And - another U1 owner...
Warning
This became a long post. No, it's not AI. I write a lot for the day job and on my various sites. If you don't like it, scroll down for pics or move on. Others might enjoy it - so be it if not. ;)
Background
I've currently got a Prusa Core One L which I've been printing away with for some time now. I'd been mostly-patiently waiting for INDX to become available for the Core One L, but I now have a direct small-but-real need for my (non-printing) business to be able to do some multi-color/material printed items.
Considering some of the issues to date on the INDX launch (e.g. nozzlegate, delays in general), I needed to look at other options. I've got faith Prusa (and BondTech) will eventually get INDX sorted, and will pick it up then, but I needed something <now>. I had already loved the potential and market disruption when the U1 went through kickstarter (and the price vs the later H2C, etc.), and nearly jumped on the bandwagon then.
The Bambus were already not in the running. Good machines, but not for me with the closed garden nature and price point on something like the H2C. I did take a look at the Flashforge Creator, specifically the Creator 5 Pro as the only effective comparison. There are a few things I like on the FF C5Pro, besides the cover being included, but ultimately the open-ness and community around the U1 + availability of paxx made the choice for me, as right now I need a lot more printing over tweaking - I have no doubt things like FF profiles will continue to improve, but as they too are Klipper-based but not conforming with the license, well - yeah, U1 it is. Were Flashforge compliant with the Klipper/GPL license - it *may* have been a tougher call, and their pricing is obviously very intentionally under-cutting the U1, but to me, it's worth the relative maturity and community to pay a bit more for the cover and chamber heater as I do intend to be printing some ASA - single color will go to the C1L, but I'll have enough work for the U1 as well.
Ordering and Delivery
So ironically while I am both a SnapMaker and Amazon partner ( blog and https://3dsupplyfinder.com ) , there's no discounts for me - which is fine, honestly. Waffled a bit between Amazon and ordering direct from SnapMaker, mainly wanting to see if Snap had any package options, e.g. 'add hardened nozzles' but was pretty much a wash, so ordered via US Amazon over the weekend. Initially was set for a few days out (Wed), which was kind of a bummer (yeah, that whole Prime/same day thing kinda spoils you, doesn't it? :D ), but a heck of a lot quicker than either Kickstarters or my Prusa 'who knows?'.
A few things kinda sucked:
- I have an old industrial set of steel shelving my C1L is sitting on, with 3/4" plywood shelving on it. It is a MOFO to move the shelving around. Oh yeah, and like 500# of crap sitting on the top shelf - the one I need to move. Needed to do it anyways, eventually, as I woefully underestimated INDX height, but now with the U!, gotta do it.
- It's SUPER crazy hot and humid right now.
- I'm gonna need more PolyDryer boxes. My 'pre-INDX' system was pretty well sorted, with around 8 boxes spanning PLA+ in a few colors for my daughter, black, red, orange PETG, and TPU, but … crap. I *know* I don't have four PLA/PLA+ dry anywhere b/c I never use it except for daughter's occasional toys. Yeah, first world problems right there.
Woke up Monday to a 'surprise' - Amazon said it's gong to be delivered <today>(Monday). Huh. Ok then. Got the shelving moved higher, eventually, by levering up a side at a time, as I just wasn't feeling taking the plywood down - in 90*+ temps, probably sweat off 5#.
Shocker - Amazon 'oopsed.' Checked a few times, then around midnight - 'sorry, arrived late to distribution center, it'll be there by or on Wednesday.' Ok then..meh. So wake up Tuesday to - it's coming <today>. Yeah ok, we'll see. Eventually it turned out they weren't lying when I got a notice '10 stops away' it became real, so thankfully I work flex time, and at least got a few hours to get things set up.
Unboxing, Assembly, etc.
In short, a really good job on packing this thing. The install/quick-start guide was also good, as were the yellow folded over tape ends. Just near zero issues and well done. There was a time or two I thought I might be missing a part, but nope, all there with a few spare screws.
The only real area for improvement here (for assembly… ):
- I can see people mixing up the screws for the tool head usb-c cable ends. Should just make them the same in a future rev and be done with it.
- A screwdriver or slightly longer hex key would have been nice. Not needed but would make it a bit quicker.
- Having only Toolhead 1 with a peel-off sticker on it’s back had me wondering for a moment if I got someone’s return printer…
- It would have been great to cover if it needs post-assembly / pre-first-print lube..
- I’m not sure if I missed something or if the ‘towers’ the rear usb-c cables is supposed the really be ‘free,’ have a velcro loop to it and the 6mm tube and usb cable or ?
Power on and setting up for first print
I suppose this is where I did run into some issues, and the end of the quick start really should cover, IMO. I plan to run paxx and possibly LAN-only in the future, but of course wanted to get at least a print or two done first, compare Snorca vs Orca etc. before that.
It seems that wasn’t to be, at least not today.
Powered it on wondering if I ‘needed’ a SN account set up already. There was a QR code at some point, but /I had issues creating a SN account, hanging. Later I didn’t see an obvious way to bring the QE code back (later found - account). To be fair, I'm now unsure if the printed guide had the online version chapter 6 in it covering account, etc. There also wasn't a YT playlist I could find that was really setup -> first print, etc., but there is indeed a 'video 2' out there, and they're good. The part about raising the bed to remove the bed adjustment screw tape - really should moved in the PDF guide as BEFORE first print.
As there seemingly wasn’t any way to share the wifi ssid and credentials from my phone, I tried adding to my 2.4GHz network. Several times. It showed green but apparently failed, several times. Having an actual status for joining would have been nice. As it turns out, my ISP decided to ‘gift’ us with an outage, While my phone would tell me ’joined but no internet,’ the U1 pretty much said nothing other than eventually something at some point of ‘not connected,’ so I moved on.
