good to hear , as with your choice, my next printer looks to be that prusa XL; it doesnt have the speed of a v400 ( or even close) but it has other desirable features, and as you point out, the prusa ‘stand-behind’;
plse let us know the assembly ( i assume you got the partially assembled variant…) and how onerous that 4+ minute wait to calibrate between each prints is;
i note that no-where in any review or company specs are there any speeds quoted at all ( MM/s);
wild guessing maybe 100 MM/s, maybe 120
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just to clarify my now-closed v400 experience; i had a catastrophic failure that required buying a new extruder assembly a couple months ago; installed that ( very easy) and printed for another month or so, then another failure;
this time i had to totally take the toolhead/extruder/effector apart;
in doing so i found the failure and it turned out it was a fatal design flaw;
could happen anytime again;
so flsun offerred to sell me another effector head assembly at half price but i declined and told them of the design flaw;
to be clear i could get that printer working again in the couple weeks it would take for the replacement part/assembly to come from china;
but to what effect ? to keep doing this over-and-over ?
so i resolved to be done with this printer
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yeah it is a bit pricey, and no telling what that second toolhead ( to support the water soluble supports) will run;
who knows maybe we would have to buy a prusa special filament to support that water-soluble…
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Yes they should be fine, I have one on order just has not arrived yet. It needs a volcano (or adapter) and high flow type. CHT was the orginal so there should be no issues.
I considered the Bambu but with the issues being reported and the NEWEST FIASCO its off the table. The possessed printer thing is a disaster, there are enough that started printing themselves with zero input and some damaged them selves, no way. The security issues alone are enough to take it off the table. Problems I can see and fix are one thing but the manufacturer using problems over a network is unacceptable.
Yes no joke price for the XL. I have absolute faith in Prusa, they have so few issues and the XL design has 100000s of hours at Prusa testing and hardening the design. It is part of the reason why the cost. If FLsun had made millions of prints on hundreds of printers for years before it was released they would not have the reliability issues.
My v400 runs fine but the bed sucks ( I replaced mine) and it really seems to like really expensive filament. It runs super fast but the speed is its own worst enemy.
The two toolhead is 2499. and no they do not have any method of reading the filament you will be free to use any filament you wish. I didn’t order the two toolhead but will likely at some point order a second ($500) head and add it. The best thing of Prusa they have always sold upgrade kits and say the XL will not be an exception to that. I am considering upgrading my MK3s+ to a MK3.9 or maybe a 4? (I bought a MK3 upgraded to a MK3S+)
As soon as I get back from vacation and get my flooded basement sorted (so frustrating) I’ll get back to the build. I am excited to do it, I just need to sort my house out first. Nightmare. I am so shocked insurance will not cover resolving the source of the water entering but will cover the damage it causes, bizarre.
Small rant I am so frustrated by the whole thing.
as regards that prusa xl, it appears it is shipped with a stock 0.6 mm nozzle, which prusa marketing claims achieves about the same accuracy as a 0.4 mm (hmmmm…?); the marketing material continually referes to an “adapter” to accommodate V6 nozzles and suggests that may result in higher flows and more speed; if that nextruder design was so good, i would have thought it not rocket science for prusa to do that higher flow nozzle themselves; does that higher flow nozzle defeat the other advantages on that nextruder design ?
Generally it is accepted that a .4 and a .6 produces similar prints.
My personal experiences I don’t really see much difference in quality but .6 parts are slightly stronger and it increases filament use a bit.
I use a .4s, .6s and .8s. Depending on the application.
Prusa works closely with E3D, the evidence is clear as there is a Prusa ObXidian nozzle which is a E3D nozzle. They E3D have only just released a high flow nozzle for the revelo system so I would guess the prusa configuration is not far behind.
I am uncertain if at this moment it matters. The standard nozzle can keep up with the flow requirements a high flow is not currently needed. The XL has input shaping on board but not fully enabled as of yet. That firmware is in beta. I suspect once all the bugs are sorted out and sufficient tests are done. If memory serves they ran 600 xls for 18 month 24/7 pre release as R&D and testing. One can only assume they are using the same philosophy on firmware testing. It is annoying for consumers as they can be slow to release but they in my experience have few issues that plague other manufacturers. I hopped Bambu would break that too but with the cloud fiasco starting to print all on its own that is a resounding no. They clearly did not test anything before they released new updates. There are a handful of damaged printers as a result. Who would expect a print to start printing all on its own at 4 am? If there was a print on the build surface or not?
Once they sort out the firmware (Prusa) and they bring input shaping on line there is likely a need for faster nozzles, it is likely that both will come at once. The adapter allows any V6 so a CHT could be fitted although if there is not the flow demand it will not make a difference other than be harder to clear if it clogs.
We shall see.
kiteD: i wonder if a ‘manufacturing culture’ might be at play here; my 2 chinese printers, anycubic and then flsun came up short,
as you pointed out bamboo, despite some recent success seems to have laid an egg more recently, another chinese company;
contrast that to prusa, a czech company and their , as you pointed out, extensive effort on (R&D + testing)
and resultant higher quality products;
i was recently trying to research filament quality that i get here in thailand, all of it comes from china ;
as one author wrote, paraphrasing, “it is, after all, made in china , where there are no rules”
(( best of luck with that flooding, it is maddening coaxing all that dirty water away and it takes forever to drain by itself))
I was thinking about responding to your comments of six days ago (FLSUN V400 Delta - #56 by vernd) but I’m not sure how to respond to them and how well they’ll be received.
Reading your posts, I don’t think you have appropriate expectations when it comes to 3D printers. The FLSun V400 costs just north of $1,000 CAD which puts it right in the middle price range of hobbyist 3D printers.
