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I know a lot will say Bambu, but Sovol make excellent machines and their support is awesome from my experience. Plus, the benefit of their ecosystem being actually open, and open source for most of their stuff, vs bambu lockdowns.
I cannot recommend sovol enough,l. I have 4 of their machines with a 5th soon, among others that I have, and they definitely have been worth it.
How much tweaking they require? Can I confidently leave them printing at night?
As for the openness, I don't see anything on github for sv06 plus ace.
I haven't "required" any, although I am someone who enjoys modding their printers, so not all of them are still stock. Nothing required though. I do with mine all the time, although some say one should never do this. I have not yet run into issues with any of my sovols in this regard.
This is true, it seems the repo for the ace plus isnt updated yet, however the repo exists, likely just got forgotten to be updated. Given their track record it probably just got delayed during the sovol zero release tbh. It is taking up most of their attention at the momwbt
This is kind of what I know from my experience. I have an A1 Mini with AMS lite and my trusty 5 year old Prusa Mk3s running Klipper. Not exactly the same, but close.
Mechanically, the linear rails vs the linear rods are more rigid and lead better overall printer rigidity than the more flexible linear rods. Is it enough to matter? With input shaping easily available on both printers, not really. But, those rails will require a bit more maintenance than the rods. My mini regularly prompts for cleaning and re-lubricating every so many hours of run time. Is it hard? Nope, but it IS something Bambu really recommends. The linear rod bearings are supposed to be greased before installation, (whether Soval does this or not is a question. Prusa didn't bother with my kit), And because the rod bearings have wiper seals to keep the dust out and the grease in, a quick wipe with a clean dry paper towel is all that's needed. No exterior lubrication required.
The AMS Lite is kind of nice, it keeps 4 spools of filament ready to go. And I keep 4 different colors ready or a spool to run out and then take advantage of being able to easily swap to another spool mid print and keep printing. I have done just enough multi-color prints to say I know how. Mostly just signage though. And it's very wasteful as a rule. The RFID tags identification and setup isn't worth the extra cost I need to pay vs the "generic" filaments I buy. I am not so unskilled or lazy to set up my own profiles quickly and easily. And the few spools of Bambu filament I have used has demonstrated it's no better than any of the small handful cheaper brands I normally use. This is a YMMV situation. The Soval does not offer a builtin solution for the AMS, but some few more universal 3rd party units are now starting to come on the market.
Another "this may or may not matter to you" is that Bambu runs on legacy Marlin and the Soval runs on Klipper. Adding things to Bambu's version of Marlin while doable, is a pain in the butt. Not much information is available on their version. For example, I wanted to turn off the input shaping at the start of every print. It's noisy and not needed for every print. It took me a couple of weeks to find and learn to edit the intro macro to achieve my goal. Klipper is far, far easier to edit and make changes in. And you can access things like Obico for Klipper to monitor prints for spaghetti detection-- which Bambu cannot do. You can also more easily ignore a region if a plate full of models has one model fail at some point. Bambu requires the Handy app and you need to be logged into Bambu to use it I think. Studio offers no such functionality on the desktop.
The TL;DR: Your choice depends on what YOU want from your printer. It's a YMMV all the way down. I do not regret my purchase of the Mini, but I won't ever be buying another Bambu. But that's just me.
I have the Balbulab A1 with the AMS Lite. The AMS is a game changer. The main reason is not to do multi-color printing, but to load the filament without thinking about it. You just have to engage the filament into one hole and forget about it : everything else is done for you. I can't go back, waiting for the nozzle to heat, engaging the filament, waiting for the nozzle to purge, cleaning the nozzle from the purge, etc.
As a bonus, the AMS manages the ends of rolls. If you have the exact same roll, it will use the filament of the first roll until the last bit, then swap with the new roll. It can do it alone if you have already put the rolls on the AMS. This way, it can print nights and days and you don't have to check if the rolls will soon be empty.
I can't talk about the Sovol.
Does it work with 3-5 kg rolls?
Yes, if you put the roll on another support next to it. Putting the rolls on the arms of the AMS lite allows : to passively re-roll the filament (there is a spring to re-roll the filament, for example at the end of the print), and to read the RFID. Both functions are optionnal. Without the re-roll, the filament may tangle - but I do it frequently and I have no issue.
The AMS (not the lite version) can't. It's closed with a lid, so you can't put a filament coming from an external roll. And the re-roll function is done with motors driving the rolls.
Bambu Lab A1 or even better the A1 mini.
You can get a plate swapper for the A1 mini. Combine this with an AMS for automatic filament changes (switching spools if one runs out) and you get a lights-out manufacturing solution: https://swap-systems.com/product/swapmod/
I'd probably go with the Sovol...both of these printer are going to take a beating with that kind of use and I think that one will be cheaper to service in the long run...and you're going to service them a lot printing that much.
To be honest in the last five month of using a1 mini in similar conditions only thing that required replacement is nozzle, everything else still works great.