0:03 Welcome back to Hooos. Today on Hoochos,
0:06 I'm going to be doing a comparison
0:09 review of my two top picks for
0:14 entrylevel 3D printers for people who
0:18 want a tool and not a time sync. In this
0:19 video, I'm going to be comparing and
0:24 contrasting the P1S with the A1. I'm
0:26 going to be talking mostly about the
0:29 differences between these machines and
0:32 the benefits that a Core XY printer has
0:36 over a bedser and kind of teasing apart
0:39 what you're getting for the extra money
0:41 and whether it's worth your money and
0:44 time. All right. So, on this channel, I
0:46 primarily focus on hydroponics,
0:49 beekeeping, and providing people with
0:52 practical 3D prints that they can
0:56 download through my Patreon or purchase
0:58 through my Amazon store or hydroland.com.au
1:00 hydroland.com.au
1:02 here in Australia. This is my
1:05 prototyping room. in it. I've got three
1:09 P1S's, one with an AMS, a P1P, an X1C
1:14 with AMS, and an A1 with AMS light. Now
1:17 the reason I have a mixture of all these
1:19 printers is because I wanted to compare
1:23 and contrast the printers for practical
1:26 people like myself that would like to
1:30 invest in a quality tool but are unsure
1:33 which of those quality tools is best for
1:35 them. So immediately we want to look at
1:37 the first thing that consumers are going
1:41 to look at and that is the price. Now,
1:44 in the store right now, the price of the
1:47 A1 is $399
1:52 US and $499 Australian. The price of the
1:54 P1S, now this is both without the combo
1:57 AMS, is $699
2:00 US and $899
2:02 Australian. So, for Australians, that
2:07 makes the P1S $400 more than the A1. And
2:11 for Americans, it's $300 more. So there
2:14 is a decent gap between these two
2:17 printers. So you are paying a lot more
2:21 for the P1S, but how much more are you
2:24 actually getting? And does the A1
2:27 present better options for a lower cost?
2:29 Well, it depends what you're after. So I
2:31 think the easiest way to start a
2:33 comparison of these two printers is by
2:37 directly comparing their features. Now,
2:39 straight off the bat, the P1S is an
2:41 enclosed printer. This means that you
2:45 can reach higher build area temperatures
2:50 for more intensive materials like ASA
2:53 and other filaments that require
2:55 specific temperatures to print. The fact
2:58 that this printer is enclosed also means
3:02 that it is contained within a smaller
3:04 footprint. So even on this desk, you can
3:08 see that the AMS plus the printer itself
3:11 takes up a lot less space. And this is a
3:14 major consideration for a lot of people
3:16 because space is limited for a lot of
3:18 people. The A1 would actually need to be
3:21 in an orientation such as this if you're
3:23 running an AMS. And you also have to
3:25 have it forward in whatever work area
3:28 you have because your bed slings
3:30 backwards and forwards. It takes up
3:36 about 150% of the depth of the P1S. Now,
3:39 this actually has a caveat in the form
3:45 of print bed area for the P1S. You see,
3:49 the print bed of a P1S isn't actually a
3:52 256x 256
3:55 square. It has an exclusion zone that
3:59 can be removed, but it disables the AMS
4:03 if you have it removed. So on larger
4:08 prints, the A1 actually has a natively
4:11 bigger bed print area able to be taken
4:14 advantage of with multicolor printing.
