3D Printer Reliability: Prusa vs. Bambulab

I'm getting ready to add nine more 3D printers to this print farm so over the last two months I put these 3D printers to the test printing hundreds of parts and running almost 1,000 hours each I ran into some strange issues had plenty of failures but there was one machine that stood out so am I selling all my prusas or tossing these new bamboo lab machines in the trash let's find out this video is sponsored by Shopify my print Farm has made up entirely a prusa I3 Mark II s+ 3D printers considered by many to be the gold standard for additive manufacturing production machines they're simple robust and easily maintained and repaired so it's no surprise that most of the large 3D print farms around the world use prusia machines but times they are a change in as competitors enter the market there are now other decent options with compelling value propositions including new offerings from perusa themselves as a business owner looking to expand my print Farm I'm obligated to make a decision based on data and not hype now I've talked about the lineup of bamboo lab printers before I think they're awesome I use the two behind me quite a bit for prototyping work they're crazy fast and have proven to be a super reliable machine but what about using them in a print Farm they seem like a logical choice right well not so fast there is a big difference between a printer that can print individual Parts reliably and one that can print hundreds or even thousands of Parts reliably are the motion systems and wear items designed for that kind of abuse throughout my additive manufacturing journey I found that the single most important aspects of a print farm machine is uptime and output what percentage of time does the printer stay running over an extended period and what is the total production output during that time would running prusa versus bamboo lab printers be like the tortoise in the hair does the slow and steady approach of the prussa win in the long run or can the bamboo lab printer hold up long enough to win the race this is really the question I am hoping to answer with this video knowing that I'm going to invest a bunch of money in more 3D printers which one do I buy for this test I'm going to be comparing the tried andrue Mark 3s+ printers which will be the Baseline to two different Alternatives and number one is the brand new prusa markv this is the updated version of The Mark II s+ and boast some seriously nice features especially for a print Farm environment we've got a large color screen wireless capability a beefed up frame and motion system but the improvements I'm actually excited about the most are all in the print head there's now a full nozzle assembly that can be easily swapped out rather than replacing just the nozzle tip itself this eliminates the oozing from a gap in the heat break and also eliminates the possibility of damaging the heater or thermister components during changes which is a con Conant battle on the older Mark 3s machines they also added a little breakout board on the head so changing these components is much easier and quicker compared to the Mark III where you had to replace the connection all the way back to the board and finally the addition of a load cell in the head to automatically calibrate your Z offset and level the bed is very convenient there are many more improvements than that like the planetary gearbox actual functioning filament sensor and of course input shaping for faster prints the other option is the bamboo lab p1p this is the most stripped down version of the PS series machines in their lineup and don't let his lack of side panels or color screen fool you this thing is an absolute Speed Demon when it comes to printing the biggest difference between this and the prusia is the layout of the machine this is what's called a core XY machine where the X and Y axis move in the top Gantry of the printer while the print bed itself only moves up and down in the Z Direction the prusa is what's commonly referred to as a bed Slinger the bed actually moves in the y direction while the print head moves in the x and z and this is important when it comes to speed because moving and accelerating the relatively heavy mass of the print bed and the part sitting on it in the wi Direction during printing really Limits The Print speed and acceleration capabilities the p1p on the other hand just has to move around the much lighter print head which it can accelerate much faster the bamboo lab printers leverage traditional linear bearings in the y direction but have a unique dry graphite bearing in the x-axis it's a novel concept but a huge question mark when it comes to long-term reliability in a print Farm environment also add on to the fact that bamboo lab is a relatively new company and customer support has been found to be how would I say spotty at times so here's what I'm going to do I've got a test cell made up of three of each printer in question on the top row I've got three of the prusa mark 4S in the bottom row I've got three of the bamboo lab P1 PS I'm going to run the same Parts using the same filament in a production setting and I want to do this over an extended period of time so I can get as much data as possible during this test I'm going to measure the total filament consumed by each printer the total part output from each and record any failures or maintenance items that occur during this