BIQU B1 FDM 3D Printer with Removable Metal Build Plate - Dual-System SKR V1.4 Silent Motherboard, Filament Break Detection & Resume Printing - 235x235x270mm Printing Size (CE Certified) for Home DIY Projects, Prototyping & Educational Use

This is my second printer. I have an Ender 3 Pro, and wanted to 'upgrade'. The 32-bit board was the next step for the E3 Pro, but it would have set me back at least $80. The Biqu B1 printer had the SKR 1.4 board already included and the touch screen and I figured this would be a better starting point rather than spending a weekend dealing with the learning curve and troubleshooting headaches of upgrading the E3 Pro. When the price showed up at $228 on Black Friday I purchased it. My other option was to purchase an Ender 3 V2, and after watching online reviews, I figured the Biqu offered me a better platform for upgrades down the road.Unboxing and set up is not complicated. The biggest thing I would watch out for is to make sure your frame is square. I learned that lesson the hard way when assembling the E3 Pro, and I won't make that mistake again with the Biqu B1. The Biqu is not trouble-free or perfectly aligned. Use a quick square layout tool and shape the frame in place before you tighten the Z-axis frame screws. Watch assembly videos for the Ender 3. This is basically the same machine, with different electronics.The printer was packaged extremely well. Better than the E3 Pro, in my opinion.The firmware on this machine was the latest at the time, Marlin 2.0.6 so I did not need to do any upgrades. Another nice surprise is that the printer came in all black, not with those flashy fuchsia parts that are shown in the review videos. I don't mind a little color, but black is a good starting point. The machine is sleek-looking, and solid. The touch screen is very nice, responsive and very easy to use. Printing is very quiet, much more quiet than the E3 Pro, but you can still hear the fans in various parts of the machines. Some louder than others. I plan to upgrade to silent fans in the future.A few things that are missing on the Biqu B1: no PTFE tube clips. I had to print some meant for the Ender 3 at 125% scale due to the bigger size. Also, they did not include a nozzle cleaning needle.Having said that, the quality of non-critical parts is lacking. The USB reader stick kind of broke (it's on the side) after the first few uses after I bumped into it accidentally. The spool nut plastic felt way cheaper than the one on the E3 Pro. I had to print a replacement.Other minor annoyances: a bad driver kept me from using the printer right after assembly. BigTreeTech (the manufacturer) quickly contacted the Amazon reseller and I had a new set of FIVE TMC2225 drivers shipped very quickly. I only needed one, so I will have extras. Customer service exceeded my expectations. They helped me via email to troubleshoot and isolate the problem. You may need to wait a day or so, since it's based in China, but they were very responsive, nonetheless.It was very annoying to see the big blob dragged into my print when it started out printing. Not cool. The profile for this machine does not have the code to print a line prior to printing. This usually is done on the E3 to prime the nozzle. You can easily add starting g-code to the machine settings in Cura to prime the nozzle before printing. A quick google search will instruct you.Another annoyance with this machine is that the power switch is in the back and it's a little hard to reach. Also, the models included in the SD Card are set for a very low temperature (180C I believe). Do not use those. My filament was too cold to print. I will miss the v-slots on the bottom of the frame of my E3 Pro. I have nowhere to attach drawers now. I will design something later to store tools for this machine.The pdf manual in the SD card has instructions on how to get started printing with Cura. It gives you instructions for creating a new profile for this printer. The SD Card also has a Cura profile for this machine stored, and it is set for 0.1mm layer heights. I printed a 3D Benchie with that profile, and the result was superb. I tried a couple of other filaments, increased the layer height to 0.2mm and results were just as nice. I ran another couple of tests using online calibration guides and it turns out that the machine uses very similar parameters that I was using with my Ender 3 Pro: 4mm retraction distance, and 20mm/s retraction speed. I created a new profile using my old machine's E3 Pro settings. These were very similar to CHEP's E3 Cura 4.6.x profiles and it's been printing beautifully on the Biqu, even using the cheap filament. These prints far surpass the quality of those coming out of my E3 Pro's prints, especially when you turn on acceleration and jerk control.No additional tuning was needed for my extruder. When I ran the e-steps calibration, this machine was spot on. It was calibrated perfectly to extrude 100mm out of the factory.I printed a 20mm calibration cube that came out one or two tenths off. I still need to calibrate that. My E3 Pro was exactly 20.0mm on most dimensions out of the box. I will tweak the Biqu B1 further to get those dimensions more accurately printed later.Here are the main things I love about this printer:- Super Smooth prints, I think because of the dual y axis rail. This is the main reason why I purchased this printer. I wanted better prints.- It's nice and quiet.- The LED light. I can see the print as it's coming along.