Hello IslandBill,
I also wanted to go into 3D printing with my brother-in-law, but we stayed away from it because he lives on an island. And unfortunately he’s not an engineer - that would have been such a mess… .The A1 would be just right for him, but as a hobby and without the AMS lighte.
In any case, no matter what you buy, you will buy twice!
3D printing farms have up to 30% of their printers under repair and those guys are absolute 3D professionals.
Even I have other printers in addition to the X1C. I haven’t had any problems with my X1C yet, but I’ve been printing for enough time that I know it can fire at any time - is the display defect or the motherboard? A defective transformer or a defective motor, ther you can quickly identify the source of the error… What do you order to fix the error? Ok, since you’re an electrical engineer you’ll figure this out better than me…
I don’t know how many printheads I’ve already unscrewed - and two months ago I had one where I couldn’t find the error. I’ve drawn the line and just screwed in new ones and stopped troubleshooting the heads.