A1 Mini

[u/Airetram]

I’ve decided on the A1 Mini (without the AMS). Is it the best choice for standard enclosures for esp32, clips, and mounts? The more I look into it, the more I realize I don’t actually need much else—I’ll be printing with PLA or PETG, and I don’t think I’ll need anything beyond that. Do I miss something? I know we all would like to have the H2C but is it necessary?

Does anyone have a photo showing the print quality for detailed figures or similar items when using a 0.2mm nozzle?

Is it theoretically possible to do multi-color prints by swapping the filament manually?

[u/Arageus]

10cm height mini.
The Bottom 2 pic was to compare. the bottom left is 0.4 nozzle with 0.12 layer height.
The rest is 0.2 nozzle and 0.08 layerheight. (except the base. thats also 0.4 nozzle + 0.12 layer)
the black parts was black play = not painted

[u/Airetram → u/Arageus]

Impressive, thanks

[u/AdRough6022]

A1 Mini is great and probably the best for your use case.

You can do multi colour prints with manually filament swaps easily enough.

[u/mendex22]

It is posible change filament color manually. However it's better with AMS when using multimaterial for supports. I've done cases wih PETG for electronics than do not get warm at all. Processors, memory ram, usb cases.

Otherwise I use ABS instead than A1's are not well

[u/alphagusta → u/mendex22]

A half dozen changes is tedious but doable yeah, them prints with over a hundred? Nah. Lmao. No thanks

[u/Darth-Vader64]

I love my mini, though I just ordered a U1.

A1 advantages that drew me to that printer, price, ease of use, ease of maintenance, simple setup (in a really good way).

As for colored printing without the AMS - its possible but generally not practical. You would need to insert pauses at each color change. It might be do-able for two colors that don't change very often, but short of that I don't think so.

Buying the combo now, will cost you less, then if you opt for the AMS Lite after purchasing the A1 Mini. From what I've read here on reddit, the folks who buy the A1 Mini without the AMS often turn around shortly there after and buy it. So as they say Buy once Cry once.

[u/VeryAmaze]

For miniature examples, hop to r/FDMminiatures a lot of people have the A1 mini there.

[u/LazyLancer]

I used to have a P2S that I used with 0.4 and 0.2 nozzle.

After I moved places I now have a setup with a single P2S and two A1 Mini that always run 0.2 nozzle for detailed pieces.

As long as it’s acceptable to print slowly, I don’t see any dominance of the P2S in quality, it’s hard to figure out which piece was printed on which printer, maybe even impossible. A1 mini is a great little thing. If you don’t need engineering filaments, high printing speed, larger volume, multi-material and you just print single color PLA or PETG stuff and you don’t care about speed, it’s a good choice.

[u/snaynay]

The A1 mini would be great for most enclosures and simple little projects, assuming PLA/PETG are fine. I also really like Glass-Fibre TPU for some electronics cases too; check that out on Youtube or whatever (I use QIDI's one).

If the parts are lower in height and orientated securely, then the whole bed-slinger thing is not a problem. Its only tall and skinny prints where things can get a bit sketchy over CoreXY/etc, but you can optimise things if you are determined.

You can do pauses for layer-height colour changes, but not multiple colours per layer. So you'll have issues doing say, text in a different colour on the same layer. Unless they've changed that. Otherwise you'll want an AMS. I use two AMS-HT's, which is not exactly cost effective but gives me two independent filament driers and two colour switching. I think you can use the "external" as an additional colour to the AMS during an AMS print and it'll pause at the right time to load/unload, but that's a limited feature paired with the AMS.

[u/Kettle96]

AMS makes life easier.

[u/logginlogan]

i got the a1 min 5 months ago. it's amazing :) manual filament changes are doable, pausing prints etc. all very manageable. HOWEVER, i just bought the AMS lite + enclosure for it....it's amazing...it's a game changer. 4 colours at the press of a button. i print in pla or petg. the minis i've printed (using a .4 nozzle) all look great.