Those two would probably never have gotten started if not for how easy the Bambus are. It took me a month to get decent results off my first printer and they were up and running in a few hours tops.
I’ve got to admit, I’ve never understood that sort of issue. I’ve owned two 3D printers, a Monoprice MP Select Mini (bought back when it was the only ‘cheap’ printer in existence… holy shit, probably almost a decade ago) and a Creality Ender 3 V3 SE (because it was the best ‘cheap’ printer as of a couple years ago), and both of them gave me decent prints pretty much out of the box. After bed leveling, obviously, but without any other weird hardware adjustment or excessive experimentation with slicer settings.
I feel like the vaunted ‘superior ease of use’ of the Bambu stuff is overblown, but IDK, maybe I’ve just been lucky.
Admittedly I started pretty early on with the commercially available ones and I’m sure things have improved since then but that was my experience. I was fighting it for weeks screwing with leveling and temps, I completely burned through one set of leveling screws and had to replace them before I gave up and took the extruder apart and constructed a jig to make sure the nozzles were even. After that I started getting better results. By comparison my brother was given the exact same model by a coworker of his and he gave up on it because he’s just doesn’t think about technical things the same way I do. When he got the bambu though he was able to just go with it because he didn’t have to really troubleshoot anything.
I’ve got to admit, I’ve never understood that sort of issue. I’ve owned two 3D printers, a Monoprice MP Select Mini (bought back when it was the only ‘cheap’ printer in existence… holy shit, probably almost a decade ago) and a Creality Ender 3 V3 SE (because it was the best ‘cheap’ printer as of a couple years ago), and both of them gave me decent prints pretty much out of the box. After bed leveling, obviously, but without any other weird hardware adjustment or excessive experimentation with slicer settings.
I feel like the vaunted ‘superior ease of use’ of the Bambu stuff is overblown, but IDK, maybe I’ve just been lucky.
Bambu are not the only easy to setup anymore, but they did influence the trend.
They also have MakerWorld/Bambu handy that makes it really easy to start a print from anywhere.
So they are extremely easy to use.
But they are trying to leverage that to close their ecosystem and lock users in with shady practices…
Admittedly I started pretty early on with the commercially available ones and I’m sure things have improved since then but that was my experience. I was fighting it for weeks screwing with leveling and temps, I completely burned through one set of leveling screws and had to replace them before I gave up and took the extruder apart and constructed a jig to make sure the nozzles were even. After that I started getting better results. By comparison my brother was given the exact same model by a coworker of his and he gave up on it because he’s just doesn’t think about technical things the same way I do. When he got the bambu though he was able to just go with it because he didn’t have to really troubleshoot anything.