Beautifully said! Care to share your site?

We miss you!

What are some alternatives? Ty in advance for any hint!

My favorite continues to be hardware from Prusa. They're rock solid and respect user freedoms (serviceability/upgradability/hackability). Being made in the EU is also a big upside for me.

I've had an MK3S+ for years and even though it's a primitive machine in comparison to the current Bambu hardware I see no reason to upgrade to something else. It just keeps printing whatever I throw at it and the results continue to be very good. In fact, I seem to have better luck with it than the Bambus I sometimes use at various hacker/makerspaces.

If you just look at the numbers (speed, volume, ...) against Bambu hardware they're not as good, but the reliability and simplicity make up for it IMO. The main missing feature is multi-material support, but that's something I'm not really interested in due to how wasteful the current technology is.

Bambu AMS is useful even if you're doing single color prints - you don't have to worry about filament running out, it'll just continue on the next roll if it has the same filament loaded on two slots. It can also print multiple (small) objects in the same job with only one filament change per object.

Right, but I'm also wary of the extra complexity and whether it's worth it for me personally. (I've seen Bambu AMS systems act up, and I also know they're picky about spools).

I'm using the AMS mini with an A1 together with a Sunlu filament drier - never had a single spool on the AMS itself, the filament sits in the drier and the AMS is empty on top of it. Works great with all filament brands I tried.

It's wasteful in part due to Bambu's defaults for purging; they're really high, I imagine to make it "foolproof" but it means I see people (like the YTbers who made a stop motion film with 3d printed objects) waste a loooot of filament, because they have no idea it can be dropped quite a lot before colours start mixing.

It would be lovely for the BL printers/AMS to use a colour sensor at the hotend and then you can run a calibration on purges to determine what is an acceptable threshold when transitioning colours and use the absolute minimum purge amount.

I suppose more complexity (like the sensor you propose) would increase the chance of failures or something going unexpectedly. Bambu Labs seems to be going for "It Just Works", at the cost of being wasteful. Seems to be working as a strategy, giving the rave reviews it's getting...

I'm not using my AMS much, precisely because I simply cannot stand the waste and the additional print time.

Thanks for the throughout reply!!

Prusa. Made in Europe, from quality components (or buy it as a kit from them and build it yourself, which is a really fantastic experience). Hardware is repairable and upgradable and the firmware is open source.

But they cost more than Bambu. Most Chinese things tend to cost less than alternatives, for obvious reasons.

Note that Prusa recently opened a US-based factory according to their blog, so in addition to EU-made they also got US-made going.

As a big fan of the company I'm hoping this will make them price-competitive to Bambu (or even considerably cheaper) while the tariffs rage. I'm not a fan of the tariffs, but if it gives a boost to the Core ONE launch, welp ... good for them.

For those of us in Latin America, Prusa being US-made makes no difference price-wise. Chinese is cheaper.

While they target a completely different audience (tinkerers and DIY vs "just works") the VORON printers are the gold standard of open source printers, and you'll get a very capable machine when built.

I got a Sovol SV06 ACE a few months ago as it seemed to have most of the nice features of the Bambu (like auto bed leveling) without the closedness. The printer runs Klipper and you can ssh into it. So far there's been one issue where I had to replace a fan but otherwise it's been great. Much cheaper than a new Prusa too.

Raise3D. Even the lower-end ones are expensive, but they're a step up in reliability.

Looks nice. I really tried but couldn't find it: Pricing please! :)

Hi there! As I read this I wanted immediately to check it up and sign up right away since my ccard pro plan happens to expire tomorrow. Then the price... It would be great to get some kind of very basic plan. I really only need a single page but it was pretty ridiculous in the end to get my website to look ALMOST (I wasn't able to get it to do what I wanted and in the end I wondered if I could not have fought with the html/css myself (I don't do any of this anymore but used to)) like I wanted it to look. Ccars is 20 for a year. I would be willing to pay 3 times more, let's say. But 20/year vs 144/y is quite a difference :/ I will surely save this and pass it on though. Hell, even use it for my dad's website for example :) Cheers!

Got it, thanks for the feedback. You could give it a try with the free plan which allows you to publish 1 page for free, but you won't be able to connect a custom domain unfortunately.

I'm not sure if you're saying you want to add html/css or you don't, but just letting you know that we do have a Code Injection feature to add code to the <head> and <body>.