Is this the start of the next major change in 3D Printing?

I bought my P1P with the intention to upgrade it with an AMS-system. Immediately I was impressed with the left-over features of calibration, tuning and setup from the Bambulabs X1C (X1 carbon). The printing performance was in a completely different level compared to ~€1000 (with taxes and stuff) printers I’ve had before.

Out of the box, the P1P 3D Printer performs as well as Ultimakers and Zortrax machines, that cost 5 times as much. On top of that, the P1P smashes those machines in terms of printing speed.

Print speed is where the P1P disrupt the market, and now everyone is copying, trying to achieve better printing performance in higher speeds. Not everyone can support the numbers they boast, and some are just empty promises.

I’d like to talk a little about why printing speed IS important, and why some big brand manufacturers have to play catch up.

Update: After upgrading my P1P to a P1S I want you to know the P1S is just a better P1P, and what you read below about P1P is the same for P1S, but better.

Flexibility for a new generation enthusiasts

Traditional 3D Printing enthusiast are split into two schools. Machine-oriented and print-oriented. The machine-oriented love the hardware side of 3D Printing. Tinkering, modding, updating, perfecting and of course 3D printing.

While the other school are less skilled in terms like programming, firmware or open-source, and geek out on what’s possible to print, colors, materials and creativity.

Bambu labs, and the budget friendly P1P “suddenly” put the print-oriented school at top priority and made a printer that works, and that you don’t have to mod or tweak to get fast printing with quality. Even the P1P that you have to mod to enclose, isn’t really mod-friendly. It’s more like a IKEA-flat pack. Some assembly required, but the product is complete.

This faster printing works as an enabler for creative persons who are afraid to leave the printer running too long, overnight or just hate the noise in the long run. Most of us love the sounds, but I must admit I’ve stopped myself from starting prints because I need to use the room in a few hours, and don’t want to spend 8 hours working from home in a room with a printer running.

Nowadays, those prints are just 2, maybe 3 hours long. Much easier to plan for and I press Print much more often.

It’s the speed and reliability that gave me those features. Not mod-friendly, open-source or “industrial”, terms that are important for some, but probably fading in relevance.

The landscape is changing

Like always, the 3D Printing landscape is changing. Why have ultimakers gone from DIY-friendly machines on a budget to wanna-be-apple at 10x the cost? Well, they couldn’t compete with budget brands like Flashforge and Creality. Why have Prusa I3 not really evolved towards printing speeds? It’s a proven, reliable concept that is perfected for the first school of users. For the less skilled in terms of programming, tinkering and programming, the Prusas have often been the best option anyways, due to it’s evolution from i3 to i3 mk3.

Now, finally, someone is disrupting (in good and bad ways) and bringing a mostly, if not completely non-open-source printer, with fantastic features, reliability, price in a completely new package. There’s a real alternative to bed-slingers, while still being on a budget.

It’s not about what you can get your printer to do anymore.

I Love that there are so many creative geniuses out there, enabling faster printing speeds, doing 3Dbenchys in 5 minutes or printing upside down. You are the ones who help evolve 3D Printing, through Open Source or not.

But there are so many users that are not about squeezing performance out of a cheap purchase, at the cost of spending time on the machine. These are the new X1C and P1P/P1S customers. And they can get all the features they need, without tricky modding.

Begone Prosumer

There used to be 3 segments in 3D Printing. Enthusiasts, ProSumers and professionals. There were manufacturers targeting these groups. Ultimaker, BCN3D, Zortrax, Prusa and Flashforge were realistically targeting the prosumers, since the enthusiast market was already “lost” to cheap i3 copies like Anet, Creality and Monoprice.

During this time, the term Industrial started to become more popular. If you called yourself an industrial 3D Printer, you could charge 10x, and be 2-3x more reliable (or “something” like that). Print bigger, but at bigger costs. Use a consultant service engineer on site to play with settings in your slicer instead of yourself. Maybe the print was good, maybe it was way off tolerances anyways.

The manufacturers are struggling to survive the Prosumer segment and instead dissolving into targeting either professional customers (someone who actually makes money on the printer) or to stay enthusiast-oriented (like Prusa and Flashforge, although they both seem to grasp for other markets as of end of 2023).

Makerbot and Ultimaker actually merged to try to deal with a dying competition, as they were no longer competing with each other, but rather a market segment dying. I think they are going to run out of customers anyways.

Others are trying to go Industrial, like BCN3D and somewhat Zortrax. Most professional users are not going to spend the money as they don’t have the “industrial” needs the machines require.

Industrial FDM is a tricky segment anyways and might just be left to the print service agencies, unless you actually have a unique technique, rather than typical FDM printing.

Will the manufactures die out?

No, at least not most of them. But I think the future is difficult for anyone trying to charge above $1500 for a FDM 3D Printer with around 225mm cubed printing volume. When (or now that) the budget alternatives like bambu labs catch up, with better features, same type of presets and user-friendly software, why would I pay $10’000 for an Ultimaker S5?

Let me know in the comments, but I can’t find relevant arguments anymore, and I used to Love to recommend Ultimakers.

No matter how strong of a brand Prusa is, they have to feel like they are late to the game. It doesn’t really matter if they can solve how to print faster with the bed moving, or add a fancy display and simpler MMU. The Prusa customer is already sold into the "almost perfected DIY” system that they could mod and improve.

Prusas are fantastic machines that works out of the box. They do look like a DIY racing drone. It’s functional, awesome performance, but lacks the sense of completion in terms of design. On the other hand, DJI drones works more or less the same, while giving the impression of a fully featured, perfected product.

I’d like to point out that both scenarios above are good, and for specific users, but it’s hard to cater both groups, hence why I believe Prusa are going to struggle to cater the second user group, now that there actually is a viable alternative.

Yes, I love my Bambulabs P1P (now P1S)

And the reason is that It enables me to do things I though I needed to either hack, DIY, mod or just pay much more for. I get multi-material, reliable high-speed printing with a software that works. What else do I really need? I mean really really need?

My full written Bambu lab P1P Review can be found here.

If you would like to read the latest specs on Bambu Lab P1S you may do so via my link here.

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