If I compare it to a low priced hobbyist 3D printer, like the Ender 3 (any version), I would expect it to have:
- Decently machined mechanical parts
- 32bit Controller and Colour UI
- Ability to handle PLA, ABS, PETg and Nylon (Heated bed and a hot end capable of 250C+)
- Some promise of faster speed (this seems to be a big thing right now)
- Extras (in this case the Speeder Pad and FLSun’s version of Klipper)
It won’t have:
- Well defined slicer settings that produce very good quality prints immediately after turning it on
- Premium hardware to maximize print quality and speed
- Parts engineered to run 10,000 hours without failure
- Engineered for easy maintenance
For that, you’re looking at machines that cost $5,000 CAD or more and are in the professional space.
You’re feeling that there is a race to the bottom to get printers with the lowest possible cost, and there is a small amount of truth to that, but you don’t appreciate the significant costs of bringing a printer to market before you start looking at the cost of unique tool designs, user testing and redesigns (which restarts the previous two actions of updating unique tools and repeating user testing).
For hobbyist printers, the margins just aren’t there to support this level of cost. Along with that, there is the assumption that hobbyists will be modifying/upgrading their printers to get them working better for them. To get a hobbyist printer working at the level of a professional one, the owner must spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars working with their printer so that it will produce superior prints reliably for thousands of hours of operation without fail.
I know its frustrating but what you have are hobbyist level products and they will require more work to properly calibrate, require more maintenance as well as have a more cumbersome workflow than professional level printers.
after consuming everything i can find about the XL, incl your comments, it seems well-positioned in the pro-sumer space, which is exactly where i want to buy
@mykepredko i agree with much of your comments. Many moons ago I worked designing bags for mass production. Not as complicated as a printer but still the process is similar, paper design version, lots of hand crafted prototypes, manufacturing prototypes, small run, market research and full production.
I get how expensive and how complicated it is. The kicker for me is monoprice. They are not a huge company compared with Creality the mini v1 was my second printer. (My Tiko hardly counts plagued with issues it never made a print) I opened the box plugged it in and sent a benchy off the provided card. It printed perfectly. I loaded them version of cura they supplied and sliced it and sent it. The same a perfect benchy. Because of my idiotic nature I contacted tech support to ask a question and to see what support was like. I got a prompt reply and an answer to my question.
That printer at that time was on sale for 120$ it was cheaper than anything else I could find.
It arrived trammed and ready. I trammed it myself, did a poor job and cursed myself for messing with it.
It still works perfectly. I print small abs parts on occasion. I don’t know about the new version but mine is a gem. My go to beginner printer. The only mod it has is the bed. When I gouged the sticker thing they used I replaced it with a bit of glass. It came faster than a new sticker. Want a mini bed sticker it’s in a box somewhere.
If monoprice can manage a very low price printer and get it to market years ago for cheap why can’t others? The answer is easy, they can they choose not too because the culture allows it.
My sidewinder is a good example the frame was visibly not square. Tech support took 15 days to ask if I leveled the bed. They never read the reply and didn’t help at the end of the day. Then I voided the warranty with a BL touch and they cut me loose never having addressed the frame of the printer was off square by enough I could stick my pinky between the frame and square. They blamed the square.
I see your argument I agree but if one small company can produce an entry printer for cheap why cannot others?
They can, they just don’t.
It was my decision I am biased. I can’t tell you much yet the box is big. It came with a xl tub of xl gummy bears! Not the standard gummy bears the mk3 came with. It took ages to arrive I preordered release day. I figured at the time refundable deposit no big risk. I usually print only high end filaments and after the preorder I started using lower price ones and deposited the difference. That mostly paid for the printer.
good to know, here in thailand we have much less choice for high quality filament than in the civilized world; so we get the filaments we can (unless amazon,… which for us is 2x price and 3 weeks wait) and just hope…;
on that fork, i would like to post my pla silk experiences on the same models, same g-code files,same printer, using different colors;
the artifacting is quite a bit worse in one color v another
One of my favorite filaments is prusament stupidly expensive but I have never had any issues with it and batch to batch color is excellent. They ship worldwide, expensive however.
those guys actually sell any of that filament at those prices ??
Yep,
I mean it is good stuff, I have only personally used a couple spools of it. To me I would rather just save a bit and buy something from 3DPC but to each their own. I am willing to bet that there are a good amount of people that will use it exclusively with their prusa printers becauase it is prusa branded material. I have met people in the past that didn’t know that you could use filament that wasn’t prusa branded with prusa machines.
Yes I think they sell a lot. The biggest reason for me is the color consistency. Roll to roll they are exactly the same. Any project I do that is important for color and will need multiple rolls it is not really an option. A big multi day print with color inconsistencies is too expensive.
I don’t buy brand a pla (or other) is better than brand b. I would expect them all to be basically the same. These days dimensional stability is easily checked too easy to not expect most manufacturers to be checking. Color on the other hand is not as easy to control. I have rolls that start to finish are inconsistent. This is where the cost sits.
They are not alone in this but their run is open and well documented how it is accomplished.
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I have been thinking about your issues. What nozzle temps are you printing with? I found at speed I used a higher temp quite a bit higher to get the filament to throughly heat and melt and hold enough temp to bond.
I print a lot of petG so this is tuned better for it.
First layer I was using 240ºC (230ºC other printers) and 85ºC bed temp the rest of the layers I use 250ºC and 90ºC on the bed. 20º higher than my normal. PLA I don’t use that much but I was tinkering with 215/65 first layer and 225/65 the rest. I found the extra heat didn’t really translate to more heat on the extruded material but after melting.
I wonder if your issues are caused by filament not fully heating and increasing the back pressures a lot?
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