time I'm then going to calculate the total uptime and output for each machine this information will hopefully help me make the right decision on where to spend my money to expand my print farm so over the course of this test there's a lot of repetition every day I would start prints unload parts and reload material as needed and then just rinse and repeat over and over and over you know the whole reason I'm even doing this test is because my print Farm represents a business an online business to be specific whenever someone ask me hey I sell products locally now how do I take it to the next level my answer is always the same and that is Shopify there really is no better platform to do this on which is why it's used and trusted by millions of Brands all around the world it's an extremely powerful tool supporting everyone from Little oneman shops to multi-million doll International businesses I'll tell you two things that I really like about Shopify number one is it can grow with you start simple and build an online shop using one of their templates it'll look great function flawlessly and give your customers piece of mind that they're buying from a real company and number two when you do grow they make selling internationally extremely easy using their new markets Pro feature look selling products here in the US and figuring out where and when to collect tax is challenging enough but when you go International it's an absolute nightmare trying to figure out each country's individual requirements Markus Pro by Shopify handles all of that for you which is amazing you can even run your entire business from their app which makes staying on top of things like orders and customer insights quick and easy and of course you can always manage through a web browser and really dig down to just about any level of detail you can possibly want if you want to finally get that online business started that you've always thought about doing do it today start with a free trial by going to shopify.com shopnation or use the link down in the video description you can have an online business up and running in a matter of hours so what are you waiting for okay so I now I've been running these printers for about 2 months which is about 40 days of solid printing that equates to each printer running approximately 950 hours during this time let's take a look at the data okay actually let's stop right there any test or experiment is going to have certain factors that are probably worth discussing or disclosing cuz I know that the YouTube comment section is is going to drag me through fire if I don't number one the Baseline Mark 3s printers that we're comparing to are not brand new printers like the ones we're testing anyone who's ever owned a 3D printer knows that the first couple months of use are usually the most reliable I did my best to use Mark 3s+ printers that either had a brand new hot end replaced or were just generally the newest in the fleet hopefully that helps correct for this discrepancy and number two is that I did not use input shaping on the mark 4S during this test when I actually started the alpha firmware that first launched the input shaping for these printers wasn't even out yet so changing that mid experiment just seemed kind of wrong so in theory the mark fors could have produced at a higher output rate had I been using the much faster input shaping feature but one could also argue that maybe it would introduce more problems we'll never know and number three is that this was a very short test 1,000 Print hours per machine might sound like a lot but I fully expect a printer in this Farm to last upwards of 20,000 hours with proper maintenance and general wear and tear replacement a true test in my opinion should be more like a year not 2 months I do plan on continuing this test and doing an update at a later time just thought I'd mention that let's get back to the results my Baseline are the Mark II s+ printers that are already in the farm during that 2-month period an average printer went through 4.4 3 Kg pools of filament or 13.2 kg total from that they were able to produce on average 136 standard Parts these printers had some periodic shifting and crash errors causing the entire print to be scrapped in most cases the total up time for the average Mark II s+ printer was 816 hours which means the scrap rate was effectively 15% next up is the newer prusa Mark I during that same 2-month period the average printer went through 4.63 kg spools of filament or 13.9 kg total they produced an average of 144 standard parts during that time the only real issues experienced with the markv were some initial bed adhesion issues and several instances of high first layer Z offsets this happened on numerous occasions before I could figure out what was going on turns out that the load cell that was used to calibrate the printer before each use was sensitive to any residual filament left on the nozzle and the force of the 3 Kg spool pulling on the print head I was able to completely eliminate this issue by manually cleaning the nozzle and unspooling some of the filament for the calibration step I was honestly kind of disappointed by this the load cell was supposed to reduce the manual input by me and ensure perfect first layers every time found it kind of annoying to have to do these steps just to make sure the prints turned out okay the total up time for the average mark 4 ended up being 