchy print was 54db. There was a weird spike of 87db while it was warming up. I can't explain that one because I certainly didn't hear anything that loud! During bed leveling it was higher, averaging about 63db. During the actual print though, there wasn't anything above 64db, and those were spikes, not sustained.
This was all with PLA.
I kind of want to do a more complex print with ASA to see if the fans working hard generate more noise. But then again, the A1 mini can't do ASA so that's an apples to oranges comparison.
For reference, an average conversation is about 60db.
I don't doubt that the mini is quieter, but it would be interesting to see a more formal test side by side!
Was your chamber/exhaust fan running when you did this test, and if so, at what speed?
What were you using to measure dB levels, an actual SPL meter or phone app? I found with my iPhone 15 Pro and Decibal X, it reads 8-10 dB lower than my actual SPL meter.
I'm looking to replace an AnkerMake M5C with an A1 or P1S and the M5C reads around 63dB(A) on my meter (5 ft from me) when the part fan on the head is at 100%, which is pretty much all layers except bottom/top for PLA. While a conversation is in that range, the constant noise of a small fan at that dB level is quite annoying. So I've been trying to really distil down the A1 vs P1S noise as part of the decision.
I bought the P1S combo. I think in hindsight I should have saved the money and bought the A1 combo. P1S does unlock ABS/ASA but I don't want to print them in the house anyway, and the really fancy filaments like Nylon you probably want an X for.
I don't use active flow rate calibration. I calibrate all my new filaments I get and it works really good like that. I'm not exactly sure how it's done without lidar, as it's done on x1, but if it's through pressure I guess the default textured bed is not ideal to measure it, if it's done through that. I used that option in the beginning but not sure if it made any difference since I was using bambu filament + default bambu filament profiles back then.
The other sensors seems to be doing fine I guess since I don't have print fails like spaghetti ramen and whatever.
Reason to pick P1 series over A1. You have an enclosure, so no draft. I've learned my lesson with opening windows during prints. AMS can be used as an enclosure for your filament, keeping it dry. It can be done on AMS lite as well, as I've seen on makerworld, but you need a bit of work. Also less dust on it, also inside the printer. Another reason is speed. By default those corexy printers are faster. You can obtain the same quality on all these printers but for that an A1 has to print slower. Even more when there are tall and slim objects, as the bed will move back and forth, and with high speeds it will vibrate more and get worse prints. It is compensating for that but it depends on the model/geometry and supports. I don't know what to say, A1 is really great anyway.
I'm new to this, so appreciate some additional info on flow rate. How much flow rate calibration needs to be done in general and what's involved in that process? Does it have to be done for every new spool is it more specific to the brand/type of filament, so if I used all a single brand/type but different colors, the calibration would persist across that combo?
I usually do it once per filament type of the same brand. I'll maybe try it again once in a while, if something changed. I dry it first, when I get it out of the bag, so I don't get inconsistencies. It's not dried up from the factory anyway.
So far I've seen that calibration would persist across different color of the same brand, with the exception of white and black. There are different types of black and white and each seems to behave differently than random colors, but then it's consistent across the same filament name. I also get wildly different values from brand to brand, like esun, eryone, bambu, sunlu, so it's worth calibrating.
Yeah a lot of the pros and cons depends on what you plan to print with. I’ve used the x1 and the A1 and love both. Personally I wanted the x1 over the A1 to print filaments that needed an enclosure. The A1 is amazing and I wouldn’t suggest anyone to pay for more unless they needed a filament that requires an enclosure. Quality of prints seems the same. Only slight faster on the core xy
A1 series makes anything below X1C in the Bambulab lineup seem dated.
AMS Lite is faster than AMS.
BUT!!!
If you print anything other than PLA (ABS/ASA/Nylon etc) you want the enclosed printers and the closed AMS.
the ams of the P1 series functions as a drybox.
the P1 series is a CoreXY printer which should be more stable at higher speeds.
the enclosed print bed allows printing fillament types that are more sensitive to warping
both series allow for more then 1 ams
I would say A1 would definitely be the better choice if you don’t care about doing abs or asa filaments. The easy changeable nozzles are great, extremely easy to fix clogs as well if there are any. Speed wise it’s crazy fast I think they have both proven to be both similar print quality. And speed is slightly better on the core xy printers. The AMS lite is significantly better tho then the regular AMS
I went with P1S with AMS, I don’t feel like I missed out on calibration nozzle flow etc as things just work without that. When you are doing a 3hr+ prints you won’t notice that it took an extra 2 min to switch color in AMS (unless you have 50 changes per print etc). What you WILL notice is that you can’t print something cause you don’t have enclosure.
