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MizuMakes may earn a commission from links in this post. For most people, the best budget 3D printer under $300 is the Bambu Lab A1 mini, as long as your parts fit in a 180 mm cube and you stick to PLA, PETG, and TPU. If you need a bigger bed for $200 or less, the Creality Ender-3 V3 SE is the practical pick. If you need ASA, ABS, or carbon-filled nylon, you need an enclosure, and the only machine near this budget that has one is the Elegoo Centauri Carbon, when you can find it at its street price. ...

MizuMakes may earn a commission from links in this post. Short answer: to print multiple colors on the Flashforge Creator 5 Pro, load each color into its own toolhead, then set that toolhead’s material and color on the printer’s screen. In Flash Studio, assign colors to the model and slice with the prime tower on. When you send the job, map each slicer color to the matching toolhead. The printer swaps whole toolheads instead of unloading and reloading filament, so there’s no long purge between colors. ...

MizuMakes may earn a commission from links in this post. For most people choosing between the Bambu Lab AMS vs AMS 2 Pro vs AMS HT, the answer is the AMS 2 Pro: four spools with active drying. Add an AMS HT only if you print materials that need more heat than the 2 Pro can deliver. The original AMS only makes sense if you find it discounted and you print PLA and PETG. Each unit is a feeder, a sealed storage box, and in two cases a dryer. For functional parts, the dryer matters more than the color count. ...

MizuMakes may earn a commission from links in this post. The Bambu Lab H3C is a nine-tool changer. It went on sale November 3, 2026, at $2,499 in the US, and that price includes the AMS 3H filament system. It fixes the biggest problem with the H2C’s hotend swapping, which is the single shared filament path. It does not fully remove purge, and its chamber is no hotter than the Creator 5 Pro’s. For functional multi-material parts, it wins on build volume and tool count, not on purge waste. ...

MizuMakes may earn a commission from links in this post. My Bambu P1S has been the workhorse of this shop for well over 1,000 hours, and it isn’t going anywhere. But the kind of parts I print has been drifting. Less PLA, more ASA and carbon-fiber nylon, and more prints where I want two materials in the same part. That’s where the P1S and its AMS start to fight me, so I went shopping for a second printer. ...

MizuMakes may earn a commission from links in this post. If you print brackets, enclosures, or anything that sees load, wet filament is a mechanical problem as well as a cosmetic one. Water absorbed into the plastic turns to steam in the hot end. Prusa’s drying guide says high moisture content can cause low layer adhesion, blobs on the prints, and bubbling and smoke during extrusion. Layer adhesion is already the weak axis of an FDM part, and TDS numbers are measured on ideal specimens, so you don’t want to give up more Z-strength to steam voids. ...

MizuMakes may earn a commission from links in this post. The short version: the Flashforge Creator 5 Pro is a reasonable deal at its current price, but only if you want four dedicated tools and a heated chamber in one box. If you mostly print single-material functional parts, the Bambu P2S Combo is $200 cheaper and probably the better buy. Prices below are US prices as of November 1, 2026. Sales are moving daily, so check the cart before you commit. ...

MizuMakes may earn a commission from links in this post. Outdoor parts fail in three ways: they soften in the sun, they crack from UV and moisture over months, or they creep under a steady load until they sag. PLA, PETG, and ASA each handle those three differently. The data sheets let you rank them, even though no data sheet gives you a service life. All the numbers below are manufacturer TDS values from ideal test specimens. Printed parts land lower, and the layer-to-layer (Z) direction lands lowest. ...

MizuMakes may earn a commission from links in this post. PETG is the filament I’d reach for when PLA is too brittle or too heat-sensitive and ASA or ABS is more printer than the job needs. But PETG is not one material. Different brands tune the copolymer, additives and drying history differently, and the data sheets show it. This post compares the major brands the way I’d pick one for a bracket, jig or enclosure: published numbers first, marketing last. ...

Short version: my Bambu Lab P1S has well over 1,000 hours of print time on it, and it hasn’t had a single significant issue. It’s been a great deal from day one, and at around $399 now (it’s dipped as low as $349 on sale this fall, down from a $699 launch price), it’s an even better one. The P2S is the newer printer, but for most people the P1S is still the one I’d buy. ...