I’ve tapered off quite a bit from the forums, and still seem way slow on switching back over to laser even though I have a project or two for it. But I realized recently when I cleaned up that I’ve been taking printing with the A250 for granted pretty much, vs. my old, always needed fiddling, Frankenstein-ed Solidoodle.
I got in the habit of just tossing the ‘skirts’ atop the enclosure when pulling prints. This pic doesn’t do the pile justice, since there’s a VR basestation and a large printed electronic box project in work up there too. But at a quick estimate when I threw them all away there were around 100 up there. That may not seem like a lot to some of you, but 3D printing is only one of my vices, and in…10-ish months since receipt??..that’s not too bad.
I haven’t changed out the nozzle yet, and have the ‘original’ 2.0 print module. Printing PLA almost exclusively (my one or two early trials with ABS I couldn’t get bed adhesion, and stopped fiddling with it as I had the same color in PLA available anyway).
The A250 isn’t without its flaws and not all prints come out exactly how I want (as much design error / revision need as ‘printing’ issues - finish or warp). But it’s been pretty reliable at least for my level of use, so far. I supposed I have some uneven levelling, as I can tell from the skirt it’s not the same squish all the way around, but I’ve learned to pick an offset based on the first 2 loops (err on the side of too much squish if necessary to make sure there’s never not enough on one side of the ring). The PSU is noisy as heck, but the machine itself inside the enclosure isn’t bad at all. It’s just become routine, actually to the point where I’m getting a bit careless in part design and having to repeat, vs. being totally obsessed about fine tuning the design before a first try because I don’t want to waste the print time or filament.
I’ve run thru at least 2 spools total of material (3 different colors / types in use, all of which are getting close to needing replacement, estimate might be low because it’s hard to judge from the 0.25 or so remaining filled ‘radius’ without math). I also live in a semi-humid climate and have never dried any of them…go figure…