I bought the cheapest 3D printer on AliExpress!
How much 3D printer can you get for just 72€?
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:00 - Sponsor: Anycubic Kobra 2 Pro
01:36 - Unboxing & Teardown
08:00 - Assembly
11:23 - First power up and calibration
14:59 - First print
16:18 - Benchy setup
16:45 - Benchy & hardware discussion
That's honestly some impressive engineering. They clearly weren't thoughtless about all the cost cutting, they really put in the effort to get as close to a workable machine as they could within the budget.
Some brass bushings and a better mainboard and you ate good to go for the speed benchy. The toolhead is clearly light enough 😂
@@TheSokailu it doesn't need a better main board. It needs a set of real fine step ungeared steppers for at least the XY axis.
No it’s not. It’s junk
"Anyone can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to make a bridge that only just barely stands"
Yeah, the ONLY thing they cared about at all was how much profit they could make from each one. I'm confused though, because anyone can find an Ender printer for around the same price, so I'd be surprised anyone would ever bother buying one of these. (except to make a video on it maybe).
Would love to see a "sleeper" rebuild, that sounds like a great project!
That would be cool, but a lot of work for no good reason...except to make a video. I was wondering if this printer would work for printing chocolate, so it would be fun to eat the print afterward so at least you get something good instead of throwing it in the trash.
for the price what do you expect? Buy one 30 times the price!
Engineering to make it cheap as possible is respectable. Looking at some of the cheap stuff i've ordered, a lot of them just to see how in the hell they manage to make it so cheap.. it is like looking the work of a genius. Overengineering and using the best parts.. is quite easy. Most of the work is done for you, those solutions exist already. But trying to make it cheap... requires real innovation and deep knowledge. Like here, preloading the bushings using the geometry of the whole thing: genius. There is one specific niche that is maybe the most interesting, and that is when companies buy failed batches of chips, and then repurpose them.. You can have things like... signal output pin used as a mosfet driver... because they have dug in to the schematics of the chip and found that "if we short these two pins, then that output turns into an input..".. And it can be that this part of the chip is all right in the whole batch, and now we have a lot of very cheap, almost free mosfet drivers, that are not efficient, or may heat up a bit too much... And sure, it can have 12 pins unused but who cares if it is just powering a 500mW led on a 2€ gadget.
Chinese manufacturers are specially talented in this regard... they go above and beyond when it comes to cutting costs.
@@hd-be7dilike labour costs.
The crazy thing is, although this kind of product feels super sketchy, it's actually got a lower environmental impact to use less material and lighter processing. Not to mention upcycling failed chip batches.
Is easy to do things if you're not looking at cost and *waste* Somehow we need a middle ground between this and over engineered "eco" wasteful things.
one of my favorite sayings is that "anybody can build a bridge, but only an engineer can build a bridge that just barely stands" and i think this fits the theme
I bought an EasyThreed from AliExpress, about $120 aussie dolalrs. It was surprisingly good (except for its slicer) and I actually made 3 times the cost back by printing custom gluestick holders for the local women's scrapbooking group members. Minimal assembly needed, just enough for a beginner to understand how the printer works and fix simple issues, which is a win as far as I'm concerned.
Now print a hot glue gun stand and combine the two. They'll sell like hot (glue) cakes!
New speed benchy category, "most inexpensive printer". I support this.
I enjoy how we’re starting to see almost a demoscene emerging from 3D printing community. Haha
How would you score this? Time in seconds multiplied by price? Time plus cost converted directly to seconds?
@@SteevyTable ooh… that’s a good question. Would probably need to have a few classes. Total retail cost seems like it would make most sense.
Bought that for my 9 year old. Added the heat bed. The extruder stepper motor broke after 2 prints. Took 3 weeks to get replacement. Still haven't repaired it but I grabbed a raspberry pi to set up octoprint on it. The 3 prints she completed turned out very well
@@ForbesLsome people can’t afford “a bit more”
@ForbesL, what was your thought process? You didn't spell thought correctly. Don't insult people if you can't spell.
You should make sure it's ventilated properly if you don't want your kid to have respiratory issues
@@badmexican333 from what?
Plastic fumes = Distilled Fuel/Petrol/Diesel/Kerosene/Gasoline/other oils and alcohols = not F*cking healthy. In a ventilated place you'd be good tho.
The Easythreed printers make great practical TPU printers with their direct drive. Practical or useful TPU prints like rubber feet or handles for a tool don’t typically require great looking prints. So I use mine as dedicated TPU printers.
