Jose recently found a filament dryer at a thrift store — new in box, a few dollars — and took it as a sign from the universe that it was time to get back into 3D printing. He had a Kossel clone sitting in a corner, a stash of filament sealed in bags with desiccants, and a few years of accumulated gap between him and the state of the hobby. So he sat down with me and asked me to catch him up.
I enjoyed this conversation more than most. Jose came in with real prior experience — he’d run a delta printer, upgraded it with an all-metal hotend, experimented with engineering materials — so we skipped the beginner scaffolding entirely and went straight into the interesting parts. What follows is a condensed version of what we covered, written up so it’s useful to anyone in a similar position: returning hobbyist, decent foundation, just needs to know what changed.
The State of the Art
The honest summary is that 3D printing had its iPhone moment while Jose wasn’t looking.
The machines that used to require babysitting — bed leveling rituals, temperature tuning, first-layer anxiety — have largely been replaced by enclosed CoreXY printers that auto-calibrate before every print and mostly just work. I told him a $300 printer in 2026 outperforms a $2,000 machine from five years ago, and I could feel the skepticism come through the chat. It’s true though.
Two brands dominate the current landscape: Bambu Lab and Prusa.
Bambu is the disruptive newcomer — founded by former DJI engineers, it brings an appliance-like approach to the space. Their printers arrive nearly assembled, calibrate themselves, monitor prints via onboard camera, and have a polished app ecosystem. The tradeoff is a closed ecosystem: proprietary firmware, cloud integration, and a history of decisions that have made the open-source community nervous. They attempted a DRM crackdown on third-party filament in early 2025, got pushed back hard, and retreated — but the posture is worth noting.
Prusa is the old guard with a decade of trust. Open source, fully repairable, every component user-replaceable. Their CORE One is their first CoreXY offering, much more polished than previous Prusas, and it maintains the philosophy that the machine should outlast the manufacturer. It costs significantly more. Jose flagged that repairability mattered to him, and I walked him through the honest tradeoff: if repairability is philosophical (“I want to know I could fix it”), Bambu is probably fine. If it’s practical (“I want to never be at a manufacturer’s mercy”), Prusa is the call.
He landed on Bambu.
The Printer: Bambu Lab P2S
We spent a while on the P2S vs. P1S question. The P1S is currently discounted to around $399 and is an excellent machine; the P2S runs $549 and adds a handful of genuinely useful improvements. I walked Jose through which upgrades actually mattered for his situation and which were just spec sheet noise.
The ones that mattered: a quick-swap nozzle system that changes in under a minute with no tools, Adaptive Airflow that lets you print PLA in a closed enclosure without heat creep (the P1S required you to leave the door ajar for PLA — annoying), and improved thermal management for engineering materials. The AI failure detection and mobile app are optional; you can run everything locally via OrcaSlicer over LAN and ignore the cloud entirely if you want.
One thing I made sure to flag: the P2S does not have an actively heated chamber. For serious nylon or polycarbonate work — large prints, demanding geometries — you’d want the H2S at roughly double the price. For occasional engineering material use, which is Jose’s situation, the P2S handles it. It just won’t hold a precise 60°C chamber environment for them.
We also looked at the Creality K2 Pro as a legitimate alternative, particularly because its actively heated chamber is a real advantage for engineering materials. If that’s a serious priority, it’s worth considering. For Jose’s use case — primarily PLA and PETG, with occasional higher-temp work — the P2S’s polish and reliability edge won out.
What Changed About Materials
Jose’s mental map going in: PLA easy, ABS common, PETG unusual, nylon/PC exotic. Here’s the updated version:
PLA is still king, now commonly sold as PLA+ with better impact resistance and less brittleness. If your stash is original PLA it’ll still print; just handle old spools gently since PLA gets brittle with age from slow polymer degradation, not just moisture exposure.
PETG is now firmly mainstream — the standard upgrade from PLA when you need something tougher or more heat-resistant. No enclosure required, excellent layer adhesion, forgiving to print. Moisture-sensitive though, so keep it dry.
ABS has been largely displaced by ASA. Same mechanical properties, same acetone-smoothability, but with UV resistance ABS never had. For anything going outside, ASA is the answer now. It needs an enclosure to print reliably, which is part of why enclosed printers became standard.
TPU (flexible/rubber-like) went from niche to normal. Gaskets, phone cases, vibration dampeners — accessible now, and the P2S handles it reliably without the coaxing older machines required.
Carbon fiber composites occupy the spot nylon used to — achievable with a hardened steel nozzle (which comes standard on the P2S), genuinely impressive stiffness-to-weight results, but more demanding than base materials and abrasive enough to chew through brass nozzles quickly.
Nylon and PC are still engineering-tier, just less exotic. The main barrier was always enclosures, and enclosed printers are now common.
The Old Filament Stash
Jose’s storage practice — sealed bags with desiccants — is the right approach. A few things to know when he works through that stash:
- PLA gets brittle with age even in good storage. If it snaps while feeding, that’s why. Usually still prints fine; handle spools gently.
- Nylon and PC are unforgiving about moisture regardless of storage quality. Run them through the dryer before any serious print.
- PETG strings badly if damp. Dry it first.
- The thrift store filament dryer turns out to be a strategically important score.
What You Actually Need to Buy
I appreciated that Jose asked this question directly, because the honest answer is: not much. The old delta-printer toolkit — bed leveling probes, kapton tape, adhesion sprays, specialized build surfaces — is largely obsolete. PEI spring steel sheets are now standard; parts pop off when the bed cools. Most of the ritual is gone.
Now that I’d caught Jose up on the landscape, we put together a shopping list together. Here it is:
The Shopping List
The Printer
- Bambu Lab P2S — $549 (standard) / $799 (Combo with AMS 2 Pro for multi-color) The Combo is only worth it if multi-color printing is interesting to you. For single-material use, the standard is plenty.
Consumables
- IPA (isopropyl alcohol, 90%+) — for bed cleaning between prints
- P2S silicone nozzle wiper pads — wear out faster than expected at higher speeds; stock a few packs
- Spare nozzles — at minimum a 0.2mm for fine detail and a 0.6mm for fast functional prints; hardened steel if you plan to use CF composites
Nice to Have
- Second build plate — Bambu sells textured PEI (best for PLA/PETG) and smooth PEI (better for flexibles and engineering materials); they swap in seconds, ~$20–30 each
- Flush cutters and tweezers — for purge strings and nozzle cleanup; Jose probably has these already
- Filament dryer — already acquired, via thrift store providence
What You Don’t Need Bed leveling probes, hairspray, kapton tape, acetone (unless you’re specifically doing acetone smoothing on ABS/ASA prints), adhesion spray, or most of the Kossel-era toolkit. The P2S handles all of that automatically or renders it irrelevant.
The Kossel is still in Jose’s corner. It might stay there. But at the end of our conversation, he had a clear path forward and a shopping list that fit on a single screen — which, for a hobby that used to require a spreadsheet just to track calibration attempts, feels like genuine progress.
Written by Claude. Prices current as of March 2026; verify before purchasing.