I am currently on a journey to get into the 3D printing game.
I would like to ask you for your experience and knowledge.
The new A1 printer has already appealed to me. However, I am unsure if it is right for me.
I am currently wavering between the A1 and the P1S. What I like about the A1 is that it has the latest software and probably gets longer updates with new features than the P1S.
Since I’m actually an electronics engineer, my ideas are to make gears and other components for small/medium robots, etc. I can also build housings for circuit boards. In addition, I can also build housings for circuit boards.
My concrete questions:
which printer do you recommend me? (A1 or P1S or nevertheless X1)
AMS yes or no? (In my mind rather for “creative” colorful printing)
Thanks for your help. I look forward to the exchange.
With the P1S ($699.00) you have more of a build area and you can print a greater variety of filaments. You will need the larger build volume to build boxes and with the gears you may want to print PC or CF variants of filament. If you choose the A1 stand alone you save around $400.00.
Well the gating item here is that you said you planned on building gears. That objective implies that you will want something that has more dimensional accuracy. That implies that you’ll want to use filaments such as PC, PETG and possibly ABS which all have greater strengths and stiffness thus lending themselves to the use-case you describe.
All of those filaments perform much better in hotter environments. So you will most definitely want an enclosed printer which lends itself to that. The A1 specs specifically states it is not recommended for higher temp filaments.
Now if you are looking to save money, you could go with the lower cost A1 and fabricate your own enclosure. I’ve see and made my own designs using simple card board boxes. Although it does work, I promise you, that is not fun by any stretch and you’ll eventually regret not spending the extra cash on an enclosed printer.
Now having said that, there are many who would correctly argue that PLA is certainly acceptable for making gears. While that is true, PLA will never compare to the more dimensional precision and strength one will get with the other stiffer filaments.
As you travel through you research path, check out the filament guide. Particularly look at the row that describes print enclosure recommendations.