Cool idea
Hey there Chuck, I was just going to mention the video you did a while back with your red one you have and your findings of using it as a TPU printer.... Ever since seeing your video I have been looking to get one for myself but living in South Africa earning in ZAR and having to ship them here with import and deliver costs they are a bit expensive at almost 3K (USD$160) in my currency I could just get another Ender 3 Pro at 5K lol, hopefully with amazon entering the South African Market with warehouses here they will become more affordable, so I will be waiting to see what happens when Amazon gets here. I feel like amazon is going to disrupt retail and ecommerce here in SA as I had a shock after purchasing my XBOX series X for 14K locally and I could have gotten one from US with shipping and import and delivery for 10K and I just had to have waited for week.
same here had it for 3 years or so. still going, tpu only :)
was your original review that made me go for it :)
So, could I use this as a TPU printer?
The hollow tubes are smart, the outer shell of a hollow body (especially a round one) takes the vast majority of the load. So if you have the dimensions to spare, you can make quite a strong part very very light by making it much bigger but only including the material that contributes to the strength and not the useless interior
Exactly why Bambu use hollow carbon tubes for the rails in the X1.
@@ferrumignis Also because making a solid CF reinforced rod would be quite challenging compared to wrapping the fibres around a rod
They provide better leverage against buckling under uneven forced but does not provide additional strength against direct ballanced compression and tension from both ends of the rod, otherwise we would be using tubes instead of I-beams for construction.
@@maxhammick948 Solid CF rod is commercially available and not particularly expensive.
@@miguellopez3392 Hollow box section lintels are used in construction. They wouldn't be useful for replacing large I-beams because the overall dimensions would be larger and likely more expensive to make for an equivalently strong part, and they would be very inconvenient for joints; you couldn't use rivets because there would be no way to access the inside.
the amount of injection molding engineering that went into this is impressive. Like the materials are totally crap, but the connection of the axis and all that is very clearly custom to this device, which I find wild.
First thought: I saw used ender 3 printers in similar prices. Second thought: Its crazy how accessible 3D printers are because of second hand market, you barely can produce a printer in price of ok quality used printer
Yes, an original Ender 3 is still a very usable machine, especially with some upgrades. I'm not getting rid of mine even though I got myself a V3 KE. The old one has a full metal direct drive toolhead, silent motherboard, PEI build plate etc. so it's very capable still, albeit not as fast as the new one. I use it for smaller parts and special materials (currently building an enclosure for it), the new one has a 0.6mm nozzle and handles large prints requiring speed and volume. So yes, a used Ender 3 is in a completely different league from these toys, a "real" printer of extremely good value.
@@Murgoh I have used ender 3 pro with too many mods to list :P Its with me for quite a few years and recently bought bambu a1, ender was pain for me but i just hadn't patience for it, still imo its a machine that is working and worth a look, in its price range its hard to beat, of course when speaking of second hand, new ender 3 are too expensive for 2024. Yet my ender is sitting on the floor waiting for me to find use case for it
I have two Ender 3 and when asked if i would buy a base used Ender 3 for 75$ i would say no. There are still Ender 3 Neo with Autolevel around for 140$. After my first break down, i looked at it and lot of the bearings, maybe the motherboard or the steppers were broken. It was cheaper and easier to buy a Ender 3 from overstock and swapp all the Upgrades from my Ender 3 pro (Wich was heavily upgraded BL-Touch, Aluminium Wear Parts etc) to the base machine, as i still had lot of spars. The V-Nodge Rollers are notorious unreliable, even the new One has a light knocking after 500 hours and 2 new roller sets. (I service the printer every 100 hours with lubricant etc). Myself and my circle of Friends have 6 Ender 3. All but one have developed Bed sagging etc. The Ender 3 is a nice cheap Printer but don't expect to have longevity in it and you need experience to keep it running. But at least all bearing are swapable, there are lot of spare parts out there. But i would buy a Ender 3 Neo for 150$ instead of a used Ender 3 or Ender 3 Pro for 75$. When you do, you can buy directly for 10$ a 10 piece V-Roller set and swap them in and 10$ a metall Bowden Feeder, the parts dying first.
This video was a joy to watch, because honestly everything about this tiny printer was better than I expected! I can't wait to see what you do with it in the future, it seems like a great machine for just tinkering and having fun.
It's amazing that in 2024 a toy-like printer like this actually works and prints usable parts! I'm not a 3D print enthusiast and I don't even own a 3D printer yet, but I remember 3 or 4 years ago printers 10 times the price of this would require a lot of tuning to even produce a benchie without major failures
The funny thing is i bought an easythreed printer for 90$ about 4 years ago. It did had less features than now but it printed fine
The fact that thing even printed a benchy that actually looks like a benchy is impressive.
That hotend looks like it came straight from a 3d printing pen xD
I think that's exactly what it is.
The extruder* seems to use the same 28BYJ-48-style geared stepper motor as the motion system. That motor is too big to fit in a 3D printing pen. edit: I meant to write extruder, not hotend!
@@yvan2563 Looks more like the PTC heater and nozzle that would go in a pen matched to a beefier extruder.
