Background: I just got my first printer (Bambu Lab A1 mini) last year. I am also not an engineer and, like you, don’t want the printer itself to be the hobby.

Based on my experience, and what I’ve seen others say online, Bambu Lab is still the king of “it just works”. If you’re not as ideologically motivated by right to own as I am, I’d say go with Bambu.

While I have zero experience with the company, Prusa seems to be the most consumer friendly, though they have their own issues. If I buy a second printer, it’s likely going to be the Prusa Core One.

Thanks. Not sure if this is what you meant. The shape is distinct but the colors are similar. My avatar is from a worldbuilding project I work on as a hobby.

I forgot about dev mode. How does that compare to pre-enshittified firmware?

I’m definitely an “it just works” guy, and I am by no means an engineer. For me the printing is the hobby, not the printer.

Multimaterial would be good, but only if it doesn’t have to purge between colors. I bought the AMS lite along with the mini, and while it’s convenient when I want to print something in a different color, only having one nozzle means a truly multi-color print takes orders of magnitude longer to finish unless the print itself is completely designed around the limitations of the single-nozzle setup. Having said that, if the MMS can also act as dry storage that would be a plus even if I primarily use one filament per print.

It’s less about specific build volume and more what I can fit into the existing space while providing more build volume than the Mini’s 7x7x7 inches. I’d say the overall footprint of the printer has to be less than 60 cm on a side, since the table my current printer is on is 60 cm deep.

Enclosure is also a must-have.

I was going to say about 10x10x10 inches, but after recalculating the dimensions of the latest thing I’m making (a pill bottle organizer) I may be able to squeeze it onto the mini, so the thing that prompted this post may be a non issue, at least for now. Continued suggestions are welcome though.

What exactly does the mini do that makes it worth keeping if I get a larger printer? I’m not sure I can justify owning more than one.

I find it interesting that there’s a mix of commenters complaining that Reddit is at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

I was on Reddit from mid 2012 to mid 2023, across a few accounts and with a hiatus of a few months here and there. I had been passively looking at less centralized forms of personal interaction on the web, trying to find traditional forums to replace the subs I frequented. Like a lot of people here, the API issues and the news of Reddit courting investors left a bad taste in my mouth.

I deleted my account, but I still lurk on a few subs, and my IT job means I have to dig through reddit posts on a regular basis for troubleshooting purposes.

Also, remote printing and monitoring are nice features, which would be a pity to lose.

I don’t see an easy way to accomplish this independent of Bambu’s servers, especially if you use the handy app on your phone.

Slightly harder: add exceptions for bambus servers in your routers firewall so that requests to that domain are blocked

I assigned a static IP address to my A1 mini in my router, and made a firewall rule preventing all traffic originating from that IP from going to the internet. The printer is also in LAN only mode, but I periodically have to reconnect it to Bambu studio which is annoying.