Is 3D printing easy?

Beginning: joy and first steps

At first, it was joyful, as my BambooLab Mini was creating magic (I shared all the excitement about the printer in my previous post). The PLA printing was going as it should: the products were of good quality almost from the first try. This made me think that printing is easy. After listening to the advice of seasoned printers, I switched to PETG, and struggled with it for a long time, but then, after calibrating everything properly, joy returned. You look at the finished product and feel proud, as by correctly adjusting quality and speed, you become more efficient, and thus you breathe more rus...no, no, no, this post is not about that!And it's also cool to print something for yourself.

Who is this retraction of yours? The technical aspects were difficult for me; I kept forgetting the terminology and got confused about which parameter was responsible for what. The solution to this problem was to mimic others or experiment and waste a lot of plastic. Surprisingly, after 900+ hours of printing on the Mini (and a bit on the A1), I, not understanding what I was actually doing, produced 24 kg of quality (according to the curators) products. So maybe printing is indeed easy? You just print until it looks good and sturdy. It seems simple, but...

Everything is fine as long as it worksHappy that I was printing so awesomely, I bought a BambooLab A1 with the help of the community. However, problems started right during the first launch. The screen arrived defective...After about 8 or 10 days of waiting, I received a new one and surprisingly replaced it myself.

As far as I understood from Reddit, a defective screen is a common factory defect. But the problems didn’t end there. There was poor print quality, the plastic was delaminating and flowing. The problem turned out to be the incorrect position of the latch on the hotend, and surprisingly, the settings that worked great on the A1 Mini did not suit the A1 (what about family ties?)There was a time when both printers were printing excellently, and I achieved maximum efficiency for myself (24 kg of printing in 3 months). But everything is fine as long as it works.

The Mini started to malfunction. On advice, I tightened the screws (don’t forget to tighten these little rascals), and it got better.

But eventually the A1 Mini started cutting the filament in the middle of printing (what a tragic suicide). Of course, following the advice from Reddit, I turned off the entanglement sensor and the printer started working as it should. But...eventually, the nozzle started to clog (at first, that’s what it seemed to me) and the printing didn’t stop; the nozzle just continued working without extruding plastic. A clogged nozzle, you thought? No, the nozzle was fine. The situation didn’t change after a cold pull or replacing the nozzle with another 0.4 or 0.6.

And this lasted for several days. I tried to figure it out myself: tightened all the screws, cleaned the extruder, the nozzle, and something else I don’t remember because I GOT TIRED of looking for the problem and doing test prints over and over again. Colleagues' advice didn’t help; it was like in the series House, but instead of a patient, it was the printer. And my beloved said: "I’ll come back from duty and throw it in the trash because it’s upsetting you."

However, as impulsively as I bought it, I sold it just as impulsively, even though I loved that printer (the buyer is aware of its issues).Will I buy a new printer? I would like to, but the fear of an unknown malfunction scares me. Printing is easy. Repairing a printer is a nightmare. Is it worth it?

Despite my excitement and later bitterness and irritation, I loved the A1 Mini. After all, it’s a great printer that printed a lot of cool stuff for the Armed Forces. But would I recommend it again? Who knows. Is there such an efficient and cheap printer? Who knows. There is still so much to learn and try.3D printing is exciting, wonderful, not eco-fri...cough-cough, let’s forget about that. Our main task here and now is to help the military. And it seems the A1 Mini did quite well.