- The electronics included provide a great platform for performing upgrades, without going through a huge learning curve and troubleshooting of the 'basic' E3 machines.Things I will upgrade later that will make this a superb machine:- The hot end. The stock one is not that great.- Drivers will be upgraded to TMC2209s.- Hot end modification, by CHEP to print higher temperatures.- BL Touch for automatic bed leveling.- Power Supply 'upgrade' to a Meanwell brand PSU.- Dual extruder.In summary:I purchased this printer to get a new platform for upgrading. I wanted a printer that would print great out of the box. I wasn't disappointed. The quality of the prints is SUPERB and even better when properly tuned.The manufacturer of this machine (BigTreeTech) usually sells upgrades, not printers. The community for the Biqu B1 is still small. You may not be able to get a lot of search results if you google this machine, but granted this is essentially an Ender 3 frame and similar components, a lot of the same applies. The firmware is upgradeable and open source, and the community is very large for that regardless of what machine you use. If I had zero experience I would definitely buy this again. I think the learning pains are just the same with both printers. Except with an E3 platform you may reach the machine's upgrade limits sooner.This was my first 3d printer purchase ever after having followed the scene for many years. I really just wanted something that worked out of the box without paying Prusa prices. Between this and the Ender 3d or Ender 3d V2, this seemed like it would have been the ultimate culmination of what I would have wanted after a few months of potentially owning an Ender. So I went with the Biqu B1.The rough start comes pretty much on step 4 of assembly when the printed manual doesn't match what you're supposed to be doing and the ordered numbers don't match what's printed on the bagged parts.. It's easy enough to figure out, but not having really gotten to know all the terminology over the years of following, it really was a head scratcher at times. However, that was just a one time setback of an hour or two during assembly. The real setbacks came upon turning it on. For starters, the fans are ridiculously loud and some even sound broken. Upon following some user groups, it seems this might already be fixed with some models manufactured starting in Oct/Nov 2020. Mine was shipped in the beginning of Nov 2020, but it appears to have been made in Sep 2020, so they do not have these new parts. They work and eventually quiet down after being on a while, but I have a feeling I'll need to fix or replace them soon.Then comes the first prints. Out of the box, I now understand that it is horribly calibrated. At the time, though, I did not understand at all why nothing worked, or if it did work why it looked so horrible. And it didn't help to not even know what to search for in Google or YouTube to fix it. Prints not sticking to bed, globs, gaps, too thin, too thick, stringing, etc. There are no instructions to explain any of this. You're on your own. It became apparent this isn't exactly a beginner printer. It's a good thing I also bought a spool of PLA right off the bat because I went through nearly half of it trying different solutions, which is way more than the tiny roll of white PLA sampler they give you. Then I found Teaching Tech's calibration video on YouTube. Before I even got halfway through with his video, I was astounded what was being printed just in calibration models vs what I had been trying to do all week. After finishing that up, I'm confident in saying this is 95% of the way to being truly well-oiled and high performing printing machine with any remaining issues pertaining to the type of filament you're using.All in all, this is well worth the money if you're already someone with printing knowledge, or a beginner that's willing to put in some work to figure everything out. The $200-$300 price point really seems to have come a long way in quality over the years and I have no regrets jumping in at this time with the Biqu B1.It printed well for the first 10 prints then the filament stopped feeding through. This is the 2nd printer we’ve had with the same problem.Been wanting to get into the 3D printing world for a while, after looking at reviews online I settled for the Biqu B1 for my first printer. So I knew what to expect. Assembly required, nothing really complicated, instructions are pretty good and YouTube videos can help. The main negative I would give is the lack of instructions for the menus of the printer. Nothing in the box to help, so got to try, guess and again, search online. Some help would be nice for newbies like me. Otherwise the printer has been pretty good so far, printed bunch of clips, support, box, the mandatory groot.... Overall I'd say it's a good starter printer as long as you're willing to put in the time to search and experiment, it's cheap but capable of pretty good prints.Likes- Easy to assemble, instructions are OK, might have taken me an hour- Hot End is quiet- Steppers are quiet- Display is very nice- Magnetic build surface- Very well packagedDislikes- Power Supply fan is pretty loud- Part cooling fans are cheapI've ran this printer for several days, 18 hours a day and it's doing great. One part cooling fan is starting to get that startup bearing buzz.Buyer Notes: Take your time during setup. It's not in the instructions but make sure the printer is square and plumb to the print bed. It's not hard and takes just several minutes. Look up anything for Ender 3 and it will pretty much apply to setup on this printer.I liked it - I bought a 2nd!