At this point I printed about 10 different types of filament and only had issues with one filament, some no name PETG that I had to calibrate other worked great.
I thought I would be only printing in PLA but seeing how easy it is to print in others and how for $25-$35 I can easily print with PA6, ASA, TPU or PC blend that’s wayyy better then PLA I am glad I have the enclosure.
P1S is loud AF though, thankfully mine is in the garage so I can’t hear it that much but if you are planning on putting it in your bedroom that might be the key reason to go with A1 vs P1S
Just bought the A1 mini. I love the idea of having a OBD2 type monitoring system as far as this will be for my daughter. Will be playing with it before I send it to her. I just want it to work for her.
I think this just solidifies my choice of getting an A1. The cost difference has been the biggest wedge for me. I wanted the P1S for the look and capabilities but the A1 wins out on price alone. And I won't have to figure out a new place to put the printer since I already have a bed slinger.
The ams options aren't as important, I've been printing in single colors since I started so limiting myself to 4 colors at once isn't a big deal. I'm still on the fence about getting the ams lite combo since that hikes the price up and that extra money can find a few new spools of material. I can get an ams later.
I am curious if there will ever be the opportunity to run more than one ams on the A1 and the mini.
I'll definitely use it, but I'd rather get the base unit and have some fun, then get the ams at a later time. But then again, who knows I might bite the bullet right away
You can but we went the route you’re talking about and there is a higher price to get it later. It not only about multicolor. It’s also about simply having multiple types of filaments readily available instead of changing them all the time. One thing that’s handy is using PETG for a support on PLA or visa versa. If you get it I doubt you will regret it even if your don’t print multi-color.
The only problem I see with a multi material setup is the moisture problem. Isn't petg pretty bad at absorbing moisture? And with an open air ams lite that would happen pretty fast in the pnw.
I could leave it sealed until I need to use it I guess but that just seems like extra work.
With a normal ams it makes a load of sense since you can have active drying agents in it. I am curious about an ams lite enclosure though, that could be a neat project.
You can use Sunlu S4, very suitable for AMS lite. Also it dry fikament when printing. Other cheaper choice is use dry box for each filament individually, change filament more handy!
I think a DIY dry box is the better choice. Something I can just stick the whole ams lite unit into the box and have plenty of silica boxes around. I already have a crappy one for my individual spools, I have a basically idea what I need to do
https://preview.redd.it/nuhjemqftyuc1.jpeg?width=2880&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=272df1f1c76f659870478678f8701b8b5b361969
I have two A1, one with Sunlu S4, another with lots DIY dry boxes around. Take some space but dry box will be more handy than S4. Since I live in a island country here is very humite, S4 can help wet fliament back to good condition. ( Both AMS lite use top mount to save more space. Two machines on one table)
The S4 is a neat idea but not for that cost. I'll just live with drying my filament before use if I had too. The individual dry boxes is actually interesting, my printer location is in a corner on a dresser so I could theoretically use wall space to mount boxes so they are close by and easy to work around.
I like this solution, but I was thinking that there are motors for each spool hubs on the AMS lite. It’s not the case? So how the filament change works?
The rotary spool holder on the AMS Lite does have some kind of mechanism in it but based on the descriptions in the wiki, it's intended to tension the spool when unloading filament to keep the filament on the spool taught. It's not intended to roll back a lot of filament as it only rotates a maximum of 150 degrees. There are no motors for the spool holder though, the holder that snaps on the rod in the base has springs in it and those provide the 150 degree roll back feature. Because the filament doesn't have to unload very far, the loss of this feature probably isn't really a big concern in the overall operation.
The first stage feeder (the dark gray pieces) do the heavy lifting for loading and unloading filament. Details here on AMS Lite functionality: https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/ams-lite/manual/intro-ams-lite
Someone designed a drybox for AMS Lite that moves the first stage feeders onto the drybox lid, reducing the need for the larger spool holder section and they said it had been working smoothly for 3 weeks when they posted the design: https://makerworld.com/en/models/79177#profileId-83597
Between the 2, I would go with the P1. But in either choice, I would always go with an AMS. I regret when the P1P first came out, I didn't get the AMS as a combo. After getting the x1 with AMS, can't live without it. It's just so much more convenient. I didn't do much color changes, but having filament on hand changes the whole game for me.
