You chose an excellent printer to start with.
I bought a 3d printer in 2015 and it took me probably a month of screwing with it after work and on weekends to get to the point that I could make decent things with it. My brother bought one of these last year and was sending me pictures of shit he made the same day he started. I was was a bit jealous.
I’m really wanting to get a Bamboo Labs printer. I have an Ender and I honestly stopped using it because it took way longer to setup the printer than I spent printing. Whereas I believe Bamboo printers are in a state where it’s plug in and print.
I bought a Mini with AMS last month to add along side my old Mk3s+. It’s faster, (though not that much faster in the end), and the AMS works very well. And it was easy to setup and get running.
But it has had some basic design issues that need attention, (for which there are community fixes you can find). And even after careful tuning, it really isn’t any better than the Mk3s for print quality. It’s just easier to print in color if you choose to be wasteful with filament. Like I am doing right now.
Coming from an Ender, it will be an upgrade though. I do think the the A1 series is a good inexpensive home use printer though.
EXACTLY my situation. Had an ender 3 pro, modded that thing a lot, bought an A1 with AMS. Now i can’t even imagine going back to the ender.
I think the AMS is the only reason I’d go with an A1 - my modded V3 SE is a dream in its current iteration. Happily printing PETG / TPU currently with a spool of ABS-GF waiting for an enclosure to be finished.
Which is it? I was just admiring how solid the construction looks.
Edit: A1 mini? Interesting design and I had no idea how affordable they were…
