Hi all,
Sorry for the long(ish) post - I just wanted to get this down & share my newbie experience so far.
I work in tech, and have done since the late 80’s, early 90’s, dealign with ms-dos, the beginning of windows, etc… and have always jumped into gadgets - but have always been reluctant to dive into 3d printing as it always seemed like such a lot of hard work and I wanted it to be able to print, not to mess around with the printers, constantly fixing or tweaking things.
That changed a week ago when I was talking to a couple of work colleagues who have recently (within the last 3-6 months) bought a P1S and highly recommended it. I pulled the trigger on Friday, ordering directly from BL, and then after doing that, I spent the weekend reading as much as I could about them, and in particular, following these threads & loads of others on reddit etc…, where people have had lots of problems & I started to get a bit worried.
Total timeline from order to 1st print - 5 days. Filament shipment arrived 4 days after ordering, printer arrived the next day. Given that 2 of these days were weekend, I’m not complaining.
I’d already installed the app on my phone, so didn’t need to worry about any of that as part of my setup. It took me around 30/35 mins to get it from the box, set-up and starting the 1st print off the sd card (one of the supplied sample prints).
As someone who just wants it to work out of the box - BL delivers. They have made it super simple, with straight forward instructions, where everything was clearly labelled, and provided in the box. So far, I’m happy with it. I get that I may have issues in the future, I may never have issues - and those I’ll have to deal with if/when they happen. This is no different to any other piece of tech I have in the house from my TV, to my fridge, my regular printer, my mobile phone or even my car.
The PS1 looks good, it makes some noise - but I can still be on work calls from the same room, the only thing is that after 2hrs of printing, you really do need some ventilation. I wouldn’t advise sitting in the same room for hours at a time unless you have open windows or decent ventilation. I can’t fault the printer for that, as its a fact of life - you melt plastic, there will be fumes.
I read a lot about closed vs open eco-systems, ability to change things etc…, and ultimately, this printer fits what I need. It’s what I signed up to when I bought it. The reason I bought it, is because it has great print quality & just works without a whole lot of tinkering. I am probably the exact demographic of people BL are aiming their product at - someone with an interest, who wants to enjoy the final product & not have to get deep into the technicalities of building it & then doing a load of tests until I’m happy with what I’ve got. open it up, turn it on, print, move on…
Thanks for reading, hopefully if there are others out there thinking about buying, but hesitant - I can’t guarantee yours will be 100% issue free, but if it is anything like mine, you’ll be pleased you decided to go for it.
