Been lurking here a long time. Got started in vending with zero knowledge and got my first machine in mid February.

Took me 2.5 months to score my first placement. Then I had to wait on more machines stuck in customs hold. But I used that time learn and refine. My four new machines finally arrived at the end of June after about 2 months in customs. In 2 weeks, I've secured locations for them all.

And I can say, at least in my case, the advice given in here is pretty spot on:

• Emails and other passive cold calling measures are low-percentage.
• In person, with a one-sheet (and in my case, a demo product) is golden.
• Use the "nos" you get to find out *why* (if you can) they said no, and bake the answer to the objection into your initial pitch.
• Chicken-and-egg problem: The more machines you place, the easier it is to place them. Which means that first placement is a soul-killer.

A few months ago, I wasn't even sure I could make this business work. Now, I'm chock full of excitement and can't wait to order my next batch of machines.

I've run a small print farm for a couple years, and put 20,000+ hours on a small fleet of Bambu P1S printers. After a bit of time with the Snapmaker U1, I swapped out my entire fleet of P1S printers for U1s (except for one I'm keeping for ABS/ASA). I'm used to hearing people talk about how the Bambu machines "just work", and they mostly do. But they conveniently leave out all the pain points or mods you have to make to alleviate them.

With that in mind, these are things I don't miss about the P1S fleet.

Color swap time: At ~90 seconds on the P1S to cut, retract, advance and purge vs 5 seconds on the U1, a job with 300 color swaps means 7 more hours for the same job on the P1S. For my models, my fleet of 4 U1s has the average throughput of 7.2 P1S printers.

Purge waste: Taking out purge waste means my costs average half what they do on the P1S machines. This let me pass the savings onto the customer and undercut my competition at the same time.

---- These are the things all of us U1 users talk about. Now onto the meat ---

Quality: I print small, articulated figures and toys. On the Bambu printers, there's often a little joint fusing I have to break by hand. On the U1 machines, there's just that much better dimensional accuracy and bridging. Figures come off the beds just...articulating. This saves me post-processing time, and the prints just look so crisp.

Purge/poop getting dragged onto the bed: This happens occasionally, and it can wreck a print, or maybe just a single item on the plate. Either way, more waste.

Purge/poop backing up the chute: Either the bucket gets full (that's on me) or the chute gets warm enough for molten pla to stick to it. Either way, the chute backs up, eventually knocks the toolhead off, and there's always a layer shift after resuming.

Video: Having to buy external cameras to get more than 0.5FPS video.

Monitoring: Bambu locks out a whole lot of telemetry from 3rd party apps which means if I want to truly monitor the fleet, I have to use Bambu Studio and manually switch between each individual printer rather than glancing at a dashboard.

Respooling: The AMS was great when it came out. It democratized color prints in a major way. But the AMS itself is finicky: Doesn't like cardboard, doesn't like certain spool sizes. Which means printing a V-Spooler, pastamatic, or something similar and respooling spools. And if you don't respool...

Printing and storing spool adapters: For those times you don't wanna spend 10 minutes respooling and just wanna throw a mostly-disposable ring of plastic on that cardboard spool.

Low spool hangs: When a spool runs low, you gotta throw some weight in the middle so the AMS doesn't jerk the spool out of the seat and hang.

Endless mods to fix or improve things that supposedly "just work": improved nozzle wipers, AMS feeder funnel to prevent wear on the filament intake, mods to improve plate seating, mods to help prevent purge drag, improved spool holder for the external spool, mods to close up all the little holes in the machine where debris and dust can get inside. Poop chutes, tunnels, and bins. You know how many mods I've printed for the U1? None.

The U1 has its pain points, but for me, at least they're minor. I knew it was time to swap the fleet when I had a single U1 in the mix, and kept putting off prints on the P1S machines until the U1 had finished what it was working on. Quite the statement for a machine that was a fraction of the cost of a P1S/AMS combo (edit: back when I got them..not now. :D).

Background

(this might be a little long, but I feel it's important to frame my thinking. If you don't care and just want the meat of the post, scroll down to "Observations")

I got into 3d printing back in 2023, decided I wanted to make the hobby pay for itself, and ended up growing a small farm of Bambu P1S printers to support the growing business. I sell both in-person, wholesale, and in kiosks. I'm no Wigglitz or Shop Nation, but I do sell thousands of prints a year.

The types of models I sell are small and highly multicolored. On purge-based single nozzle machines, the smart play was to pack as many objects on the plate as I could. Purge waste was a fixed cost per layer/per color change, so the more objects I could put on a plate, the lower the waste cost per object. I even dropped the purge tower, arguing that a few seconds of cleanup on the first object after the color swap was worth the additional savings. This kept COGS lower, and allowed me to sell at prices that would be difficult to achieve for one-off specialty prints. Many of my models have 2-4 color swaps per layer, 300-400 layers. That's a lot of purge I've been throwing away.

