Trying to decide on a printer?

[munnst]

Hi,

I have two printers I'm considering for my £1000 budget.

Bambu Labs X1 Carbon.

Photon Mono M7 Max.

Now this is an unanswerable question so I set a real world challenge. I want to print this stl in 1/72 scale.

Fondor Haulcraft

So if you had these printers to choose from and wanted to print the above what would you choose?

Thank you.

[bootneck]

That's a fair size footprint for printing if it is one piece.  Looking through the reviews, mention is made of assembling it; therefore, you may not need a large printer just one with high resolution output.

 

Can you check with the designer what the large component is?

 

cheers,
Mike

[Captain Glumbo]

Have you already purchased this?  In the download and after unzipping there should be a number of STL files not just one.  Each of these will be a component, and its the largest of these that will dictate the size of print plate you require.  Also even for something that is bigger than you print plate, you can always chop it up into smaller pieces using something like meshmixer.  I have the Mandalorian helmet and I would need to resize to 97% in a slicer to print it on my Ender V3Se, but loading it into meshmixer and carving the 3d model into 4 pieces, they can be printed without resizing.

[ICMF]

4 hours ago, munnst said:

So if you had these printers to choose from and wanted to print the above what would you choose?

 

If I had the printers, I'd use the M7 Max, as MSLA (resin) printers are in a league of their own when it comes to resolution, detail and sharpness, while FDM (filament) printers are better suited to practical prints and items with less detail.

 

But - and this is key - I've been running MSLA printers for six years (including an M3 Max since it was released) and FDM printers for about eight.  If I was just starting out, I absolutely would not start with an M7 Max.  Larger MSLA printers are significantly harder to run than smaller printers: the forces are MUCH higher, the margins of error are narrower, and because the prints are usually large, the costs of mistakes are much higher.  And, not for nothing, they're also significantly smellier because of their larger vats.

 

A 7" class printer (Mars or Mono 4)?  Not a problem.  They're as straightforward and simple to operate as MSLA printers get.  A 10" class printer like the Saturn or M7 Pro/M7 Basic?  It'll be a bit harder to master - but not too bad - and the increased size may be worth it.  A 14" class printer though?  BIG jump up the learning curve that will be incredibly frustrating to most beginners.  That's not to say it's impossible to make a jumbo printer work as your first printer; if you do a ton of research into printing problems to prepare yourself, are technically adept with machinery and just flat out enjoy problem solving, you'll probably be fine.  But the fact that you're cross-shopping two such fundamentally different machines suggests to me that it would be a mistake.

 

Also, I would note that (particularly with a resin printer), if you've set yourself a $1000 budget, then that actually means you've got a budget of $500 - 600 for the printer, and $400 - 500 for all the assorted other bits and pieces: gloves, paper towels, vat tools, funnels, some sort of cleaning/curing solution (be that a wash station, an ultrasonic cleaner or just a tub of alcohol), a flex plate if it's a larger printer, maybe a heating solution depending on location, potentially some sort of air purification and/or enclosure depending on sensitivity and printer size...  Oh, and a stockpile of resin.  For the Bambulabs printer, you'll have fewer ancillaries (gone are the days of fan replacements and silicone bed heaters), but you'll still blow through a few kg of filament learning how to use the printer, probably want a better scraper, some pliers for dealing with supports, replacement nozzles and tools for changing them, probably some extra bowden tubing, etc, etc.

[munnst]

21 hours ago, bootneck said:

That's a fair size footprint for printing if it is one piece.  Looking through the reviews, mention is made of assembling it; therefore, you may not need a large printer just one with high resolution output.

 

Can you check with the designer what the large component is?

 

cheers,
Mike

Don't have to print in one lump. Happy to slice and dice the model.