864 hours which resulted in a scrap rate of 10% and finally the bamboo lab P1 PS in the exact same 2-month time frame each printer went through 6.2 3 Kg spools of filament or 18.6 kg total a monstrous 4.7 kg more than the marvs given higher material input they were able to consistently produce 192 standard parts during this test the only issues I experienced were some initial print sheet adhesion issues specifically when trying to print Parts with a small footprint the bulk of the test parts were larger so this issue was not very impactful to the total output the total uptime for the average p1p printer was 922 hours which resulted in a very efficient scrap rate of just 4% now if we look at the results together the difference is pretty clear the bamboo lab p1p is clearly the hair in this race roasting the competition and uptime output and scrap rate but as I mentioned my concern is not about who wins in the short term but which 3D PR printer provides the most value over the life of the machine unfortunately to answer that I need a lot more time I'll be honest I'm still not 100% sold on the longevity of the carbon rods the closed nature of the hardware and customer service reputation of bamboo lab those are areas where prussa frankly kicks their butt in my opinion they've got a lot to prove here and notice I'm not even discussing printer price here in my experience by the time the printer cost is amortised across the life of the printer typically 5 years the purchase price difference is almost a trivial amount pinching pennies to buy production maches can be very shortsighted which is why you don't see me even discussing the lowcost options like Ender eligo any cubic or stuff like that you may have success with one or maybe a few of these printers but they are not production machines in my opinion so my real issue is that I need to make a decision now I'm running into a production bottleneck and I need some more capacity I'd love to have a much longer test so that I can push things to see the limit and truly understand the long-term reliability but when considering all of the factors I decided to take a gamble on the bamboo lab P1 PS you can see I've actually just finished setting up a new rack of nine p1p printers it's just too hard to ignore the Stark difference in output even if it's just over a short two-month period these nine printers you see behind me have the equivalent capacity of 15 Pria Mark 3s+ machines and to me that's kind of a no-brainer considering I'm running out of space in this print Farm room now when it comes to getting them ready for print Farm life there's a couple things that I have to do the first is to set them up on an isolated platform like I've done everywhere else in this Farm rather than a continuous shelf they all kind of sit on their own little platform which is then sitting on strips of window seal foam that helps keep the individual printer vibration to a minimum and the next is to connect three of them to a UPS or an uninterruptible power supply to keep them printing should the power suddenly ever go out now it's not going to keep running for long if the power goes out but it will certainly bridge the gap between a power blip or a short power outage and finally the printers themselves I first replaced the standard hot end with a Harden steel6 mm nozzle this is the same nozzle size I have on all of my other printers and the harden steel will make them last much longer longer between changes next I reconfigure the filament Bowden tube mount with this handy little 3D printed bracket this routes the Bowden tube towards the front of the machine so that it can be fed from a rack mounted spool now what I haven't done yet but I will likely do in the future is to upgrade the cable and Tube management to a cable chain this is actually a standard on the higher level printers like the x1c but it can be retrofitted on the p1p as well and finally I bend up some filament hangers at a 516 steel bar to handle the larger 3 Kg spools that I use this makes keeping an eye on filament level and changing material very EAS easy and that's pretty much it now I've got nine more printers in the farm that should drastically increase my output making it possible to support more products and cut down on lead times for new product launches did I make the right decision frankly I don't know we'll just have to find out but I know there's a lot of people out there who are curious myself included as to how this bamboo lab printer is going to perform in a print farm and really my only hope of this video is to be transparent share with you what I found so that if you're in a similar boat you're looking to expand a print Farm or start a print Farm maybe you can use this and for the those of you shaking in your chairs with anger about how I could possibly disregard your Bargain Bin $150 printer you got on Amazon as a serious print Farm Contender because it prints your Marvel Universe character helmets like so good just take a deep breath and know you're wrong

Channel: Shop Nation

Views: 264,360

Keywords: shop nation, shopnation, print farm, Bambulab, 3D printer, 3D printing, Prusa mk4, best print farm 3d printer, best 3d printer, bambulab vs prusa, P1P, X1, X1C, bambu lab p1p, 3d printer printing, 3d printed, 3D print farm, 3d printing farm business, 3d printing business, bambulab reliability

Id: x_Esrxt7GII

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2023