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Author here: All logos were supplied by the customers, and a lot of them were custom logos. The real value, IMO, was the name written in text, which is what I'm censoring out in each of the photos. There's still enough demand using alternative logos, since the "job to be done" is providing a trading card dealer with a way to show off their name/logo in pictures of their wares. I wouldn't describe the situation as "the printer breaks down all the time". Stuff, like plates, or PFTE tube, or nozzles would wear out and break. It's not a regular occurrence, but it does happen, and it's enough of an issue when you are trying to hit a shipping window that you'll want to take steps to avoid it. From a story/narrative perspective, that's the stuff I tend to remember, not the other 99% of prints that turn out well. The Bambu X1C is reliable, you just can't run it 24/7 and not run into issues. The most unreliable component is probably the AMS, something about that, plus matte PLA, was causing clogs where you had to take apart the AMS and fish out the broken filament. That happened to me maybe 3 times. In those 50 orders, most of them were for 5-10 actual card stands, and throughput was enough of an issue that I bought a second printer. As for the clogs, that's really specific to the 0.2mm nozzle, not the 0.4mm nozzle I used after the jam. Unjamming a 0.2mm is much more difficult, since the hole is so much smaller. I did try cold pulls, and several other techniques, but I do think the root cause was one roll of matte PLA filament. Sure, there was more stuff to try, but I didn't want to sink more than one night on the problem. As for the quality of prints? I stand by the quality of prints as good examples of what can be done on consumer hardware. Consistent matte finish, even layer lines, bold, vivid logos that matched the input pics.I'm happy to design and print something people want, and my problem was never lack of demand. |