@@peterpiwowarski8689 Absolutely! But I was talking about the stepper motor/extruder part of the system which is different from 3D pens. I wonder why they didn't also use the smaller extruder motors from 3D pens, surely that would have required less engineering and lowered the cost even more.
The printer in itself is actually a glorified 3D printing pen. If you have a printer farm, and you have a family member who wants to get into 3D printing, this makes quite the good gift for a First printer. just to see if they like the hobby.
this thing is just so elegant, i can appreciate the drive to maximize (or minimize in this case) a parameter to the absolute limit, idk this thing is a work of art.
As a new viewer and non-3D printer owner, I thought the prints weren’t too bad. It would be interesting to see what improvements or extremely cheap mods could be made to it just for the fun of it!
It's fascinating how cheap it is to make injection moulded plastic parts and apparently how many they (intend) to sell of these printers to turn a profit.
Don’t only think about western market. Think about China market - consider 0.001% of all Chinese boys wants to play with a 3D-printer and parents wants to buy something cheap because anyway the interest will change after 2 weeks. The manufacturer for local market will be rich - and I am honest/ no kidding.
China (1.443B) + India (1.326B) ... is over 1/3 of global population.
@@AerialWaviator 👍
in the ali store is promoted to kids/starters is kinda fine for what it is
I saw these exact printers a year and a half ago, on Wish, for $25 CAD. The price has probably gone up, but now I actually regret not buying one. Instead, I bought a used Ender 2, which I still haven't even set up. One of these days...
Actually hollow tubular rails is sound engineering for optimum stiffness-to-mass ratio; others should do trhe same.
Funnily enough, Bambulab actually does this with their carbon fibre rods. It makes less sense for parts that won't be moving to quickly though as you pay through either bad toperances or paying more for better tolerances. To put it another wqy, you cant just buy any ol tube and expect it to be consistent enough.
Completely agreed. Pipe vs rod has pretty similar strength when you talk about bending. Thin paper rolled in big diameter takes bigger force than thick copper wire.
My first printer was a CTC DIY printer. It had hollow metal rods for the Y axis, and after a while they bowed, which made adjusting the bed height difficult. It was probably my hand weight on the bed that bowed them, but what the H.
If the filament spool was positioned on the right side of the printer, tugging on the filament would not unload the bearings, but rather would increase the load. That might make the printer more stable as it pulled filament into the extruder. Interesting machine. Thanks.
This reminds me of my childhood. When the other kids got cool toys, my father would always research and buy the absolute cheapest alternative.
I have to say that when I played football, my dad bought me white cleats because they were super cheap, and everyone made fun of me. Seems odd that it mattered, but this was junior high. I tried to dye them black, and made them purple, and that was so much worse!! lol
Remembered me about the cheap RC car with only one button that I had as a kid 🤣
They still sell "Transfromers" (sic) knockoffs in Shanghai - dirt cheap
@@equake80 and it was a wired RC car, not wireless 😆
@@mitchio83 💀
Actually, pretty amazing for the price. As an occasional maker of PCBs for personal use, one thing caught my attention: tactile switches can be surprisingly expensive in comparison to many of the other components. Thanks for taking the time and expense to experiment with that printer!😁
I also make PCBs and I don't know where you get your components (Digikey or Mouser I assume) but components in china are way WAY cheaper! LCSC (the chinese version of Digikey) has tactile switches for less than 0.01€ if you buy 1000. Considering these guys are using injection molded parts, they must be making these in the tens or hundreds of thousands so yeah, the tactiles are not a big part of the BOM, that's for sure.
@@diyfury Depends on a type of tactile, and when you are not doing 1000s, it often is the case that instead of 8 buttons it is cheaper to do it with a microcontroller and 2 buttons. In the mass production scale things are different, it can be either way that buttons are cheaper or adding 2000 transistors in a small package that runs a bit of code is cheaper than few buttons.
I built a proper 3d printer, a CR-10 clone, using a printer like that, the EasyThreed X1. It cost me around 130$ in 2021. It was a great way for me to get into the hobby without paying 500$ for an Ender 3, locally or internet bought (them shipping costs...).
I had that question in mind ) can you actually print a normal printer with that) , but i see no point in that sinse used ender or its clones cost about 70-120$(of course if you' want build it with your hands from scratch..)
@@madzak9847For me it wasn't really an option ordering an Ender 3, because they weren't sold locally and shipping costs were the same as price of printer itself, so I was looking at around 500$. At 130$ this looked like a fun, jokey, very inexpensive introduction into the 3d printing realm. But yeah, I could never see myself doing that again now that I can get a Ender clone loxally for a similar price. Unless, that is, you want a fun/weird challenge for yourself.
I was actually wondering if the printer could print a better non bendable plastic part of itself. Great.
@@FinnbogiRagnarRagnarsson It can as long the parts dont exeed 100mm in either direction.
