I searched on Twitter (I will never call it X) to see if I could find any photos of our first 3D printer, and came up with nothing, but did find that I’d been talking about 3D printing since 2011, and even posted about some jewellery made with a 3D printer on my blog (although haven’t actually made any myself on my printers!)
I think it was around 2015/2016 when my husband bought a Cel Robox Dual 3D printer, I never touched it because the software it ran on was Windows only, and I only had a Mac. It was boxed up when we made the move to the US in 2017, and pretty much just stayed in the box until October 2022 (I checked my Amazon purchases for filament!) when I realised that I had access to a Windows laptop and I might as well play with it to see what it can do!
It was a great way to start learning about 3D printing, but it was an older printer that was EOL (one of the selling points of the printer was that it was easily repairable by the user, but thats only useful if you can still get parts, and one of the reasons the Robox appears to be abandoned is that during the pandemic, Cel were struggling to get parts. It was also a little fussy about what filament it preferred and I was definitely reaching the limits of what I could do with it!
(before we get into the things that we currently own, I feel like I should tell you that my husband likes to upgrade things and we are both very bad at selling older things. But! All of these have different functions that make them useful, so it’s not been a bad thing to keep them around)
In February 2023, we bought a Bambu X1 Carbon printer with an extra AMS and its been a game changer! The AMS allows you to have upto 16 different colours and types of filament set up against one printer (although that gets a little unwieldy) and you can print with the different colours into the same print (as long as they are the same type of material). If I am ever asked for a recommendation of a 3D printer, it’s definitely this one, because it’s fairly idiot proof to use which means you can get to the fun of printing rather than fiddling with the printer!
We then acquired a Snapmaker Artisan 3 in 1 machine, which can do 3D printing, CNC and laser – the only benefit of the 3D printer element for me is that it can print bigger models, but if you wanted all three modules, and you were limited on space, I think the Artisan is a pretty decent option, it’s just a bit basic.
I’m not even sure why we have the Bambu A1 printer – I think my husband ordered it in a presale and forgot about it (!). The A1 is Bambu’s budget full sized printer, but I’m not a fan because I feel like the lack of an enclosure around the printer means the temperature can vary too much which can lead to more failed prints.
Finally, the overkill: the Bambu X1E‘s. These are the top spec printer that Bambu does, and we purchased them because they are able to use more specialist types of filament (such as ASA) due to the heated chamber and better air filtration – behind the printers, you can see a clear tube, which is for a filtration system. I still need to find/design a way to get these connected to the printers, but the fumes coming off these even with PLA and ABS is much better than the other printers. They also have better networking options, which is important to us. We purchased them both through Matterhackers and would recommend them!
That’s all of our printing devices for now – if you have any questions, please do ask!