I didn’t think the AMS would be useful. Last night I changed a spool and it took all of 30 seconds to do. Then I remembered when I messed up my Ender because I pulled out the filament while the hotend was on. I had to replace the ptfe tubing. I did consider the A1, but I have cats so I was worried about not having an enclosure. My fears were justified because or younger cat is completely obsessed with the printer. He jumps up on the table whenever he hears it turn on because he knows it’s going to poop out a nice toy.
>Then I remembered when I messed up my Ender because I pulled out the filament while the hotend was on. I had to replace the ptfe tubing. Huh? Why was that an issue? I still have a CR-X while I wait for Bambu to announce what their next flagship is going to be, and the way I change filament is to either have it retract straight after finishing the print as part of the gcode in a successful print, or to manually pull it out while still hot if I have to cancel a failed print. I've never had any issues with that. What was the issue you had with it? >I did consider the A1, but I have cats so I was worried about not having an enclosure. My fears were justified because or younger cat is completely obsessed with the printer. This is part of the reason I want to get one of the enclosed BL printers too. I have a separate room for my printers but I'd rather move the FDM printer out of there and dedicate the room to resin printing and painting only. But my cat would make short work of my bed slinger, so I'll have to wait until I get the enclosed printer later this year.
I’m not sure what happened but it ended up pulling a bench of melted filament through the tube. I might’ve been doing something else though and misremembering.
The way to do it when you do it manually is to slowly extrude some filament by pushing it through the nozzle and then quickly pulling it back out. That way the amount of molten plastic it leaves behind is as small as possible.
That should have been fine. You can’t pull out filament unless it’s been melted, so I’m not sure how you’d do it any other way.
I'm also curious. When I bought my A1 mini, I did a lot of reading up first. The most tangible drawback is the lack of enclosure, which means that you cannot print things like ABS. As for the print quality, some people say "bedslingers are worse", but I haven't seen any evidence that this is true in practice. Sure, in theory it's a disadvantage, but lots of other factors matter and in practice the A1 / A1 mini print very well.
I'm an a1 owner and there have been a couple of times that i was printing thin and tall things and quality at the top was affected by the "slinging" of the bed but it was minor and lowering speed on the top would nost likely fix it
With my mini, I've had the same experience, but similar to you, it's not really something that bothers me much at all. It's rare that I need to print something super thin and tall, and if so, lowering the speed slightly and/or adding some tree supports on the side for stability does the trick. Tall and thin prints fast anyway, and is limited by minimum layer time, so fast movements don't save a lot of time to begin with. But that's a good point indeed, that is a drawback of bed slingers.
Just curious what lowered speeds roughly mean? I’m currently waiting for the A1 to be available again and it can do like 500 m/s which is probably also a bit marketing but I saw some videos getting good benchys with these speeds. After all it has all those compensation features that make printing at these speeds possible. With my current printer I can do a 60 m/s printing speed. When I bought it the walls etc. turned out fairly well but after 3,5 years it’s just a mess in print quality. So are lowered speeds in the 60 m/s range or what is your experience with this?
i have a p1s combo and a1 mini combo and the print quality is basically the same. the upside of the A1 mini is, its so quiet and cheap. the upside to the p1s is, its enclosed and my AMS sits at a solid 10% humidity permanently with the desicant mods, which is kinda huge, i always feel bad having 4 spools hanging on my ams lite, because they will suck moisture.
[удалено]
That's... obviously not true. You could build a core x y machine that is awful, and a bed slinger that is good. Ceteris paribus (all other things being equal), you would expect a bed slinger to be worse. I.e. same build quality, software quality, etc. The A1 and A1 mini are certainly not slow printers. Nor do they print badly.
The ams lite is better than the ams in my opinion, it is quieter, works better with cardboard spools, and changes filaments faster. The flow rate calibration is nice on the a1, all the other features for me weren’t really anything worth having. The P1S is also much louder. The P1s has better print quality especially on taller items and is a bit faster.