This meant that I was printing (depending on the unit size) between 9 and 30 objects per plate (depending on how well I could tessellate them). Far more than I would need for any single show. So, I developed a stock system using plastic parts bins from the hardware store. I could tell at a glance if a bin was low, and throw another plate on the printer to replenish the stock. For shows, I have another set of carrying cases with smaller bins that I fill up and take with me. They hold 3-4 of each item, and it's just about perfect for event inventory.

Last year, I felt I'd reduced costs and increased throughput as much as I possibly could with my existing inventory and started looking to tool changers to cut purge out of the equation. No purge meant lower COGS, and if I could eliminate the ~90 second color swap time, that would mean faster prints. So, I bit the bullet and got a Prusa XL. It was...disappointing.

But, I was still convinced that purge waste and time were the biggest bottlenecks in my current system. I aggressively kept my eye on all the announcements late last year about new printers aiming to solve those problems: The Bambu H2C, the Prusa Core One with INDX, and the Snapmaker U1. The U1 was extremely attractive, because of the price. But I wasn't convinced to pull the trigger until initial Kickstarter user reports and influencer videos started coming out about it. I judged in November that it would probably be much better than my XL experience, and bought one. In March of this year, it arrived. Within 2.5 months, I'd sold off the XL and nearly all my P1S fleet and replaced them with U1s.

The U1 has been great for my workflow. It has some issues (and all printers do), but I consider them minor. Nothing intolerable. The most important things to me are reliability and uptime, and the U1 has been giving me those in spades. For my products, my COGS average about half what they did under the P1S fleet, and each U1 gives me the throughput (due to color swap time savings) of about 1.8 P1S machines (again, based on the kinds of models I print).

Observations

Now that I don't have to worry about amortizing purge waste, I don't need to absolutely pack the bed any longer. This means smaller runs and shorter print times. I don't have to put on a 27 hour print job and hope that nothing fails overnight, ruining a big run. I can print 3-6 items at a time, at need, and run several jobs a day.

This has had secondary effects. Because I'm not printing more than I'll need for a show, I've let my backstock inventory wall deplete. That space is mostly empty now. Instead, I use my carrying cases to hold event inventory, and I can glance in them to see if I need to reprint any particular item. It's allowed me to move to more JIT printing rather than printing dozens of items on spec.

Since my business is speculative printing, this also means I have less money tied up in potentially slower-moving inventory. In the past, if I bet wrong on an item and it didn't move, I would have to drop it into lower price tiers to at least recover some margin on them. But that's not ideal. Now, if something isn't moving fast, that's ok, because I only have a few of each item anyway. So if something only sells 1 every couple shows, I know it'll move eventually, and then I just don't print it again. I'm not looking at a bin of 30 of them wondering what the hell I'm gonna do.

Without the backstock, I can repurpose that whole inventory wall for another purpose. Maybe to house another row of printers if I need to as the business grows. Though with the throughput improvements noted above, it'll be a while before I have to. But regardless of what I do with the space, it means I have more breathing room before I need to consider moving into a larger footprint.

Another secondary effect: because plates aren't sardine-packed, I have space on the plate to put the purge tower back up. That tower can now collect the zits and ooze, saving me some post processing time after every print.

Not packing plates means (for me at least) the chase for larger print beds is over. I don't print big art pieces or cosplay. I don't even care that the U1s print beds are marginally larger than the P1S (270mm vs 256). Because I'm no longer just jam packing those beds full. If they could fit a 4 toolhead system in an even smaller footprint, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, because it would mean I could fit more printers into the same space.

And lastly, it's opened up a whole new revenue stream in custom color prints. In the past, I've had lots of people request items I print, but in non-standard color combinations. I used to have to charge a hefty premium for those--a one-off print has to bake all of the purge waste into the pricing. With a toolchanger, the waste from the prime tower is negligible, and so my custom item fee can be much more modest (and therefore more attractive to the customer). Bespoke prints are a newer line for me, and one I hope to capitalize on more as I grow.

Those are my observations so far aggressively optimizing my biz around the new toolchanger fleet. While in the middle of this optimization, I got a large 750-unit wholesale order, and got to see the side-by-side differences in the two engineering philosophies first-hand. I had to run the full fleet (half P1S and half U1) to make deadline, and it was crazy at how fast the u1s were outpacing the P1S printers and completing plates.

(minor typo/grammar edits after posting)

Background

I got into 3d printing back in 2023. A friend of mine asked me to build her Ender 3 pro kit, got hooked, and bought a Bambu P1S when she took the Ender back a month or so later. Quickly got into 3d printing as a side gig to make filament pay for itself. Made enough money to continually expand the farm. I've since put about 20,000 print hours on a fleet of 4 p1s units.

The biggest downsides, in my mind, were purge waste and purge time. The quality and uptime of the machines was stellar, but I was throwing away tons of filament in the form of purge. And that was dollars directly going in the trash.

