I’m a total noob when it comes to 3D printing and am frankly bewildered by all the options for machines. I don’t want to buy a printer and find out it won’t smoothly handle ASA. In fact my first print will almost certainly be a custom mount so that I can put my Tempest PWS on a 5"x5" vinyl fence post.
I’d like to keep it under $800 but if I will spend more to get a better machine and a better experience if I need to.
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If you just want to print ASA and no multicolour the Centauri Carbon is actually not a bad choice - it brings everything to print ASA and works relatively reliable. And it goes pretty cheap at the moment.
Not quite in your price range but the current hot shit (would need a improvised top cover and maybe even a external chamber heater) is the Snapmaker U1,but while it seems a decent machine so far it is clearly meant for PLA/PETG/PCTG. Nevertheless I am also using my P1S (Bambu) as a very sucessful ASA printer which in theory shouldn’t be possible (it is,just needs more time and preparation).
BUT: please, for the love of god,the spaghetti monster and everyone else: Still get a proper ventilation/filter solution. While ASA is less toxic than ABS it is still far from healthy.
And stay away from Bambu,imho. Not only is their whole environment becoming more and more walled garden like, their support and spare part availability is simply shit.
The Centauri Carbon is surprisingly inexpensive, almost suspiciously so. I don’t need multi-color so that won’t be a problem. I’ll look into this one more.
The Snapmaker U1 looks interesting and it’s currently on sale for $849 so it’s in my budget -but- were back to the “I want a guarantee the thing will print ASA without 100 hours of frustration and faffing about.” thing.
BUT: please, for the love of god,the spaghetti monster and everyone else…
🤣
I appreciate your warning about ASA and its toxic fumes. The machine will live in my 3 car garage where I can put an externally vented hood over it or enclose it completely.
And stay away from Bambu,imho.
That’s a bummer to hear as they’re one of the few manufacturer names that I actually recognize!
The Centauri was designed to be a price breaker and has some drawbacks,but currently it is mainly so cheap because they did not manage to get a proper multicolour system going (which they promised). For someone who mainly prints ASA it’s a decent choice and relatively open software wise. I have a few friends who have it and none had issues - and all were new to printing. (Tbh, if I had the WAF and the room I would have one for ASA/technical printing only…but well…)
For the Snapmaker everything I read in terms of ASA would make it “workable”. (Even with a 12$ hood from a Ikea basket). If you send me a DM around the 15th or 20th of January I can tell you more,by then mine should have arrived and I should have had to run tests for all my technical filaments. (Even if you just want to print ASA/technical a toolchanger has its merits,e.g. for mixing materials or -this is not yet implemented but like to follow- different nozzle sizes). It’s very very unlikely that it will take hundreds of hours of work to print ASA - all the people I spoke with basically chucked some kind of hood on it and were good to go and from the technical parameters it should not be an issue. And if it is then it’s "chuck a external heater in some corner and your donex(they come prebuild these days).
Good that you take it seriously. Sadly there are a lot of people onlinr who claim “ASA is not toxic, I sleep next to my unfiltered ASA printer all the time”,etc. The reality is: A longer ASA print is deadly enough to kill a small bird in a small room. While filaments have improved, the filtering solutions used by printers are often,well, not much more than a marketing buzzword and none eliminate the risks - which is an issue as ASA has some potentially cancerous compounds (in theory they are not used normally - but formulations differ between batches), stryrenes are always airway inflamming and ASA is the worst offender for ultrafine particles. So your solution is basically the best thing you can do but sadly my garage has no power and is far to prone to thieves.
And yeah, ask me about Bambu being a shame. They were always “doubtful and not open”, but their shit worked. A few month after I got mine they went full enshitification mode and did their crazy lockdown thing. (Only when facing legal consequences they at least backtracked a bit - but it’s still not all the way). And their support is pure evil (my favorite story: They did not send me part of an order - somewhat expensive spare part and required a video of me not getting the part - how in hell I should have done that is still a mystery - A stronly worded legal letter helped). And their new product lines are somewhat buggy,artificially limited (like the actively heated AMS that cannot print and dry at the same time), the spare parts that don’t exist in the required amounts and the very strange design decisions that seem to be mainly driven by “doing things in a way that keeps the ecosystem closed”.
Btw: Happy new printer year. This is officially my first post 2026.
I have a qidi Q1 which I’m using to print ABS parts for a new Voron right now. It’s working very easily even on default settings, although I haven’t made anything big yet, and I don’t know if ASA is harder to print.
As much as I lobe the Prusa Core One I have at work, it doesn’t seem to be the best for ASA. I printed a few very large flat parts in ASA a while ago. Heating up the chamber takes forever, and warping / adhesion issues happen a lot on default settings, even with their own brand.
I’ll 2nd the q1 and add that although it was just some numbers for the front of a house, it printed asa without issue.
I don’t print asa so won’t be able to tell you which printer is good but don’t forget that asa release fume and substances dangerous for health, better have a place design for it with exhaust and all the necessaries.
My Creality K1 does a decent job with ASA. You will either need to vent it outside or put some carbon filters in it to deal with the ASA fumes though.
Creality K1
See this is one of the things that confuses me. ASA supposedly requires a bed temperature of 120 but the K1 supposedly only goes to 100. Did you modify yours to get hotter or did it just work?
Thanks for the warning about the fumes. This machine will go out in the garage and be externally vented.
I use 100°C for ASA. The recommended bed temperature for the Sunlu filament I have is 90-110°C.
You’re gonna get some pushback from the open source people (and to some degree, I am one of them), but frankly the Bambu Labs printers are so goddamned easy and reliable you’d be a fool not to consider them.
I know that BL has some controversy regarding lock in but I can’t even figure out which of their models would do I want in order to buy it!
I have the p1s, and don’t find the “lock in”problematic personally.
Really, it’s the Honda Accord of printers. It just works.
I think most printers can handle ASA as my anet a8 managed it. Personally I would look for used prusa’s in my area they are like 500€ and I think they would be good enough. BambuLab printers are also great but I am not a huge fan of companies that turn off features that were offered previously like making all their stuff proprietary, so when you want to connect a slicer to the printer you need to go into a separate mode or something like that, I haven’t owned a BambuLab.