@@AX-fx7ng I did it with a mix of parts from different projects. It was big enough to accommodate a 310x310mm bed.
Some background info on the AT32 chips: They are indeed 'STM32 clones', although it's not exactly a clone since STM doesn't have an F403A, but it has similar registers and features as STM MCU's. The AT32F403A is a 240MHz M4 MCU with some impressive specs: 1MB flash (1024KB flash + 256KB SRAM), with the first 256KB serving as zero wait stage flash at full 240MHz, and 97KB SRAM (expandable to 224KB by taking 128KB from zero wait stage flash). I've been playing around with these chips recently and I like them a lot, they cost not much, 2 bucks for 64 64-pin variant with 1MB flash.
I've dug through a couple of forums trying to get the exact chip used here to work, and yes, they seem to be similar to the STM models (this one apparently matches somewhat to the F103, despite the apparent step-up in model number), but some of the peripherals don't work the same way as on the STM models. Simply flashing STM32 firmware will most likely not work.
That chip is starting to show up on drone flight controllers - it's much cheaper than an STM chip and has some pretty impressive performance. But standard STM32 code does not work with it, so there has to be some modifications to software to get it to work. Just flashing STM32 code to it would definitely not work at all. I suspect we'll start seeing more and more of these chips in other devices - as far as I've seen there really aren't too many downsides to it other than having to rework some code.
If anyone sorts out the firmware I'd love to see it (as I am sure would a zillion others).
having seen other channels try this thing, the real strength is in flexible materials. It's direct drive, and you can get pretty impressive results
Have fun with it! Just for the hack of it! I would absolutely watch this as entertainment and to learn stuff.
I feel like this would be a good travel demo printer for like a quick print showcase like i could see myself setting this up at my booth at a convention to run a demo while my actual printer is in my hotel room printing actual projects
Yes you can make a spool holder
You could probably print some internal braces for those linear stages, as well as some gussets for the connections. A spool holder that is up a little higher with a foot for stability, and a reverse bowden mounted to the top of the z stage would probably improve this a lot.
I wonder if you could replace the nozzle and hack something in place that provides a steady supply of frosting, it would probably be awesome for printing out sugary items you could then color and put on cakes and such.
Now this idea I love.
I've started my 3dp journey on an EasyThreed X1. Genius little machine, currently in the storage, neatly packed and waiting for my son to grow old enough to start tinkering. Love the brand and their little beast machines.
My main takeaway with this video is that it's apparently normal that my white PLA strings more than the other colours
My main takeaway is that you can apparently home prusa machines with a press and hold on the knob 😅
@@FreshPeI mean yeah, that's basically sensorless homing they do here, only it's not using StallGuard to gently boop the stops and validate, but rams fulls force.
@@EgorKaskader With those tiny motors "full force" is probably less than you'd get from a normal 3d printer running the steppers on reduced current
I have noticed white PLA degrades faster than other PLA colors
@@maxhammick948 You're also usually ramming considerably more robust components. Heavily walled 3D prints or just straight up metal. Prusas use continuous 10mm rods and 4-5 wall PETG printed parts. Also there's no gearboxes to damage by doing this.
You should print all plastic parts to make them stronger and stiffer. Would love to see a series on upgrading this. You could call it trash to treasure, shit to shiny or how to polish a turd. Great video. Keep up the good work.
I love the idea. A cheap $80 running 800-900mm/sec print speeds. Look forward to it
The cost engineering in these things is honestly super impressive.
I felt that too, but changed my mind reflecting on the price. Its a 1 dollar bom cowt printer selling for 72 euros. The profit margin is huuuuge. Its probably bigger than most actually decent printers. Its def still an interesting expiriment in minimal .... not quite viable but "technically functional I suppose" printing
I'd guess the BOM might be somewhere around $30, plus handling / assembly (snap-together = cheap), R&D, shipping (lightweight = cheap) and other fees. They certainly have better margins than an Ender-3, but perhaps not as much as one would assume from a Happy Meal - grade printer.
@@MadeWithLayers Ha, I meant 10 dollars but typo'd 😅 I was just thinking thar if I can buy these exact steppers for 1.50 usd each, they cwrtainly can for less in bulk, and that mainboard with fake stm certainly doesn't cost much more than each motor. Definitely more costs for logistics, though I think they saved big by reducing the number of injection molding tools needed with that 3 copy design and they save big in RND by just going with a clone motherboard design.
I bought an Easythreed X1 a couple of years back for fun. Can confirm that backlash is a problem. I managed to somewhat mitigate it with a custom Marlin firmware with backlash compensation enabled. (This was an 8 bit board.) Other than that I was generally positively surprised with it for the price.
one of your best vids lately. entertaining and informative for a wider audience. not just the hardcore super detailed printing nerds. i would have liked to see you use some high quality PLA to see where the “stink” comes from. also, i’d really would looooove a follow up to see what mods you can come up with to make it faster and more quality prints with the least amount of money spent. maybe Aliexpress mods? or an giant external aux fan?
