Our third grader has been begging or a 3-D printer for years. We got her one for her birthday. I'm probably just as excited as she is about getting it going. My wife got the Bambu Lab A1 Mini. Any tips on usage and getting it going? We got her tons of filament to get started as well.

I figure there are tons of YouTube videos as well.

easttexasaggie04 said:

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Our third grader has been begging or a 3-D printer for years. We got her one for her birthday. I'm probably just as excited as she is about getting it going. My wife got the Bambu Lab A1 Mini. Any tips on usage and getting it going? We got her tons of filament to get started as well.

I figure there are tons of YouTube videos as well.

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Tons of videos. Some things need specific tolerances for heat, flexibility, etc. Get a basic (but not cheap) spool of PLA filament. Nothing will turn someone off from printing faster than a crappy spool that fails half their prints.

I'd line up a few fun prints and then some useful ones for the wife.

https://www.thingiverse.com/

for a bunch of things to print

Grab a used AMS lite off marketplace or ebay for multicolor printing fun.

These are the main resources I would recommend:

Prints:
https://makerworld.com/

Support:
https://bambulab.com/en-us/support/804403369274351616
https://forum.bambulab.com/
Bambulab subreddit is really good, but probably for mom & dad only. Nothing really bad, but some iffy things for a 3rd grader from time to time.

Filament:
I like and use sunlu and polymaker the most. Sunlu makes eSun and Bambu, I believe, so those are both good, as well. Sunlu is typically the best value for quality, and typically one or two day on Amazon. Polymaker has the best color selection, in my opinion.

What AMS would you recommend with this setup? Does it switch colors automatically?

easttexasaggie04 said:

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What AMS would you recommend with this setup? Does it switch colors automatically?

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Yes it switches automatically, you set it up in the slicer software.

A1 mini can use both AMS lite (default unit) or the AMS/AMS Pro (takes extra components to feed properly but is a nicer ams). I would go with a basic ams lite. With the release of the regular ams firmware making them A1 series compatible, used ams lite units are likely easier to find now.

https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/ams-lite

Also from that first print boat, you likely need a dryer for your spools. They take in moisture over time and print quality drops as layers dont extrude right and movements produce lots of stringing. A very basic one should work fine like this dual spool one.
https://a.co/d/2yAcjMO

Double post

Safe to say she likes her present. Now I need to figure out how to do multicolor projects.

Very nice. And you got her some cool colors right away.

easttexasaggie04 said:

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Safe to say she likes her present. Now I need to figure out how to do multicolor projects.

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Nice job on the new prints.

For multicolor you have 2 options, painful way or easy way. Easy is an ams unit which automatically unloads and loads colors as needed (up to 4 in unit at a time), painful way it to manually pause the printer each time you want to change colors, manually tell the print head to unload current filament, load in new filament, unpause the print.

A lot of your more complicated multi color prints have 10's to hundreds of color swaps, so im sure we can all guess which route most tend to go lol.

Looks like the AMS Lite is sold out on the Bambu website. Is there a way to tell which are legit elsewhere?

easttexasaggie04 said:

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Looks like the AMS Lite is sold out on the Bambu website. Is there a way to tell which are legit elsewhere?

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Microcenter carries them.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/685299/bambu-lab-ams-lite

I recommend https://www.printables.com for files. It's a nice website and I share my designs on there.

3D printers are a great way to get kids interested in engineering and fabrication.

My son has that same printer with the AMS and still loves it after a year. He's got a nice little side gig selling fidgets to classmates. The labubu print was especially popular for a bit with my daughter's friends

Lots of good tips on here.

Probably time to invest in a dryer. I never know if his prints are failing because of the print itself, adhesion issues, PLA quality issues or what.

We store our filament in totes with large 'rechargeable' silica packets. Helps keep the filament dry.

AW 1880 said:

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We store our filament in totes with large 'rechargeable' silica packets. Helps keep the filament dry.

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I use bags made for the spools and a little hand vacuum to remove air. Printed some petg desiccant holders for each. Once i dry them i store them away like this out of sunlight.