With all the excitement of getting a 3D printer, it is easy to get carried away and not give much thought to the important question of what to print first.

I think my first print was the scraper that comes as a file on the SD card provided with the printer along with a the blade and a couple of bolts to assemble it. The scraper helps pop completed models off the board, particularly flatter ones. The scraper itself is chunky enough to come off easily after a little cooling time but it helps remove little bit of test filament the printer extrudes on the front edge of the plate. I ran out of the sample white PLA filament midway through the holder so, if starting again, I’d split the three elements in the slicer and print just the handle and small wedge first. If I was feeling very confident, I might even insert a pause near the top so that the lettering could be done with a contrasting colour. Even without, I’d probably switch filaments to print the holder and I might want to modify that to have a wider base for stability. My solution, particularly given it ended up in a random two-tone, was to create a gridfinity bin (model on MakerWorld) that hides the bottom section and prevents it falling over.

However, the next few things I printed were other utility items directly related to the printer. These included a toolbox that can be attached to the A1 Mini, a poop collector, some clips for the cables and some clips for filament spools. I’m not entirely sure what order I printed them but I’d probably suggest the cable clips and the poop collector first, which are both excellent models. With the box, I think PLA works okay as a material but the model creator is right that a light coloured lid plays havoc with the camera. I might be tempted to look for a different storage box model if you don’t have a suitable container – I’d probably end up with another gridfinity-based one. The filament spool clips are useful; I learned the hard way that the filament should always be kept under a small amount of tension, otherwise it crosses over and tends to jam. However, I find this particular model a bit fiddly – perhaps it needs to be scaled up a little or perhaps I just need to find another model.

All of those things, or other items or prints which serve the same function, are ones I count as important to get early on. There is one other item too, a filament roller, but I think that probably deserves a post of its own.