As an introductory 'toy' for kids/teens, for parents who don't want to blow a lot of cash on something that might/might not spark interest, it seems fantastic!!! I'd totally buy it, if I had kids who watched YT vids on 3d printing and showed an interest. Seems easy enough for non-tech people to set up, and robust enough to play with for a while. Actually, even as an old woman, I'd probably shell out 72 Euros to have a play around with it as an introductory machine. I've fancied 'having a go' but I don't know if 3D printing is something I'd find a lot of use for, so again, I admire the engineering to be able to create something basically functional so cheaply.
hell no i bought an ender 3 for around 150€ and spent countless hours with it. this hunk of junk wouldnt habe sparked the same intrest. sure its nice that it works and all but it does so just barely. not worth the money imo
@@SuperDeinVadda mine is 2 years old and works perfectly fine
I absolutely love your comment, yes indeed, can you imagine a bunch of excited 8 year olds or even younger making the thing in class and then printing their fave cartoon characters to take hoem or show off???. Who knows what wonders they will create when they get older.....this is a truly fantastic item for teachers.. (Im 72 and just invested in 3d printers for a tech product we are making and I am loving it)
I think it's the worst idea, a bad printer is going to turn you away from the hobby, better to spend more for something better and usable. A bit like kids and the horrible supermarket telescopes where you can't see anything when spending just a bit more would have bought a good tool useful for several years.
Oh I would absolutely love a special video showcasing your tweaks and upgrades to this printer. Full kipper would be awesome, along with a heated bed of some sort and if you can solve that backlash issue. Then do a serious speed benchy test!
I've found that a zip-tie loosely wrapped around those loose filament coils keeps them from going all wonky, and doesn't interfere with feeding at all.
Great video as usual. I think it would be interesting how far this machine can go when using reasonable upgrades. Maybe give yourself a budget of 20-30$ and a roll of filament for printed parts and try to make it print better than a stock ender 3, which would be price comparable at this point.
Good luck with that, a stock Ender 3 is a real, very capable, printer, this is still a toy in comparison even if upgraded.
@@Murgoh Yes, it would be a fun experiment but not a real world useful one, money would be better spent elsewhere
That is SHOCKINGLY good. I really like the engineering with being able to use the same assembly for each axis is so smart. The hot end looks pretty smartly designed. Obviously, wouldn’t be something I ever recommend, but could be a fun project printer.
More of this, as much as I love the high budget stuff it's amazing to see what's kicking around at the bottom end of the 3D printing market!
Important note: the seller explicitly states that the usb port is only for "firmware updates". But I've been helping make a Marlin 2 custom firmware for this printer and you can just enable the usb interactions when compiling it. I still use an sd card though.
It actually worked fine for Octoprint out of the box - with the caveat that you need to turn on the octoprint pi on _before_ powering the printer, or the USB disables itself until reboot
@JTCF oooh, that sounds interesting! Though I've seen EasyThreed printers use a whole host of different mainboards and MCUs, are you supporting this specific Artery MCU?
@@MadeWithLayers Possibly this varies with different boards for the same K9 model number - it did just show as a usb serial port. I did find the instructions for this on the "official forums" though (albeit buried in an answer in the history somewhere) which maybe implies that it should be common. FWIW I never found any instructions that looked like "firmware update" instructions. Maybe it's a mistranslation and it's supposed to be "sending (g)code"?
Heroic HR4988 are NOT Allegro driver clones, they're completely different drivers with a drop-in compatible IC pinout. They support microstep input up to 1/128, so obviously the meaning of MS straps is completely different, though they've made 1/16th mode match. They are fairly well behaved, there isn't much weirdness going on there, though funny noises are definitely an option sometimes even more so than with the Allegro.
I guess one could put it on a 15mm thick MDF board and hot glue around the base of the printer adhering it to the sides and board. Then hot glue a 30°, 60°, 90° perspex set square at right angles on the back of the vertical part and board. Continue reinforcing to stiffen any other part where possible, plus use a few dabs of super glue to make more support to the planes with screws to remove wobble/flex. That could be a cheap and expedient improvement for stiffness and stability to perhaps make some minor improvement without much investment for the sake of fun experimentation.
Your summation is awesome. Great video as always.
I'd like to see the molded parts replaced with 3D printed parts that are the same design, maybe slightly more robust, but yes, putting klipper on it would be amazing
I agree, but with a twist. All 3D printed upgrades should be made on the printer itself!
You can print a 720€ 3D printer with it.
How?
@@Eon-vids Magic I suppose.
I have an earlier version that, in orange, i was actually suprised at how will it printed giving it being basically a sunday fun construction kit!
