3d printing

[commod0re]

IME this is rubbish. I have an old ender 3 and this was true for that unit. I now have an ender 3 s1 plus that I literally do nothing other than replace filament on. It's been working without issue for about 2 years and many, many prints.

Do you have anything else to compare it to though? Not just other ender 3 s1 pluses, but like, other different printers too…

The S1 Plus is indeed significantly better than the original ender 3 was, but, it’s still below the price range for what I consider to be a good out of the box printer, and still comes with nearly all the old caveats:
- many users still receive warped print beds from creality and while it does come with ABL it’s not great and requires a printed upgrade part to correct. The ABL design itself is also two generations behind Prusa’s and will wear over time
- Creality printers in general, and the s1 plus is no exception, require a lot more manual tweaking than either Prusa or Bambu Labs printers. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and get one that doesn’t require as much, but creality is far from consistent from one user to the next
- still uses rubber v-slot wheels which needs to be replaced/maintained way more often than either smooth rods/bearings or linear rails that you get on more expensive machines. The rubber wheels also impose significantly more severe speed limits before print quality begins to suffer
- creality puts next to no work into their printer profiles and firmware, it’s on you as the user to understand this and put the time and effort into doing what they couldn’t be bothered to do
- if you run into issues and need support good luck! Creality support isn’t great but at least there is a decent community of users

At least they stopped disabling thermal runaway protection in their firmwares and putting peoples homes in unnecessary danger, but, if you haven’t tried anything other than creality then you may not be aware of what you’re missing out on

I’m not saying they’re bad printers, either, they are fine. But they are objectively more work for the user both initially and over time. It’s not for me to say what is too much work for you, but for me, the juice aint worth the squeeze

 

[Lukes Saltwater Tank]

I am not sure you will have the best results with an open printer. You won’t want to use PLA. PETG is much easier to print on the enclosed P1S or X1. Whereas the X1 will make filament calibration much easier (and faster).

I own a maker space near Cleveland, Ohio and we run all 3 models. The A1 is great for PLA trinkets, but I primarily use the X1 or P1S for aquarium supplies.

You can get tons of free models on Thingiverse, Thangs, and cults3d.

I’m not saying the A1 won’t work, it will. But you may be happier overall with an enclosed printer.

I would have to disagree with that, I have an A1 series printer and print loads of stuff for my Tanks in PETG.

The most important thing with PETG is to ensure it is dried, below 20% is best. I never use PLA in the Water of my tanks, PLA breaks down over time.

 

[commod0re]

I agree, PETG prints great without an enclosure on all of my printers. In addition to the suggestion about moisture content I would add don’t blast it with tons of cooling fan and print a little slower than PLA speeds and everything should be fine