For the last decade I’ve been watching 3d printing Going from an incredibly niche hobby to an industry worth nearly $17 billion by 2022. And while the last five years have been a race to the bottom, with big brands working to sell a consistent but not exactly basic experience in the cheapest possible way, last year saw a new type of 3D printer hit the market . These printers focus on state-of-the-art technology, offering speed, quality and ease of use instead of the lowest price.
Companies like AnkerMake and Bambu Lab have moved away from 3D printing’s open source and build-it-yourself roots and are offering something the industry needs if it really wants to attract the next 10 million buyers: a plug -and-play experience from start to finish. Those of us already ingrained in the world of 3D printing may not like it, but granular, closed-source experiences are coming that will improve the industry.
The quality of this print from a machine under $500 is stunning.
A closed ecosystem with few gates
The A1 from Bambu Lab is a small footprint 3D printer, colloquially known as a “bed slinger”. It’s a type of printer you’ve seen many times before, and while it’s incredibly fast, the technology behind it isn’t entirely new. Even the AMS system – Bambu Lab’s proprietary device that allows your 3D printer to print in four colors – is a combination of several technologies we’ve seen before. What’s special is how easy it is to go from an unopened box to 3D printing an articulated panda in three different colors, and how little knowledge is required.
It’s not just the models on the SD card either. Bambu Lab has also added a model repository built into the app, allowing you to find a model and send it to the printer for printing without the need for computer intervention. All of the slicing – the part that turns a model into something the printer can print – is done in the cloud, and because the printer is already aligned and prefabricated at the factory, there are almost no variables to disrupt the process. It’s just printed.
The only variable is the material and that is the case. Many 3D companies only allow you to use their proprietary filaments, but these are mostly commercial machines. Every consumer 3D printer that has tried this has failed. People need choice, and while 3D printing manufacturers can and should make their own filaments, they must also allow the use of other brands.
Bambu Lab and Prusa are good examples of this. Proven to work on every Prusa machine, Prusament has built-in presets for MK3, MK4 and Prusa Mini, and Bambu Lab even has RFID chips in its spools so the AMS automatically loads the correct material into the slicer. While these filaments work very well on their respective machines, they work just as well on each other’s machines as they do on almost everyone else’s Third party filament.
Small parts can be easily disposed of and replaced.
Bambu Lab clearly developed the A1 for absolute beginners. You don’t need any prior knowledge of 3D printing to work with it, and you don’t need to learn its inner workings if you don’t want to. Printers like this and the AnkerMake M5C aren’t particularly easy to build, and that’s because of the design. The A1 is designed with as few weak points as possible and all of these weak points can be easily disposed of and replaced. Instead of replacing individual hot end parts such as nozzles, thermal bridges and PTFE liner tubes, simply detach the hot end assembly and swap it out for a $10 replacement.
This may seem wasteful, but it is perfectly in line with today’s modern technology. If your air purifier’s filter is empty, throw it away, you don’t build a new one out of gauze and plastic. This also applies to 3D printers, or at least it should. Wear parts should be used up and then replaced. I’m not saying we should be intentionally wasteful – after all, one of the crucial aspects of the 3D printing hobby is being able to make things in a way that doesn’t require buying replacement parts – but we need to make the transition as easy as possible for the next group of buyers possible.
And the next group comes. There are huge markets of developers who have ideas but don’t have the technical know-how to bring them to life on a 3D printer kit you need to build or who are trying to develop software that pressure was a combination of chewing gum and hope. We need to cater to this audience if we want the market to grow.
Can a 3D printer be a device?
In a recent video, 3D printing guru Joel Telling noted that the A1 felt like a device, and he’s right. He says: “If the appliances in your home are not working and you are under warranty, contact the manufacturer, and if the warranty has expired, contact a repair shop.”
“Appliances are typically not consumer-repairable,” adds Telling. For this reason, your average consumer doesn’t think about repairing every little part themselves or learning what each part of the machine they buy does. They just want it to work, and if it doesn’t, they want it fixed by an expert.
For more than a decade, we, the 3D printing community, have lived in an open source world where we can assemble amazing machines from the leftover parts of other machines, and it’s been great. But there is another group of people out there. They want to play our games too – they just don’t want to develop the game first, and that’s okay. If we can cater to the people who want a new dryer when one breaks, and to those of us who want to roll up our sleeves and take the dryer apart to fix it, then we will become a whole new generation of enthusiastic people have for 3D printing.
And who knows? If we can get them involved, maybe they will see the mistake and want to know more. And we’ll be here to guide them to a land of open source goodness and the pot of golden stepper motors at the end of the rainbow.
