Is 3D printing simple?

The beginning: joy and the first steps

At first it was joyful, because my bambulab mini created magic (I expressed all the delight with the printer in the previous post). With pla, printing went as it should: the products were of high quality almost the first time. It made me think printing is simple. After listening to the advice of experienced printers, I switched to petg and suffered with it for a long time, but then after calibrating everything properly, joy came again. You look at the finished product and are proud, because by adjusting the quality and speed correctly, you become more effective, and therefore more Russians die... no-no-no, post is not about that!And it's cool to print something for yourself.

Who is this retract of yours? The technical points were difficult for me, I always forgot the terminology, confused about which parameter was responsible for what. The solution to this problem is to monkey after others, or experiment and transfer a bunch of plastic. Surprisingly, in 900+ hours of printing on a mini (and a little more on a1), I, not understanding what I was doing at all, made 24 kg of high-quality (according to the curators) products. So maybe printing is simple? You just type until it becomes beautiful and strong. Like it's simple, but...

Everything is fine as long as it worksGlad that I was printing so bombastically and with the help of the community, I bought a1 bambulab. However, problems began during the first launch. The screen came defective...About 8 or 10 days of waiting, I got a new one and surprisingly replaced it myself.

As far as I understand from the reddit, a defective screen is a common factory defect. But the problems did not end there. There was poor print quality, the plastic was layered and spread. The problem was found in the wrong position of the fastener on the hotend, and surprisingly the settings, which work perfectly on the A1 mini, were not suitable for the A1 (and what about family ties?)There was a time when both printers were excellent and I achieved maximum efficiency for myself (24 kg of printing in 3 months). But everything is fine as long as it works.

Minick began to fail. On advice, I tightened the screws (don't forget to tighten these pagans) and it got better.

But later A1 mini began to cut the filament in the middle of the print (which is an unfortunate suicide). Of course, following the advice from the reddit, I turned off the entanglement sensor and the printer started working properly. But...later the nozzle began to clog (at first it seemed so to me) and the printing was not interrupted, the nozzle simply continued to work without squeezing out the plastic. Did you think about the clogged nozzle? No, everything was fine with the nozzle. The situation did not change after the call pool or replacing the nozzle with another 0.4 or 0.6.

And it lasted for several days. I tried to figure it out on my own: I screwed up all the screws, cleaned the extruder, the nozzle and I don't remember anything else, because I'M TIRED of looking for a problem and doing test printing time after time. The advice of colleagues in the workshop did not help, it was like in the series Doctor House, but instead of a patient printer. And the lover said: "I will come from the service and throw him in the trash, because he upsets you"

However, as impulsively I bought it, so impulsively I sold it, although I loved this printer (the buyer is aware of its problems). Will I buy a new printer? I would like to, but the fear of a breakdown unknown to me scares me. Printing is simple. Printer repair is p*zdets. Is it worth it?

Despite my delight and after bitterness and irritation, I loved a1 mini. Still, it's a great printer that has printed a lot of cool things for the Armed Forces. But will 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, great, non-ecological...khe-khe, let's forget about it. Our main task here and now is to help the army. And it seems that the A1 mini did well.