Several years ago I leapt enthusiastically into the realm of 3D printing by buying a massive, expensive delta-type printer. I had to put it together myself, which was fun, but after that I struggled to get it to print well. Even simply trying to get the prints to stick to the bed were difficult, leading me to add huge brims to all my parts which were a pain to cut off afterward. Eventually I gave up fiddling with it and it’s been gathering dust ever since.
I know that a lot of you treat the hobby as an opportunity for endless tinkering and optimization, which is great, but I think I’ve realized that what I’d prefer is something that just works out of the box with a minimum of adjustment.
I recently got into this and picked up the A1 with AMS. It’s been a lot of fun to play with and other than the routine maintenance like cleaning the bed and lubing the rails, it’s been zero trouble.
How much of a difference does the AMS make in terms of a general printing? If someone wasn’t planning to do multi color prints often or at all would it still be worth it?
If you can swing the added cost, I would 100% get it. I don’t do much multi color, but it’s worth it alone to just be able to have 4 spools loaded up and be able to switch between them in the slicer software. I always keep matte black loaded because it’s what I use most often, and then swap the other three slots as needed. The way I see it, even if you’re ok with having to change the spool everytine you print, you may as well have the AMS and have to switch slightly less often.
Lastly, on more than one occasion the automatic failover to another spool has saved me a lot of effort. If you suspect you’re running low on a spool, you can just load up the same color on a different slot and the print run will automatically switch over to the new spool mid-print if you run out. I was blown away by the convenience of that the first time it happened. Keeps the print moving instead of stopping and waiting for you to make the switch manually.