4:16 And that's not the only feature that the
4:19 A1 brings to the table that the P1S
4:20 leaves behind. We've got a nozzle
4:24 cleaner at the back as well as a really
4:28 small filament wipe area, which wastes
4:32 less filament than the P1S's filament
4:34 wipe. And I have no idea why this is. It
4:37 just seems to be a quirk of the A1. I
4:39 think it's because this machine was
4:44 designed after the P1S and incorporates
4:45 more technology that they've been
4:46 developing. Now, I'm just going to
4:49 rattle off a bunch of features that I
4:52 absolutely love about the A1. The screen
4:55 is an absolute pleasure to interact
4:58 with. It's a low refresh rate color
5:01 screen with an extremely intuitive UI,
5:03 which you can interact with the moment
5:07 that a print is done to reprint whatever
5:10 print you are printing. And this is a
5:13 far cry from the black and white uh absolutely
5:15 absolutely
5:17 atrocious screen that that comes with
5:20 the P1S. And this is a real shame
5:21 because it makes interacting with this
5:24 machine physically jarring to say the
5:26 least. Both of these machines can be
5:29 controlled via the Bamboo Labs mobile
5:32 app, which is quite intuitive. So
5:34 realistically, you don't need to
5:36 physically interact with this screen. It
5:40 can also be controlled via the slicer,
5:43 which is incredibly handy. And I find
5:47 myself rarely if ever using the screens
5:49 except when I want to reprint, which
5:52 makes this screen invaluable. Okay, so
5:55 I'm just in editing. To be clear, you
5:59 can reprint on the P1S using the
6:02 hardware screen. It's just buried deeper
6:07 in the UI and there's no pictures of
6:09 what you're reprinting. So, if you
6:12 haven't properly labeled and named all
6:15 of the previous files, you're kind of
6:17 stuffed. And that actually brings me to
6:20 a design quirk that I found with these
6:22 A1 printers that you have to watch out
6:25 for because it could destroy the screen
6:28 on your A1. If we actually have a look
6:31 at the side of my A1 green, you can see
6:34 here this is actually a saw mark from
6:37 the bed itself. What can actually happen
6:40 is as the bed is slinging if the bed
6:43 gets dislodged, which sometimes does
6:45 happen. I've found that these magnets,
6:49 they are fantastic 99% of the time, but
6:54 if the bed dislodges in a strange way,
6:57 you will get an odd circumstance where
6:59 the bed actually just soarses against
7:02 the screen as it's slinging backwards
7:05 and forwards. And this has come very
7:09 close to destroying the screen of one of
7:11 our printers in one of our print farms.
7:13 So, my recommendation here would be to
7:16 have the screen swiveled to the side uh
7:19 when you're not using it actively. And
7:23 you can even have this entire printer
7:26 oriented side on so that you're using
7:29 sideways bench space with the bed sling
7:32 rather than having it slinging backwards
7:34 and forwards against a wall. Another
7:37 quirk that we discovered after running
7:39 these machines for thousands and
7:42 thousands of hours is that the first
7:44 layer of the prints will start to
7:46 deteriorate because of a known issue
7:49 with the print head that requires you to
7:54 tighten the screws behind the extruder
7:55 unit. I'll leave a link in the
7:58 description for those people that are
8:01 running these non-stop and come across
8:03 this first layer defect on the print
8:05 bed. I'm also going to show you how to
8:07 fix that problem a little bit later in
8:09 the video. Another advantage that the
8:14 Bamboo Labs A1 has over the P1S is the
8:17 P1S actually requires you if you want to
8:21 change out the hotend to unscrew the
8:23 hotend. And depending on whether you've
8:26 bought a complete hotend kit or just the
8:28 hotend. If you've bought just the
8:32 hotend, you'll need to remove the
8:35 heating elements and replace the hotend
8:38 with the addition of thermal paste. Then
8:41 replace the new hotend, screw the fan
8:44 on, and replace the silicon cover. Now,
8:46 on the A1, I'm going to show you how
8:49 simple it is to change the hotend by
8:52 doing it with one hand. All we do is we
8:54 remove the front cover. We take off the
8:58 silicon front protector like so. We
9:01 press the filament cutter, uncip the
9:04 buckle here, and then the
9:09 extruder just pops out
9:12 like so. And honestly, for newcomers to
9:15 the 3D printing hobby, replacing nozzles
9:18 is probably the only regular maintenance
9:20 you'll be having to do on these
9:23 machines. And while we're in here, these
9:27 three screws are the problem screws that
9:31 can cause first layer defects on the A1.
