I’m a total noob when it comes to 3D printing and am frankly bewildered by all the options for machines. I don’t want to buy a printer and find out it won’t smoothly handle ASA. In fact my first print will almost certainly be a custom mount so that I can put my Tempest PWS on a 5"x5" vinyl fence post.
I’d like to keep it under $800 but if I will spend more to get a better machine and a better experience if I need to.
Sooo…as promised a feedback about the U1:
it did print a small (10x10x5mm) test cube without issues even without a hood. (Black Forest Filament ASA HF)
with a improvised hood that was anything but airtight I achieved 57° degrees inside the hood (measured with a temp probe 10cm above the plate). (I literally just chucked my kids toy basket on it)
So. With a proper hood it should be no issue to print ASA in larger prints. But there are two downsides, well,one. The other one might be helpful.
There is very little room inside the build chamber that is not used, very different from the P1S for example. That will make it hard to just chuck a heater in - it very likely would need to go in the top cover or somewhere else. I have ordered the Panda Breath,but that will take another month to arrive.
The printer is very open in the bottom.(Literally jusf grated metal) On one hand this might be an issue if too much cold(or dusty) air comes in through that or too much air goes out through that that is then unfiltered.
So my current idea is to actually use the space below the printer for heating or to remix the hood from srinn to have space for the Panda Breath.
Thank you for the feedback!
So,here’s another update almost a month later.
Am I still happy with the U1?
Yes.
Am I happy about everything? No.
A few things that tend to get on my nerves.
The lack of filament cutting is annoying and massively delays changing filaments. Argh.
The filament roll placement is shit,especially when printing ASA and similar filaments that need to be really dry. (PEBA) Placing them out in the open turned out to be an issue, especially when you use a spool for frequent shorter prints. (E.g. one part of 5h today,another tomorrow,etc.) Especially annoying with the point above which makes simply chucking away four spools time consuming. I migitated that by using a almost closed system of containers - but I suffer from issues with the filament feeders occassionally as the axles for these tend to be an issue.
ASA has shown mixed results with the improvised hood. (Aka a plastic bin, not fitting properly, holes between it and the printer covered with tape). After looking at it with a thermal camera its clear why: The large ventilation holes on the sides let a lot of air go through (tbf,the current location here is a bit exposed) and the headpad is not heating up fully uniform (but more uniform than the P1S in comparison). So I blame the ventilation holes. Smaller ASA prints are not a problems, larger ones are - especially with more unforgiving filaments. (E.g. Spectrum 275 works well, Black Forest doesn’t, Extrudr is somewhat okay) For testing purposes I tried to print with the holes covered and that worked well. But this creates it’s own issues - for PLA you need way more ventilation as the fans are FAR less powerful (even though louder) than in the P1S.
BUT I will improve things
So this sounds negative,right? It isn’t! I am still very happy and the U1 solves a fuckton of isssues I had with the P1S. Multimaterial,automation, filament tracking, etc. For PLA my print results (with a bit of tuning) are on par with the P1S OR better for things that need support. (As you can use different materials far better than with AMS) And finally having proper clipper back and the options of the extended firmware is nice.
Funny thing: I got two aftermarket print plates from AliE and they are both providing much better grip than the snapmaker original.