Back to 3D printing, wow!

After almost 10 years break, I am back to 3D printing, and what a joy! When I tried this last time, it was a painful experience, because so many things could (and did) go wrong, making each print a challenge. But over the last years, 3D printing has gotten so much more accessible and robust that I thought I should have another go..

At a conference I ran into a colleague who works as a senior engineer and has specialized on 3D printing, also running a small company and doing many diverse projects. From our discussion I got inspired to acquire a 3D printer and run some experiments again. I asked for advice on what would be a good option for a beginner like me to have a robust but versatile machine, and my colleague recommended the printers made by Bambu Labs, so I went for one of those.

There were nice end-of-year deals this year and I went for a Bambu Labs P1S model which can automatically manage up to 4 print spools. What a blessing! No manual fiddling to get the filament loaded properly. The whole setup process up to the very first print took maybe 1-2 hours, and that's because I went very slowly over things. It was a very smooth experience, and then also the software environment that goes with it - mobile app, desktop app - are very professional and make life easy.

After the initial setup I was immediately ready for printing. A few models come on the SD card with the printer and are nice for testing. With the apps it is very simple as well to make a printout. This was so engaging that I immediately installed their BamBu studio app to print my own designs. Of course I had to try a molecule, and I was able to design something in a few minutes that actually printed! With detachable support and everything.

The whole experience was so satisfying that I need to control myself to not spend all my time on experimenting, now that the experience has become so smooth. I will report back when I made some progress and have some nice printing experiments to talk about.

I will collect 3d printing wisdom along my experiments on this persistent 3D printing blog page.