9:33 Because when the head unit becomes
9:37 unstable, the bed leveling, which is
9:39 actually achieved by the tip touching
9:42 the bed, is interfered with by the
9:46 wobble in the tip of the A1's head. So,
9:48 if you've got an A1 that you've been
9:51 running for years or something and
9:53 you're having first layer bed defects,
9:55 tighten those three screws and I
9:57 guarantee all your headaches are going
10:00 to disappear. This is only becomes
10:02 apparent after like thousands and
10:06 thousands of hours of use. It is a very
10:09 small issue that you can fix in no time
10:11 at all. It's just a matter of being
10:14 aware of that issue. And to replace a
10:18 hotend, all we do is the exact same but
10:20 in reverse. The hotend is magnetized, so
10:23 we can just place it in and it will hold
10:26 itself in place like so. We replace the
10:28 buckle, clip it on, replace our silicon
10:31 cover around the entire unit, and put
10:34 the face back onto our head. Simple as
10:38 that. And I think that that process is
10:42 completely underrated when comparing
10:44 these two printers. So, here in front of
10:46 me, I have two examples of the same
10:51 large print. One printed on the P1S with
10:54 the XY printing. So, the bed moves up
10:56 and down while the nozzle moves around
11:00 the bed and prints in place. On the left
11:03 here, I have uh the bed slinger version,
11:06 which moves the bed forward and
11:08 backwards, essentially slinging the
11:11 item. The reason that the XYaxis is
11:14 preferable is because it creates less
11:17 artifacts on the print surface. As you
11:20 can see here, we have an almost perfect
11:22 print. It has some slight artifacting
11:26 here. This however was printed on the
11:30 A1. And as you can see at the base, we
11:33 have another almost perfect print. But
11:36 as the layer height increases, you start
11:41 to get artifacting on the top. as the
11:46 forces amplify against the bed and any
11:49 movement in that bed causes artifacting
11:52 on the prints at higher speeds. Now this
11:55 is a very very extreme case. I am maxing
11:59 out the height of the print bed and this
12:01 is a large object and if I printed it at
12:04 a lower speed the artifacting would have
12:07 been reduced. But these are just
12:10 limitations of this bedslinger
12:12 technology. And I think that the fact
12:16 that this is a bedslinger is why they
12:20 have actually included on this printer
12:23 in my eyes what is an inferior heating
12:26 element design. The heating element in
12:29 this bed snakes throughout the bed and
12:35 heats unevenly in comparison to the P1S.
12:37 If we take an infrared camera and
12:39 compare the two side by side. Okay. So,
12:44 I'm going to go ahead and turn on the
12:48 print bed. We'll just turn it up to uh
12:53 70° C and I'll show you the design of
12:57 the heat sink. As you can see, it snakes
13:01 around the bed and kind of unevenly
13:04 heats up the bed initially anyway. After
13:08 a while, it does even out and you get a
13:11 more consistent heating pattern. But it
13:14 is actually quite important that you
13:17 take into account this uh heating
13:20 pattern when you're laying smaller
13:23 objects on the bed or you have prints
13:26 you've been struggling to get to stick.
13:28 And this heat pattern actually explains
13:32 a fair few print failures that I've had,
13:35 especially in this area here and at the
13:41 back here. And if we contrast this to
13:43 our P1S, I'll do the same and we'll turn
13:47 on up to 70 again. And we'll watch this
13:50 heat. And immediately we'll start to see
13:54 a much more consistent
13:58 heating. and it heats just so much
14:01 faster as well. I've noticed a distinct
14:05 difference between uh first layer
14:11 failures on this heat bed as compared to
14:15 uh this A1 heat bed. And even when we
14:17 are at temperature, you can see a
14:20 difference between the hottest parts
14:25 which are reaching that 70° and the
14:28 coolest parts which are about 60° which
14:30 is a fairly large temperature
14:33 difference. And I think compounding this
14:37 issue further is the fact that the
14:39 enclosure will give you an even more
14:43 consistent bed temperature as opposed to
14:47 the A1 where you are fighting the
14:51 external temperature of the room with
14:54 this inferior element in my opinion. So,
14:57 the final consideration when comparing
15:02 these two machines is speed, and the P1S
15:06 beats the A1 by a long shot. Let's have
15:09 a look at the slicer and compare large
15:13 print files. Okay, so here is a really
15:15 large model that I've just released.
