The S1 Pro was the model where this manufacturer stopped selling a kit that needed fixing and started selling a printer that mostly did not. It arrived with a compact geared direct-drive extruder, an all-metal hotend rated to 300 °C, a PEI-coated plate and a bed reaching 110 °C — a specification list that reads like the shopping basket an Ender-3 owner would have assembled themselves a year earlier.
It has since been superseded by the V3 line, which puts it in the most interesting position a printer can occupy: it is no longer the thing to buy new, and it is one of the better things to buy used.
The extruder is the part worth paying attention to
A geared direct-drive extruder does two things at once. It sits on the toolhead, so the distance between the drive gear and the melt zone is a couple of centimetres rather than half a metre, which is what makes TPU and even soft 85A grades practical. And its gearing multiplies the motor's torque, so it can push filament that resists — filled materials, cold starts, anything with fibre in it.
The cost of that arrangement is mass on the moving toolhead, which is exactly the thing a bed-slinger is worst at accelerating. So the S1 Pro is capable rather than fast, and profiles that push it hard produce corner bulging and visible echoes before they produce quicker parts.
What the all-metal hotend is really for
The headline is 300 °C. The more useful consequence is the absence of PTFE inside the hot zone. A lined hotend gives up somewhere in the 240 to 260 °C band, and the failure is invisible until a print starts jamming for no apparent reason — so what this machine really buys is the whole span between that band and its stated ceiling, which is where ASA, polycarbonate and the polyamides live.
Removing that liner means:
- Sustained PETG and ASA printing without the liner slowly cooking.
- Filled filaments at their proper temperatures.
- A slightly fussier cold start, because an all-metal path has a longer transition zone and prefers not to be run at PLA's lowest temperatures for hours on end.
That last item is the trade nobody mentions on the box. If your machine started clogging on PLA after an all-metal conversion, this is the mechanism, and printing a few degrees hotter usually settles it.
The used-machine checklist
Since buying one now generally means buying one secondhand, this is the part of the page that earns its place:
- The PEI plate. Look at it under a light at a shallow angle. Deep gouges from a scraper cannot be repaired and a replacement sheet is a real fraction of a used machine's price.
- The extruder arm and gears. Open it. Powdered plastic around the drive gears means someone printed through a jam repeatedly; chewed teeth mean it needs replacing.
- The bed cable, where it flexes at the back. Cracked insulation there is the failure that ends printers of this layout, and it is a fire risk rather than an inconvenience.
- The Z lead screw and coupler. Run it up and down by hand. A binding screw prints prints failing at the same height forever until it is fixed.
- Whether it still has its original hotend. A mismatched aftermarket part with no records is a longer diagnostic road than a stock one.
Running cost, and why it is not the deciding factor
The steady draw shown alongside was inferred from printers of the same construction, not read off a meter attached to one of these — and at this plate size the inference carries almost no weight anyway. A 220 mm open bed printing PLA costs cents per print at every rate in the regional table. Enter your own filament price in the cost calculator and watch the plastic and the failure rate take the answer over completely.
On a used machine the machine-time input is where the argument actually is. A printer bought for a low price and kept running with cheap spares has a very low hourly cost, which is why old capable machines remain excellent value for anyone who prints functional parts rather than showpieces.
Who this used machine will disappoint
The auto-levelling is good, but this printer expects an owner rather than a user; if you want to print without learning anything about printers, the V3 SE is the modern answer. Speed is the second mismatch — the heavy toolhead sets a ceiling no profile clears. High-shrinkage materials are the third, and there the open frame is the whole story regardless of how hot the plate gets.