Interestingly two years ago a variant of this (not with the cool clipping together) was also available from easythreed for 72 bucks. It's probably just about the lowest they can make and ship it with any sort of profit. It had the Marlin firmware just like yours with a bunch of ports and stuff, but also a lot more room in the bottom --- I modded it to add an old car jumper battery and make it portable (for almost an hour at least). You can get an extra 5 minutes or so if you unplug the fan!
the anet a8 went for 120 bucks back in 2016. ignoring the one or two cases where it went up in flames, it was a banger deal that just worked if you didnt mess up the assembly and it printed very well. 8 years and 50 bucks cheaper you get this printer, its smaller, without heated bed, slower and not as capable. so not really a step forward in affordablity they could have made this in 2016 for the same price.
I'm still using a anet a8 clone / upgrade that I got for free.
Anet went for barely the cost of hardware. Here they've got a healthy profit in it. They could sell it for $50 and they'd still be in the green.
Maybe replacing those "bearings" with a new 3d printed set a little tighter than those and adding some lubricant would take a little stress from those motors and make the whole thing less wobbly
I have two of the orange ones from the 2020 time period. Still work great, once you get the nozzle end figured out for clearing. Lots of little parts to print to make it better. I ended up adding a quieter and bigger print head fan...Good product experience.
We bought a similar priced printer ($60) from Wish a number of years ago. The MakerPi M1 Mini had 1 button and a 3 way switch for loading/unloading filament. We recently klipperized it and added a linear Z support while upgrading the motors to some Nema 14 takeoffs from the Clockwork 1 (Voron) extruder. Ridiculous? A bit, but it's a fun little PLA printer.
I have a Easytreed X1, you can run klipper on that board just fine
Probably a different MCU thought, this "Artery" one doesn't seem to be supported by anything (and apparently is different enough from an actual STM32 to not be code-compatible)
also have an X1 and can confirm they do use the same chip and even mainboard as the K9. got a decent speedboost and control of the parts fan with the mod. won't be keeping it, but i always try and get the cheapest toe into a new hobby to see if i actually enjoy it before i splash out. also worth noting - i've had a whole host of issues with z-offset and the nozzle being too close to the bed after upgrading to klipper. that bed material just gets destroyed printing even pla+. migrated to blue tape directly on the magnetic surface and a 0.3mm offset immediately.
The theme may be "as cheap as possible"! Speaking of funny: how about aluminium hockey stick axes? 😅
With all of those cold-shoe similar mounts it seems like there would be lots of options to print stuff and attach it. I almost wish my MK3s had a standardized mount to clip stuff too.
I appreciate your take on this printer plus the motion of modding the hell out of it just for fun. Great video
I'm much more impressed by the fact that an Ender 3 on sale costs just a bit more than this.
Just a bit more? It's $189 - a lot more than double the price.
@@kneekooits round about $400 in my country as well, more than 5x that price
I got my ender 3 pro for $100 from micro center lol
@@llf7737 If only there were a microcenter not in the US...these deals are complete steal, i wouldnt even look at used stuff with these prices.
It depends on tax
Apparently "you get what you paid for" is the lesson here.
I love it! Lots of comments already exist for the design. My view: probably a result of lots of iteration. Some person made a printer (probably on Kickstarter, which is infamous for "team does engineering, sends to Chinese manufacturer, within weeks, clones of the printer show up on Aliexpress before Kickstarter even finished"), then someone did work to cut the cost/parts of some element. Then someone (else) did work to cut the cost/parts of another element. Then someone... you get the point. Do that enough times and you get a functional item at dirt cheap. May not last more then a couple uses, but so long as it works 1-2 times, it probably passed any benchmark it needed to.
Pretty impressive,thanks for sharing! Wonder how this would wort when the injection molds were aluminium casts, the rods solid, some better gearings on the steppers and the thing screwed to the table... What i wouldlike to see is that hotend and extruder mounted on the prusa or bambulab mini.
Reprint all the plastic parts with an ABS/carbon filament to get more rigidity, add more screw holes for better attachment. Reprint the derlin bearings for tighter tolerances. Upgrade the cooling fan for higher air flow. That is all you really need to do to make it a bit better.
Not worth it because of one crucial flaw: the motors aren't suitable for 3D printing.
Challenge. All those prints should be done by this printer.
I see a lot of improvement room for axis rigidity. Parts made of abs but a lot thicker and hollow... 1-2 walls. And a much sturdy assembly system... or even welded. Also check the motor gears... I think it's just a matter of tolerances.
@@arthurmoore9488 It should be able to handle it (with some tweaking and trial and error), assuming that it survives without breaking.
Thanks for the great video as always 💪🏼 Just one little Klugscheißerei: The D in LCD stands for display so 'LCD screen' is a bit of doppelt gemoppelt 😉
ATM machine.