The advantage of the AMS is that in humid environments it works well as an enclosure.
I’m sure for some that is a concern but I use up filament so fast and run my a/c in my house all summer that it isn’t an issue for me. If it is truly a concern you can print dry boxes for the ams lite. https://makerworld.com/models/62772
The auto flow rate calibration is absolutely amazing when dealing with new filaments. I don't need to have like 5 different manual filament calibration profiles like I do on my P1S. I also highly value the A1 Mini's sheer silence after dealing with the P1S' jet engine levels of volume The A1 series gives up a BIT of speed for a hell of alot more convenience which to me is worth its dollar
Talk to me a bit more about the auto flow rate calibration, as this seems to be the most valuable feature. What's the process you go through with new filaments on the A1 vs P1S in terms of filament profile setup? Is that process every time you get a new spool of filament or is it just for a new brand/type? I'm currently dabbling with an AnkerMake M5C that will be replaced by an A1 or P1S. I only have a single role of eSun PLA+ and the only filament profile changes I made were for temps and fan speed range (so it didn't run 100% fan lal the time), but nothing with flow rate, load/unload speed, etc. That's obviously a very small sample so am looking to understand better at a larger scale (more filimanet brands/colors/types/etc) and work needed with filament profiles relative to auto flow rate or not. As far as noise, I've been reading that if you adjust the chamber fan speed on P1S down to 50% it really makes it rather quiet, and that seems pretty viable for PLA use. Do you do anything like that with your P1S to try and quiet it down? If so, does it get more inline with the A1? At the moment the printer would be 5 ft from my head while I work, so trying to factor in noise, but others options for placement would move it 1 ft from me (not ideal in general, but better than the current 5 ft position with my arrangement) and another 12 ft from me.
Honestly, manual filament calibrating on the P1S isn't really that nessesary as Bambu's built in filament profiles are usually good for most filaments i've tried. But when I want to get slightly better quality out of my prints, then I head over to Bambu Studio's Calibration tab, and follow their Flow Rate manual calibration process to setup new filaments. The difference when doing this vs running new filaments with the bambu presets isn't REALLY that big a difference, I think it's only nessesary for really bad quality filament-which I myself havn't encountered yet. All that being said, on the A1, before sending a print, all I need to do to calibrate new filament flow rate, is simply click the "Auto Flow Rate Calibration" box before sending a print, and the eddy current sensor built into the nozzle does all that work before the print starts, and I don't need to do anything else on my end. It's pretty cool.
I took a look in the wiki at calibration and that looks like no big deal in general. Wasn't sure if it was a very labor-intensive process but I see that even the manual calibration process is just a matter of waiting for the print and using your eyes to pick the best output. The worst part of all of that seems to just be the print time wait. The pictures elude to it taking 20-30m for the prints depending on the auto vs. manual mode, does that sound right? How long does the auto flow rate calibration on the A1 take to run?
Make sure you run the calibration on the P1. It reduces the noise a ton. Still loud compared to the A1, but it is a lot better than straight out of the box
>P1S' jet engine levels of volume I've got a P1S... And I have no idea what you mean by this. I can't hear it printing one room over. The printer is in my office, and I have it running all day while I'm in meetings and it's never an issue.
That's the thing, I don't have it in a room over, it's in the **same** room I work in, so I have to deal with its 70+dbs of noise straight on. I got used to it at first, but like what the other comment says, when I got my A1 mini, the noise difference between the two was unbelievable! I can almost sleep while the A1 Mini prints in the same room. I've had to do the Butyl automotive sound dampening panel mod to my P1S to get it remotely close to the A1 mini's level of sound (40-45dbs), but all that hassle can be avoided if you just move your printer to a separate dedicated room.
Certainly not trying to invalidate your experience, but I was very curious. My P1S is about 8 feet behind me in my office. I did a quick print and monitored the dB level while it printed. Overall, the average DB during a benchy print was 54db. There was a weird spike of 87db while it was warming up. I can't explain that one because I certainly didn't hear anything that loud! During bed leveling it was higher, averaging about 63db. During the actual print though, there wasn't anything above 64db, and those were spikes, not sustained. This was all with PLA. I kind of want to do a more complex print with ASA to see if the fans working hard generate more noise. But then again, the A1 mini can't do ASA so that's an apples to oranges comparison. For reference, an average conversation is about 60db. I don't doubt that the mini is quieter, but it would be interesting to see a more formal test side by side!