At this point, wife was home, I still needed to finish some work, so it was scattered. I really wanted to at least get to first print. My ISP remained sporadically down, but eventually was back 'enough' to pull down SM firmware 1.5.2 from the 1.4.1 that was loaded on it.
Went through calibrations, skipped account setup with <who knows> for connectivity, and had swapped around some dryer boxes and dried the Snap PLA a bit while going, so - on to the filament test/calibration bit.
I haven't sorted my final setup here yet - I suspect I'll wind up relocating the autofeeders and maybe rotating them, but the plan is to use stacked polydryers to feed from, 2 per side, and potentially more for the C1L when INDX eventually makes it. For now, I need to get the 2x per side working for the U1, which has 6mm coming out from the polydryer. I printed out Ken's ECA feed adapter, while of course the inserts I had on hand are on the larger side, got one to press in, snapped the other. Couldn't quickly locate the heat gun, so scaled it to 101% and re-printed on the C1L. Yeah, turns out the many hours I spent calibrating was pretty much spot on, as now yeah, I could get the ECA adapters in, barely, but it's probably slightly loose on the autofeeders. Oh well - I've got some more ECA fittings coming and will re-do it.
I had a wonky overly complex plan for the whole 6mm to 4mm bit, which I'd been meaning to do for a while, so printed some parts besides the simple 6mm/4mm adapters I've had, and well - yeah, there's not a ton of room there, so I need to simplify that whole idea. Will probably just do a simple adapter, leave a short tail on the U1 via Ken's EA bracket, and do some real measuring, as if I stack the polydryers, the top and bottom 6mm lengths should probably be different. Gonna play with this a bit still.
The autofeeders are cool, but weird in that the initial load seems to stop short of the toolhead by a good 4 inches or so. I guess it's intended. Fumbled the first try or two via the menu / load bit, but got everything loaded.
So - first print? Finally? Maybe?
I sure thought so, but - not quite.
Kind of odd to me it only has the single dragon on the internal emmc, but ok, so be it. Want to make sure all 4 toolheads are working anyways, and will give it to our toddler, so why not?
Went to print, and it had an 'autofeed anomaly' - ok, the ECA brackets were a bit abused trying to get the fittings in, and at least one of the boxes were kind of less than ideal, but hmm. Unloaded, moved things around a bit slightly, refed, and went back to try again. Not sure if they're overly sensitive or what triggered it really, but I wanted to at least get a print in now it's after dinner time, etc.
So. let's try again. It goes through it's to me, overly long startup, grabs a toolhead, and tap, tap, tap, tap, …. tap, tap, tap - homing anomaly. Well, crap. Yeah, I ran through the belt tuning instructions, although I need to dig in more to understand how it's actually adjusting things for future reference versus 'loosen and move around, then tighten.'
After a few more tries with the same result, threw the PopCap on top, and I gave it up for the night. Couldn't quite make it to sleep and this was annoying me, so got up around midnight to go give it '30 mins or back to bed.' I went to re-do the tuning but have to tell you, while I had zero issues doing it the first time, I couldn't for the life of me manage to do this, on a ladder, with low lights, at night. Just couldn't contort enough, get the right amount of light in there, and get the hex key seated. Undoubtedly easy enough from the other side, but it's back to a wall and window sitting on a 2" paver, and I just wasn't up for more contortion. I had done some searching beforehand, and saw this seemed to be a fairly common issue, with some doing multiple rounds of belt adjustment, one entertaining guy going postal about 'why should I need to do this' on and on, and a few saying they just moved it around manually or moved it to a different spot and then it worked. Of course, the menu brings you to 'homing calibration' but at this point I didn't want to figure out how to get the toolhead off the chassis manually (sorted now), so I moved it around a bit, retried and - printing!
Now - let's see if it *does* anything, like lays down actual layers and completes. Got this far, so sat through making sure the first layers and color changes made it through, which they did, and called it a night. I fought a bit with the app, as I really would've preferred to be able to spot scan progress before falling asleep, but it failed every way possible on phone, on ipad (awful, no one wants phone-sized on a tablet :-/ ) - had it's IP, so wth? (yeah, sorted later, need LAN mode on to add by IP, and my ISP hadn't helped any, but would be good to be more obvious).
Woke up, had to grab breakfast but definitely said - good, nothing burned, followed by - let's see what we got.
And it printed fine - didn't do any filament calibration, but looks decent for a first print to me, and was happy it made it through. Of course, I need to now start to see what it does on the next 10, 20, etc. prints, but at least it's up and going now. :)
I since got it 'bound' in normal Orca, to my SM account, SM Orca, and flashed the firmware to paxx. I've got some bearings coming for improving the polydryer rollers, and the other ECAs. I need to sort my 'v2' drybox to autofeeder arrangement, sort the mounting for the PandaBreath (and firmware), print a fan cover, the noctua fan mount for the steppers, some RFID hooks and tags, do some calibration prints, and sort what kind of Pi compute I really need, if any - I've got a 3b but I use it for work, and some Pi5s but also used for work and not into buying one of them at the double/triple-normal prices right now, and not quite sure if I 'need' one - I use PrusaSlicer but have been using normal Orca more lately on the C1L, and waiting for PrusaConnect Local to release, so dunno yet, need to go play and research a bit yet. Will likely just shift to using normal Orca for both printers.
Not enough time to say what I think other than great packaging, pretty easy assembly, good videos I saw *after* I was trying to sort IF I needed an account at all etc., and happy I got it to printing. ;)