I love small printers! I recently got a used Fabrikator II Mini for around 40€ from kleinanzeigen and had a lot of fun tinkering with it. The Z nut was horrible and the Z threaded rod was not installed correctly and relied only on the motors thrust bearing. There was about 5mm of backlash from these two sources! I took it apart, printed a replacement and now it works great! It's a solid machine made from bend metal parts and if it weren't for the horrible belt tensioning springs from that era I am sure it could fly at much higher speeds and accelerations. Threw a Pi Zero W in the bottom compartment and soldered it directly to the mainboard's USB. It runs on an STM32F103 and upgrading it to klipper was also my first thought. I wanna see this thing race! Gotta modify the unipolar z stepper to bipolar first though, but that is as easy as scratching of a single trace on the motor's pcb and soldering an A4988 in place of the ULN2003 chip on the mainboard. I could also try to modify Klipper/Marlin to work with the stepping sequence of unipolar motors, but that's surely a multi-day headache I can avoid with 15 minutes of relaxed soldering. For now, I am happy with just octoprint and might even put on a cheap USB webcam. That used to absolutely freeze the tiny Pi Zero W, but the new libcamera stack with camera-streamer is actually very resource-efficient in my testing and limiting to 5 fps at 480p will me more that enough. Don't get me wrong, this is not a Voron Zero in hiding, you'd have to upgrade so many parts it would be like Theseus' printer. Electronics are 12V only, the hotend is probably a bottleneck and the extruder is very much still in the 2015 era. But it's fun!
I have the x4 and it is direct drive, I use it to make awesome tpu prints. It has made stuff in pla that rivals more expensive machines. It got me my start into the foray of printing.
Man, you need to do a rigitity mod on it. And replace the hollow bars with solid ones. Man, this would be such a fun project to keep improving it piece by piece and seeing what you can do with it!
I don't think the bars are the problem here.
The bars are not a problem at all, you'd just be adding weight for no return as the chassis has orders of magnitude more flex in it.
I have no idea how they can sell this thing for 72 euros and still make a profit. Thomas has impressive 3d printing skills to make this POS actually print something
I'm not really that surprised seeing that can buy a major brand name microwaves for 50 euros.
It's from China, that should say enough.
It isn't about profit It's about flooding the market.
I recently purchased a fully assembled semi-enclosed Humbrol 3D Mini Printer from Airfix in the UK. Like this printer, the Humbrol does not have a LCD screen and does not have a heated bed. To print, you need to only have one file on the micro-SD card. For £135, the printer came with four extra 250g reels of PLA (making five in total). The printer would fit on the print bed of my Flashforge Guider 2s.
Thanks for the review!!!
Sensorless homing is the future. I use it on all printers. Less points of failure and faster/cheaper assembly.
too bad you cant rely on its precision for stuff like toolhead changing
Put a Ldo orbiter v2
I bought an easytreed as a first printer and I eventually used it to print parts for a larger coreXY printer that i am using now. Great entry to 3d printing
What a great video! Also, I loved 15:05 because I owned one of these and I had the same exact reaction when attempting to clean the nozzle lol.
"I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because they should just save up more money" man I hate this argument when talking about things that you're not sure whether you want to spend money on or not.
It is a very reasonable argument imo. If you could wait an extra 3 months and get something better. It is much more advisable than losing money and spending extra on a device that kinda sucks
@@nen848no. Quit agreeing to be cool. Op is correct.
He is correct. For 40 more bucks you get a machine that is actually usable and not just a kids toy
@@tonytiger3003 OP is dismissing a good argument. If your money is better spent elsewhere, it should be said. Buy once, cry once.
Disappointing you start to diss the product before you even give it a chance. "Flimsy", "too little power" etc before you even know. How can you possibly give an unbiased review when you start like that. I actually get this impression that this is quite impressive despite your comments. BTW, I am an engineer, and design world leading equipment.
I fully agree with you - he forgot about young minds in a classroom setting doing something amazing and inspirational like this!!
I got a similar model by the same brand about 6 months ago for $76 shipped. Mine is red one that has a heated bed and a color touch screen! It had some some bad layer shifting that I think was due to my overtightening the belts but it sparked my interest, and now I have a nice bambu labs printer
That is honestly so much better than I was expecting.
It would be a great project for seeing what the included hardware is capable of. Definitely will be watching for the next episode
Thanks for you honest words. Good review.
totally agree! sounds like a fantastic project!!!
I love the way you just went with it without being too judgy.
I wouldn’t replace the motherboard yet but start with replacing the bushings with tighter ones. (I’ve made once a CNC router with home made delrin bushings) btw why don’t you print the bushings! Also, if you feel you could improve the sturdiness of some injection moulded part try and print replacements. On electrical side the weak point is obviously the motors with backlash. Try to find cheap replacements without backlash. Bottomline it would be fun to see what could have been done if they spent 10-20 euros extra.
more videos with this setup pleaseeeee, lets REALLY put it to the test!
