Bambu Lab P1P Complete Setup Guide: Assembly, Bambu Studio, and Your First Print

The Bambu Lab P1P is the printer that made CoreXY, Klipper-based, auto-calibrating 3D printing affordable for a much wider audience than the X1 Carbon's price point allowed. It sits below the enclosed P1S in Bambu's lineup — no enclosure, no built-in chamber heating, a simpler mainboard without the LiDAR-based first-layer inspection some X1-series features include — but it shares the same core motion system, the same LiDAR-assisted bed leveling, and the same Bambu Studio/Orca Slicer ecosystem, at a substantially lower cost. This guide covers unboxing through your first successful print.

What's in the Box and What Assembly Actually Involves

Unlike a kit printer, the P1P ships mostly pre-assembled: the gantry, toolhead, and frame arrive built, and setup is mechanical only in the sense of attaching a handful of modules rather than building a machine from extrusion and rails. Expect to: mount the spool holder and, if included, the AMS Lite unit on the back or side of the frame; attach the top cover/gantry cover panels if your kit shipped with them separately; connect the toolhead cable chain if it arrived detached for shipping protection (check the included quick-start card, since Bambu revises packaging periodically); and seat the PTFE tube from the extruder to the hotend if it was removed for transit. This typically takes 15-30 minutes and requires no calibration tools beyond what's in the box.

First Power-On and Network Setup

On first boot, the P1P's touchscreen walks through Wi-Fi setup directly, or you can connect via the Bambu Handy mobile app, which scans a QR code on the printer to pair it. Decide at this stage whether you want the printer on Bambu's cloud service (needed for remote monitoring and AMS filament mapping conveniences through the app) or in LAN-only mode for entirely local control — this site's LAN-only mode guide covers the tradeoffs and how to switch later if you start on cloud mode and change your mind. Either way, register the printer in Bambu Studio or Orca Slicer by adding it via its IP address (LAN mode) or your Bambu account (cloud mode) before your first print, since slicing and sending a job both depend on this connection being set up correctly.

Auto Bed Leveling and First-Layer Calibration

The P1P uses the same automated calibration sequence as the rest of the current Bambu lineup: on first print (and periodically thereafter, configurable in settings), it runs bed mesh leveling using a strain-gauge-based probe built into the toolhead, followed by vibration compensation calibration (input shaping, run automatically or on demand from the calibration menu) that measures resonance and tunes acceleration to reduce ringing/ghosting on prints. This automation is a big part of why Bambu printers earned a reputation for consistent first prints out of the box — there's very little manual first-layer tuning required compared to older-generation FDM printers, though it's still worth doing one manual check: after the first auto-level, print a single-layer test square and confirm it's laying down evenly across the bed rather than trusting the automation blindly on the very first job.

Loading Filament and Choosing Bambu Studio vs. Orca Slicer

Filament loading is guided from the touchscreen or the app: insert the spool, feed filament to the extruder gears until the screen detects it, and the printer purges the nozzle automatically to confirm clean flow before starting a print. If you added an AMS Lite unit, loading works the same way per-slot, and the printer maps each slot's filament type/color automatically for multi-color work.

For slicing, Bambu Studio (Bambu's own fork of PrusaSlicer/Orca lineage) ships with pre-tuned profiles specifically validated against the P1P's hotend, bed, and motion system, and is the easiest path to a good first print. Orca Slicer, covered in depth in this site's OrcaSlicer guide, is a strong alternative once you want finer control over calibration profiles (pressure advance, flow rate tuning via its built-in calibration tests) or want a single slicer that also handles non-Bambu printers in your shop. Both read and write the same 3MF project format and both talk to the printer over the same network connection, so switching between them later doesn't mean starting your printer profile from scratch.

Your First Print

Start with a small, well-tested model (a calibration cube or a standard "first print" benchy-style model) sliced with an unmodified default Bambu PLA profile before touching any settings. This isolates whether any first-print issue is a printer/setup problem versus a slicer-setting problem. Watch the first layer specifically: even with auto-leveling, a first layer that looks too shiny/squished (over-close) or shows visible gaps between lines (too far) is worth a manual Z-offset nudge from the tune menu before committing to a longer print. Once a small test print comes out clean, move on to real projects with confidence that the calibration baseline is good.

P1P vs. P1S: What You're Giving Up

The most common upgrade question P1P owners eventually ask is whether to add an enclosure. The P1P doesn't include one from the factory (Bambu does sell an official enclosure kit as an add-on), which means ABS, ASA, and other warp-prone or fume-producing filaments are harder to print well and less safe to print without supplemental enclosure and ventilation — the P1S solves this at the factory with a sealed chamber and active chamber circulation, at a higher purchase price. For PLA, PETG, and most everyday printing, the P1P's open frame is not a meaningful disadvantage; it becomes relevant specifically when you want to run engineering filaments regularly, at which point either adding the official enclosure kit or building a DIY enclosure (see this site's DIY heated enclosure guide) closes most of the gap.

Basic Maintenance to Start

Keep the PEI or textured plate clean with isopropyl alcohol between prints for consistent bed adhesion, periodically check the toolhead's cooling fan and hotend for stray filament debris, and don't skip firmware updates — Bambu ships regular firmware releases that have included meaningful calibration and reliability improvements since launch, and the printer will prompt for available updates from the touchscreen or app.