So, in 2025, I got a Prusa XL (see posts here and here). Theoretically, it should have solved my biggest problems. The larger bed was nice, but not critical. Instead, I got a finicky machine that couldn't be left unattended on high-swap jobs. The printer just didn't have the uptime I needed.

I had my eye on the U1. I saw the Kickstarter and was tempted, but waited until early units started hitting the public, and I saw how positive most reviews were, so I pre-ordered in Nov 2025, and got my first unit in March 2026. Within a week, I sold the XL.

So

After a month, I sold a P1S and bought another U1. 2 weeks later, I did it again. My 3rd U1 arrived today, and I'll be buying another tomorrow, and putting the last redundant p1s up for sale. (I'm keeping one specifically because I have it tuned for ABS/ASA printing). I've already put about 700 print hours on my little U1 fleet.

First thing I did for my operations: I quickly replaced the gold PEI sheets with Biqu CryoGrip Pro plates. I prefer the smooth bottoms on the prints, but I've always had issues with "cold plates". I theorized that if they were nice and sticky at 35-40C, they'd work like beasts at 60C. And they do. Zero adhesion issues. I only handle the plates while wearing nitrile gloves, so no washing needed yet.

Early impressions:

The u1 is a rock-solid printer and requires very little observation once that critical first layer goes down. The prints are faster, with much less waste. These machines just run, and I don't have to worry about them. I've had zero overnight failures, zero mid-run failures. And with the Biqu plates, zero adhesion failures. If you want a litany of what I didn't deal with, go read that 2nd Prusa XL post. :D

On the Bambu, in order to reduce costs, I killed the prime tower to make room for more units on a plate. More units means less purge cost per unit. On the U1, it was worth adding it back in because pennies spent on the tower saves me post processing time, and I don't have to amortize purge waste.

Some numbers: I recently got an order for 750 wholesale units of small prints. 25-to-a-plate. Printing on the Bambu printers means an additional cost of $22.50 in purge waste, and 90 hours of additional print time on this order.

But, it's not all a bed of roses. I'll never get over how easy it is to load filament in the AMS for a Bambu machine. It's just so easy and convenient. The U1 is loads better than the XL, since it has automatic filament feeders. But loading filament is still a 2-step process: Feed 90% of the way with the auto-loaders, then go into the screen and select all your filament types and colors and then hit "load". But that's a minor annoyance when spending 5 minutes up front loading saves you hours of print time.

There are reports that Snapmaker Orca has issues. Reports that the cloud environment is unstable. Reports that the handheld app isn't great and that there's only like 30 models to choose from. All of those may be true. I wouldn't know. I run my fleet in LAN mode, using vanilla Orca and have a Home Assistant integration into a dashboard so I can observe my entire fleet at a glance. But, these things may be more important to you than they are to me, so be aware of them.

Some things I think are better, ecosystem-wise: I can slice and send a job *while the machine is printing*. As soon as the print is done, I can load up filaments and just hit print, without running back to the slicer to kick it off. And since you can select filament mapping at print time (unlike on the P1S), it means I only have to slice something once. Then I can just mix and match colors by remapping every time I reuse that g-code. That means less time slicing and sending jobs from the computer and faster turnaround time in the print room.

Something equally important though, is the U1's ability to unlock custom jobs. Most of my production is built around "print 8-25 units on a single plate." That's what made the most sense operationally with the P1S units. But if someone wanted a custom color, I had to charge them a premium because I couldn't amortize that purge waste across an entire plate. Now? I don't. So when someone comes to me and says "I want that thing you make, but in purple and red." I can just say yes.

So, for me, I'm all in on the U1 for now. I can't know long term longevity yet. Nobody can. But I hope to make a followup post when I have a few thousand hours on the machines to compare against.

https://preview.redd.it/bd3feqjj3yzg1.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=5746be0073d0e8345affc02a38c359a229a12e2d

The picture basically sums up my whole business model. Tiny prints, big gains. Sorry for the AI slop image, but I am so in love with this concept, I had to make something funny for myself, and decided the concept was worth sharing.

I have a small print farm, 5 machines. I started out selling bigger items: custom cosplay stuff, large Cinderwing dragons, etc.

I aggressively drove down my costs by buying filament in bulk, batching jobs, and moving to toolchangers to eliminate purge waste.

But it's the inverse cube law that really made a difference. In my market, $40 is a hard sell for a large item. $5.00 for a small item sells all day. But because of the inverse cube law, a large item that may cost me $9.00 to print and sell for $40, if shrunk enough, becomes a pittance in cost. Putting 25 tiny fidgets on a print bed might cost me $4-6 to print, and bring me $125 at my booth.

Cube law says that for a 3d item, doubling the size cubes the volume. Print something 2x as big, it uses ~8 times as much plastic. But the inverse is also true. halve the size, 1/8 the plastic. Costs go *way* down, and the sale price becomes low enough to be an impulse item.

Last 2 years in business, working about 8 events a year, I've brought in about $32,000, using about $3000 in filament. Not bad for a part time side gig