19 hours ago, Captain Glumbo said:

Have you already purchased this?  In the download and after unzipping there should be a number of STL files not just one.  Each of these will be a component, and its the largest of these that will dictate the size of print plate you require.  Also even for something that is bigger than you print plate, you can always chop it up into smaller pieces using something like meshmixer.  I have the Mandalorian helmet and I would need to resize to 97% in a slicer to print it on my Ender V3Se, but loading it into meshmixer and carving the 3d model into 4 pieces, they can be printed without resizing.

No, haven't purchased yet.

[munnst]

17 hours ago, ICMF said:

 

If I had the printers, I'd use the M7 Max, as MSLA (resin) printers are in a league of their own when it comes to resolution, detail and sharpness, while FDM (filament) printers are better suited to practical prints and items with less detail.

 

But - and this is key - I've been running MSLA printers for six years (including an M3 Max since it was released) and FDM printers for about eight.  If I was just starting out, I absolutely would not start with an M7 Max.  Larger MSLA printers are significantly harder to run than smaller printers: the forces are MUCH higher, the margins of error are narrower, and because the prints are usually large, the costs of mistakes are much higher.  And, not for nothing, they're also significantly smellier because of their larger vats.

 

A 7" class printer (Mars or Mono 4)?  Not a problem.  They're as straightforward and simple to operate as MSLA printers get.  A 10" class printer like the Saturn or M7 Pro/M7 Basic?  It'll be a bit harder to master - but not too bad - and the increased size may be worth it.  A 14" class printer though?  BIG jump up the learning curve that will be incredibly frustrating to most beginners.  That's not to say it's impossible to make a jumbo printer work as your first printer; if you do a ton of research into printing problems to prepare yourself, are technically adept with machinery and just flat out enjoy problem solving, you'll probably be fine.  But the fact that you're cross-shopping two such fundamentally different machines suggests to me that it would be a mistake.

 

Also, I would note that (particularly with a resin printer), if you've set yourself a $1000 budget, then that actually means you've got a budget of $500 - 600 for the printer, and $400 - 500 for all the assorted other bits and pieces: gloves, paper towels, vat tools, funnels, some sort of cleaning/curing solution (be that a wash station, an ultrasonic cleaner or just a tub of alcohol), a flex plate if it's a larger printer, maybe a heating solution depending on location, potentially some sort of air purification and/or enclosure depending on sensitivity and printer size...  Oh, and a stockpile of resin.  For the Bambulabs printer, you'll have fewer ancillaries (gone are the days of fan replacements and silicone bed heaters), but you'll still blow through a few kg of filament learning how to use the printer, probably want a better scraper, some pliers for dealing with supports, replacement nozzles and tools for changing them, probably some extra bowden tubing, etc, etc.

So 10 inch over larger resin printer. Here is one of my problems. None of the 10 inch printers have all the features I want. The GX series has no fault detection. The medium M7 either users a resin pump for vat heating or others have clunky self levelling build plates. The also have ACF over PFE.

I'm not sure about the quality of resin over fdm. The bambu labs X1 Carbon with 0.2 nozzle can print pretty good detail to the point of not being able to easily tell. Yes, resin has better quality but for a sci-fi space ship is it a game changer?

So it's not an easy decision.

[dnl42]

You'd be surprised how large that FDM layer is. To be sure, that layer size isn't an issue for some 'miniatures'. I found and printed a 'Drogon' from GOT on the FDM printer for my wife. It's a reasonable representation and the layers are very inconspicuous. But, I fully agree with @ICMF, an FDM printer, like the Bambu Labs X1 Carbon, isn't really suited to models you find on BM.

 

I have both FDM (Prusa MK4S) and SLA (Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra) printers. I use the FDM printer for modeling tools, 3D printing tools (for both the FDM and SLA printers), and functional parts around the house. My dear wife is delighted with my FDM printer as most of the things I've printed with it have been for her use.

 

ICMF's summary of the additional SLA costs is also spot-on. With SLA printers, post processing and material handling is a major activity.  Learning to use the FDM printer was a walk in the park compared to the SLA printer. But, for the models we see on BM, the additional effort and costs are worth it.