this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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Hey, I am looking for an advice on buying my second printer. I am looking for a machine that prints every day for 10+ hours mostly without me looking at it. Which one is better for the task?

Currently I'm deciding between Bambulab A1 and Sovol sv06 ace +. They cost more or less the same in my part of the world and sovol has a bigger print volume and seemingly less scummy (to date) company behind it. While bambu is super popular and pretty reliable.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

This is kind of what I know from my experience. I have an A1 Mini with AMS lite and my trusty 5 year old Prusa Mk3s running Klipper. Not exactly the same, but close.

Mechanically, the linear rails vs the linear rods are more rigid and lead better overall printer rigidity than the more flexible linear rods. Is it enough to matter? With input shaping easily available on both printers, not really. But, those rails will require a bit more maintenance than the rods. My mini regularly prompts for cleaning and re-lubricating every so many hours of run time. Is it hard? Nope, but it IS something Bambu really recommends. The linear rod bearings are supposed to be greased before installation, (whether Soval does this or not is a question. Prusa didn't bother with my kit), And because the rod bearings have wiper seals to keep the dust out and the grease in, a quick wipe with a clean dry paper towel is all that's needed. No exterior lubrication required.

The AMS Lite is kind of nice, it keeps 4 spools of filament ready to go. And I keep 4 different colors ready or a spool to run out and then take advantage of being able to easily swap to another spool mid print and keep printing. I have done just enough multi-color prints to say I know how. Mostly just signage though. And it's very wasteful as a rule. The RFID tags identification and setup isn't worth the extra cost I need to pay vs the "generic" filaments I buy. I am not so unskilled or lazy to set up my own profiles quickly and easily. And the few spools of Bambu filament I have used has demonstrated it's no better than any of the small handful cheaper brands I normally use. This is a YMMV situation. The Soval does not offer a builtin solution for the AMS, but some few more universal 3rd party units are now starting to come on the market.

Another "this may or may not matter to you" is that Bambu runs on legacy Marlin and the Soval runs on Klipper. Adding things to Bambu's version of Marlin while doable, is a pain in the butt. Not much information is available on their version. For example, I wanted to turn off the input shaping at the start of every print. It's noisy and not needed for every print. It took me a couple of weeks to find and learn to edit the intro macro to achieve my goal. Klipper is far, far easier to edit and make changes in. And you can access things like Obico for Klipper to monitor prints for spaghetti detection-- which Bambu cannot do. You can also more easily ignore a region if a plate full of models has one model fail at some point. Bambu requires the Handy app and you need to be logged into Bambu to use it I think. Studio offers no such functionality on the desktop.

The TL;DR: Your choice depends on what YOU want from your printer. It's a YMMV all the way down. I do not regret my purchase of the Mini, but I won't ever be buying another Bambu. But that's just me.