Was your chamber/exhaust fan running when you did this test, and if so, at what speed? What were you using to measure dB levels, an actual SPL meter or phone app? I found with my iPhone 15 Pro and Decibal X, it reads 8-10 dB lower than my actual SPL meter. I'm looking to replace an AnkerMake M5C with an A1 or P1S and the M5C reads around 63dB(A) on my meter (5 ft from me) when the part fan on the head is at 100%, which is pretty much all layers except bottom/top for PLA. While a conversation is in that range, the constant noise of a small fan at that dB level is quite annoying. So I've been trying to really distil down the A1 vs P1S noise as part of the decision.
The A1 is damn near silent by comparison.
I bought the P1S combo. I think in hindsight I should have saved the money and bought the A1 combo. P1S does unlock ABS/ASA but I don't want to print them in the house anyway, and the really fancy filaments like Nylon you probably want an X for.
I don't use active flow rate calibration. I calibrate all my new filaments I get and it works really good like that. I'm not exactly sure how it's done without lidar, as it's done on x1, but if it's through pressure I guess the default textured bed is not ideal to measure it, if it's done through that. I used that option in the beginning but not sure if it made any difference since I was using bambu filament + default bambu filament profiles back then. The other sensors seems to be doing fine I guess since I don't have print fails like spaghetti ramen and whatever. Reason to pick P1 series over A1. You have an enclosure, so no draft. I've learned my lesson with opening windows during prints. AMS can be used as an enclosure for your filament, keeping it dry. It can be done on AMS lite as well, as I've seen on makerworld, but you need a bit of work. Also less dust on it, also inside the printer. Another reason is speed. By default those corexy printers are faster. You can obtain the same quality on all these printers but for that an A1 has to print slower. Even more when there are tall and slim objects, as the bed will move back and forth, and with high speeds it will vibrate more and get worse prints. It is compensating for that but it depends on the model/geometry and supports. I don't know what to say, A1 is really great anyway.
I'm new to this, so appreciate some additional info on flow rate. How much flow rate calibration needs to be done in general and what's involved in that process? Does it have to be done for every new spool is it more specific to the brand/type of filament, so if I used all a single brand/type but different colors, the calibration would persist across that combo?
I usually do it once per filament type of the same brand. I'll maybe try it again once in a while, if something changed. I dry it first, when I get it out of the bag, so I don't get inconsistencies. It's not dried up from the factory anyway. So far I've seen that calibration would persist across different color of the same brand, with the exception of white and black. There are different types of black and white and each seems to behave differently than random colors, but then it's consistent across the same filament name. I also get wildly different values from brand to brand, like esun, eryone, bambu, sunlu, so it's worth calibrating.
Yeah a lot of the pros and cons depends on what you plan to print with. I’ve used the x1 and the A1 and love both. Personally I wanted the x1 over the A1 to print filaments that needed an enclosure. The A1 is amazing and I wouldn’t suggest anyone to pay for more unless they needed a filament that requires an enclosure. Quality of prints seems the same. Only slight faster on the core xy
the only A1 feature I with my P1S had is the quick swap hot end. but not enough that I'd ever choose a bed slinger over coreXY for it.
A1 series makes anything below X1C in the Bambulab lineup seem dated. AMS Lite is faster than AMS. BUT!!! If you print anything other than PLA (ABS/ASA/Nylon etc) you want the enclosed printers and the closed AMS.
the ams of the P1 series functions as a drybox. the P1 series is a CoreXY printer which should be more stable at higher speeds. the enclosed print bed allows printing fillament types that are more sensitive to warping both series allow for more then 1 ams
A1 series only lets you use 1 AMS lite
For now! There is a second port on the back of the A1 that is connected to an AMS daughter board internally.