I do A LOT of repeat simple prints. Saw these very cheap and considering buying 4 just to cycle prints every 12 hours. Max height says 100mm which will be tight but I think might do the job vs an ender 3 v3 at 4x the price.
I bought this one about a year ago. Very impressive for my proof of concepts. Only had to adjust the bed once before the first run.
I have this and have added a skr mini V2 with Klipper and had very mixed results. It's printed at a reasonable speed and everything but the backlash was so bad that nothing came out right and unless it's changed since I tried there isn't any backlash compensation available on Klipper
I'm actually working on upgraded arms to expand the build volume. This was my first printer last year and I'm almost done designing arms for 300mm rails, upgraded motors, and a larger bed
How much do the upgraded motors cost? The video makes clear that the motors are the weak spot, so I'm wondering how much the manufacturer saved by going with the cheaper motors. If they wanted to sell a more accurate version with better motors, how much more would it cost? $72 is so cheap, I'd think they'd have room to sell an upgraded "Pro" version for, say, $89 and I bet they'd have takers.
I picked up a cheap five pack of Nema pancakes from Amazon for $35
That "communication" module sort of looks like a mikroBUS, I wonder if it follows the same standard? If so, there's off the shelf modules that could work, assuming you could get firmware to work with it.
Interesting. ACs air directors use the same trick by running motors in one direction until the motor stalls. They also use the same motors
those steppers are from a ac units to be precise there are used for the one in your home for the ozzelating flap to direct the air.
Fascinating looking at a mass produced product of something that used to be super niche and expensive just 10 years ago. I remember 10 years ago getting a second-hand reprap mendel(? I think) on ebay and getting the winning bid around $300usd without any stepper motors, no hotend, no hotbed. I eventually got it "printing" but never was able to get it calibrated enough to print accurately. It felt like 3D printing was still several decades away from being mass produced. I didn't get back into 3D printing until 2021 because of that disappointing result. It may be a cheap, slow, low quality 28-watt printer but it still prints far better than my first attempt at building a 3D printer for under $500 exactly 10 years ago.
I think the module at 6:30 is also the pinout for a Wemos D1 ESP8266 or ESP32 to communicate wireless with the printer :)
Great review! I'm finally interested in 3d printing, and it seems it has finally reached explorative enthusiast level. Nevermind this printer, but something SLIGHTLY more expensive with stepper motors. Regardless, this drops those prices, so I'm all for it :)
Cheapest and favorite quickest machine I ever bought is the Monoprice IIIP 3D printer. It sits about 12x12x15 inches high and prints pretty good for my projects. I have an Ender Pro and an Ender 3 V2 as well but for quick no frills prototyping, IIIP is my go to printer. Paid maybe $90 for it back maybe 6 years ago.
Make sure you have updated the firmware on it, mine would regularly freeze up all the controls while the hot end and bed fets were left on. New marlin load fixed that a year ago.
4-5 years ago, my son took a 3D printing summer camp, which included a coupon for this printer. Monoprice IIIP mini. He's done useful work with it, it was a great learning tool.
Those printers are surprisingly good too. Heated bed, auto bed leveling, easily converted into "heated chamber", wifi printing, rather fast movement. Only real downside is the teeny tiny print volume, but for most things you would print with it that's not really an issue.
@@saddle1940 ...are you talking about the Enders or the Monoprice printer?
@@roboman2444 Mine was the first version cause there is no place for heat bed on it. But I agree about being good for most of what I do anyways. If I need a bigger print, I use my Enders. But prototyping a small piece, the Monoprice is the perfect tool.
you built one? thats awesome gonna have to go see if you have videos of the build after this. iv been wanting a bigger bed might be cheaper/more fun to build one
I had the k7 one. Great for learning fundamental but don't expect the high quality prints from it. Cylindrical shapes turned out to be more of a box with too much fillet. Small bed size was quite annoying but taught me well on how to effectively cut the stl file into pieces. I've learned a lot from it.
Hi, good video! This Artery F435 is a new chipset that is competing with the F405 in the market with great features and at a lower price point. On Drone flight controllers are starting to show this new chip. Good choice with a lower cost!
Thanks for the review, so my question would be as a newbie to 3D avoid this machine? ppl said get the Ender3 instead but here in UK its 3 x the price is it worth the extra? I have a spare MacBook Air a dry garage and excellent WiFi if that makes a difference. What's your advice plz. Thanks
Kind of a good idea with the filament spool. Just uses the base of the table to stabilize the roll.
I bought two of the K7 and used them (well... their kinematics) for projects at work. They now do the job of machines that would've cost us tens of thousands of euros... so, yeah. Big fan.
Knowing pretty much zero about these printers, this was a very instructional video!