15:18 It's the Hooch pot. It's essentially a
15:20 selfwatering planter that feeds from a
15:24 float valve below and allows you to grow
15:27 your own plants in an infinitely
15:28 refilling manner. So, what we're going
15:30 to do is we're just going to take that
15:35 over to our slicer and I'm going to load
15:38 it in. Uh, we're going to place it on
15:41 our bed. It's going to be a massive
15:43 print. Yeah. I'm just going to leave all
15:47 settings, basic settings for our A1, 16
15:49 hours and 30 minutes. So, if we switch
15:52 that up to our P1S,
15:56 we slice our plate, we have a print time
16:00 of 11 hours and 30 minutes. So, that is
16:02 actually a massive difference in print
16:04 speed. So, you're looking at a print
16:10 time that is 30% faster with the P1S.
16:11 And that is going to be a major
16:15 consideration for a lot of people. Now,
16:18 for all of the positives and negatives
16:20 of both of these printers, there are
16:24 workarounds. For the A1, with the print
16:27 limitations that a bed slinger has, you
16:30 can obviously run the bed at a slower
16:33 speed and achieve similar quality prints
16:36 to the P1S. However, you are sacrificing
16:41 speed and you can run the A1 on
16:44 Ludicrous mode, which gives you faster
16:46 prints, lower quality, but at a higher
16:50 speed that will come closer to the P1S.
16:53 But these are all sacrifices that you're
16:55 making because of an inferior
16:58 technology, even though the product is
17:01 as good as that technology can be.
17:04 However, you are actually receiving an
17:06 incredible printer straight out of the
17:09 box and it is plugandplay and does
17:13 everything that this printer can do with
17:16 standard filament types. If you see
17:19 yourself needing the extra speed, the
17:22 extra print quality, the extra
17:25 reliability of the bed, and all of the
17:28 other little incremental improvements,
17:31 the P1S is probably for you. I actually
17:35 enjoy using the A1 a lot more than the
17:38 P1S. And I think that's because of the
17:40 improvements that were made by Bamboo
17:43 Labs in the interim between designing
17:45 this device and designing this device
17:48 with the low refresh screen, the nozzle
17:50 wipe, the single-handed nozzle change,
17:52 which I think is an absolute killer
17:56 feature. So, my final thoughts are you
17:58 really can't go wrong with either one of
18:00 these printers. They're both upgradable
18:03 to multicolor printing if you want to go
18:05 down that path. The only major
18:11 difference is speed and reliability at
18:14 higher speeds. With your taller prints,
18:15 you're going to have to be a bit more
18:18 careful with your A1. You're going to
18:20 have to print slower and you're going to
18:22 have to orient your prints correctly.
18:25 And that kind of all just falls away for
18:28 the P1S. It's just kind of foolproof.
18:31 You can print anything that I design on
18:35 my channel on this device and it is a
18:38 lot cheaper. It makes printing
18:40 accessible to a lot more people. And if
18:43 your budget's stretched with this, don't
18:46 go to the P1X. But if you can afford it
18:49 and you want to futureproof and say you
18:50 want to play with other materials or
18:53 whatever or just want a more compact
18:57 printer, this is the way to go. I now
19:01 own three A1s and three P1S's. I've
19:04 split it right down the middle, but I'm
19:06 probably going to start more investing
19:08 in the P1S's because speed is something
19:10 that I need for my business. But you
19:13 need to make up your mind on what is
19:15 important to you.
19:18 and go from there. I hope you enjoyed
19:21 this episode of Who Chos. Happy 3D
19:26 printing and I will see you next time