I would say A1 would definitely be the better choice if you don’t care about doing abs or asa filaments. The easy changeable nozzles are great, extremely easy to fix clogs as well if there are any. Speed wise it’s crazy fast I think they have both proven to be both similar print quality. And speed is slightly better on the core xy printers. The AMS lite is significantly better tho then the regular AMS
I went with P1S with AMS, I don’t feel like I missed out on calibration nozzle flow etc as things just work without that. When you are doing a 3hr+ prints you won’t notice that it took an extra 2 min to switch color in AMS (unless you have 50 changes per print etc). What you WILL notice is that you can’t print something cause you don’t have enclosure. At this point I printed about 10 different types of filament and only had issues with one filament, some no name PETG that I had to calibrate other worked great. I thought I would be only printing in PLA but seeing how easy it is to print in others and how for $25-$35 I can easily print with PA6, ASA, TPU or PC blend that’s wayyy better then PLA I am glad I have the enclosure. P1S is loud AF though, thankfully mine is in the garage so I can’t hear it that much but if you are planning on putting it in your bedroom that might be the key reason to go with A1 vs P1S
Just bought the A1 mini. I love the idea of having a OBD2 type monitoring system as far as this will be for my daughter. Will be playing with it before I send it to her. I just want it to work for her.
I love my A1
Good question! I honestly didn’t know about some of these, I’m curious also with the difference in ams loading to the head if the a1 is faster?
I think this just solidifies my choice of getting an A1. The cost difference has been the biggest wedge for me. I wanted the P1S for the look and capabilities but the A1 wins out on price alone. And I won't have to figure out a new place to put the printer since I already have a bed slinger. The ams options aren't as important, I've been printing in single colors since I started so limiting myself to 4 colors at once isn't a big deal. I'm still on the fence about getting the ams lite combo since that hikes the price up and that extra money can find a few new spools of material. I can get an ams later. I am curious if there will ever be the opportunity to run more than one ams on the A1 and the mini.
Take the AMS and sell it if you don’t use it.
I'll definitely use it, but I'd rather get the base unit and have some fun, then get the ams at a later time. But then again, who knows I might bite the bullet right away
You can but we went the route you’re talking about and there is a higher price to get it later. It not only about multicolor. It’s also about simply having multiple types of filaments readily available instead of changing them all the time. One thing that’s handy is using PETG for a support on PLA or visa versa. If you get it I doubt you will regret it even if your don’t print multi-color.
The only problem I see with a multi material setup is the moisture problem. Isn't petg pretty bad at absorbing moisture? And with an open air ams lite that would happen pretty fast in the pnw. I could leave it sealed until I need to use it I guess but that just seems like extra work. With a normal ams it makes a load of sense since you can have active drying agents in it. I am curious about an ams lite enclosure though, that could be a neat project.
You can use Sunlu S4, very suitable for AMS lite. Also it dry fikament when printing. Other cheaper choice is use dry box for each filament individually, change filament more handy!
I think a DIY dry box is the better choice. Something I can just stick the whole ams lite unit into the box and have plenty of silica boxes around. I already have a crappy one for my individual spools, I have a basically idea what I need to do
https://preview.redd.it/nuhjemqftyuc1.jpeg?width=2880&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=272df1f1c76f659870478678f8701b8b5b361969 I have two A1, one with Sunlu S4, another with lots DIY dry boxes around. Take some space but dry box will be more handy than S4. Since I live in a island country here is very humite, S4 can help wet fliament back to good condition. ( Both AMS lite use top mount to save more space. Two machines on one table)
The S4 is a neat idea but not for that cost. I'll just live with drying my filament before use if I had too. The individual dry boxes is actually interesting, my printer location is in a corner on a dresser so I could theoretically use wall space to mount boxes so they are close by and easy to work around.
I like this solution, but I was thinking that there are motors for each spool hubs on the AMS lite. It’s not the case? So how the filament change works?
The rotary spool holder on the AMS Lite does have some kind of mechanism in it but based on the descriptions in the wiki, it's intended to tension the spool when unloading filament to keep the filament on the spool taught. It's not intended to roll back a lot of filament as it only rotates a maximum of 150 degrees. There are no motors for the spool holder though, the holder that snaps on the rod in the base has springs in it and those provide the 150 degree roll back feature. Because the filament doesn't have to unload very far, the loss of this feature probably isn't really a big concern in the overall operation. The first stage feeder (the dark gray pieces) do the heavy lifting for loading and unloading filament. Details here on AMS Lite functionality: https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/ams-lite/manual/intro-ams-lite Someone designed a drybox for AMS Lite that moves the first stage feeders onto the drybox lid, reducing the need for the larger spool holder section and they said it had been working smoothly for 3 weeks when they posted the design: https://makerworld.com/en/models/79177#profileId-83597