Category: Uncategorized

EDIT: Order the Tenlog Hands 2 from Banggood HERE and use coupon code BG04a4f7 to get it for only $358USD!

Hey guys, back at it with another review!!

This time I opted for the Tenlog Hands 2 which you can purchase from here if you’re interested: LINK HERE

Why did you choose to review this printer?
I have free choice to review any printer on the market, and I’d love to eventually get through all the printers out there. The reason I chose this printer is because I’m looking for specific features that i currently believe are important and at a certain price point. This printer features direct drive extruders, and it is a dual printhead machine meaning it can do multi colour, multi material, or duplicate prints. I’m yet to try a dual printhead machine, and there did seem to be a few options available but this is the cheapest one I could find that had dual direct drive extruders. I did seem to not be able to find much info on the actual extruders, but we shall find out tonight!

Initial packaging thoughts/ unboxing
So the box was a little smaller than the artillery I recently received but in the same neighbourhood for size. 

Stupidly I opened the bottom of the box not the top (facepalm)

Anyways I flipped her over and got into it, here’s the step by step process of me unboxing it:

Now overall everything was packed well, and nothing was damaged despite a damaged section of the external cardboard that suggested the box has had an impact during shipping.

Assembly overview
Much like the Artillery Genius, assembly was a breeze in comparison to the Anet A8 Plus or even the Ender 3:
First step was mounting the gantry to the base, just 4x M5 screws as usual, I will note I slid the base off of the table to put the screws in this time instead of tipping the whole thing on tits side, this did work better.

Next step was to mount the extruders, and I am very impressed by the mounting system which is 2 CNC aluminium pieces that key together with 4 screws, this is a very accurate method and would make the extruders basically hot-swappable.

Now i’m at about 5 minutes after starting assembly and the thing looks done… lol.
Next was plugging in the wires, i’m going to put these pictures and see if you notice something (an unusual double up)

I had to do a double take for a second…. 2x limit switches on the z-axis?!?!?! THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER. It is a common mod to have a z-sync belt that ties the z-axis lead screws together so that the z axis doesnt become unlevel during power off (this is a big issue with my CR10S5), but that is a dodgy bandaid compared to just re-homing both sides of the z axis independently and I am really pleased with this feature.

Next is plugging in the extruders and heated bed, I like the use of standard connectors for the extruders as they would be easy to place, but cable management is lacking, I think I might make some rollers that go on top of the gantry for the extruder cables to rest on.

So final physical build step is the spool holders, pretty straight forward:

Now It was power up time, I’ll put some pictures of the screens here, I like the different menus.

Bed levelling…

Some settings

The included SD card and reader are quite nice, I also like the chrome on the slots in the printer.

Next it was time to load up the filament, I added in the two rolls and put the filament into their respective extruders. The extruder drive seems similar to the creality one but you cant really see inside it.

You push down on the piece where my thumb is to be able to push the filament through

On the display you have to type in the temperature

This brings the printer into a printable state so we will move to the next step!

What were the first print results (included test print)?
I put the included test print on:

Initial results were looking okay, but i was wondering why it didnt have a prime/wipe tower for the dual colours, this left some straggly filament leakage on the edge of the print at first so I wasnt overly impressed, but I was amazed by the quality after I broke off the straggly bits.

The accuracy of the printer really amazed me. I went ahead and found the Low-Poly pokemon models… here is the one I printed last night…

It still needs some tuning but I am really happy for now.

How can I setup this printer in cura?
Included on the SD card is a copy of cura that has a profile for this printer pre-loaded. I’m not a fan of re-installing cura just to get this profile out though so I will host it up on my website when I do the blog post for this printer.

Are there any quirks about this printer?
I was suprised by how thick the glass bed was, pretty much double the thickness of most that i’ve seen at 6mm.

Are the special features of this printer useful?
I expect the dual colour and dual material capabilities of this printer will be extremely useful for me for special prints and if you have a bit more to spend on a printer this is a feature i’d definitely consider. The fact that all of the other features like direct drive extruders and the limit switch setup make it a very good starting point of a printer, nothing really needs to be done to print things like TPU and the print quality seems as good as any.

What are some good points about this printer?

• The Glass bed is very thick (6mm)
• Dual Z-Axis Limit switches
• Dual Direct drive extruders
• Inductive limit switches
• Touchscreen interface
• polished design
• Standard connectors

What are some bad points about this printer?

• Extruder connectors seem a little dodgy and I worry they won’t last, but easy to replace or manage
• Price is higher ($379USD)
• Not much else.

Final thoughts – Who should purchase this printer?
I dont think this would be a common first printer as people generally gravitate towards something in the Ender 3 price range, but I think if you are wanting to do flexible materials in multi colour then this is definitely the way to go. I scoured the internet looking for multi colour capable printers with this feature set and it’s incredibly hard to find, especially not at this price. I absolutely love the Dual limit switch setup, and its cool to see it level one side, then the other and then check the first side again. Mostly what I like about this printer is that at this point I wouldn’t change much about it at all, I’m not thinking about all the mods i’m going to do to it it’s just ready to use already.

If you guys have any questions please let me know, multi material printing is new to me and I’m looking forward to learning more about it and sharing it with you all!

1 Comment

Artillery saw my previous review of their Genius printer and offered to send over their other model, which is the Artillery Sidewinder X1. This printer was on my list of printers that I wanted to cover so of course I said YES and here we are.
The Sidewinder X1 is the older, bigger brother to the Genius that I previously reviewed, but it has had a few revisions with the one I got being V4. This means it has a lot of upgrades that were included in the Genius model.

You can purchase this printer from here:
Artillery official store on Aliexpress: HERE
Banggood: HERE

I mention my review of the Artillery Genius a few times, it can be found HERE

Why did you choose to review this printer?
The Artillery Genius is hands down my current favourite printer, it is easy to use, it’s consistent, its quiet, it heats up fast and its just an all around polished machine. Having a bigger version of what is virtually the same machine sounds like an excellent idea to me and in this review we will find out if it still maintains the same standards as the smaller, newer variant. I would like to hear what printer you guys would like to see me review and why.

Initial packaging thoughts/ unboxing
So the box was one of the biggest i’ve got, almost as big as my CR10-S5, which told me from the get go that assembly would be minimal. The box arrived in perfect condition suprisingly, and shipping direct from Artillery to Australia was around the 1 week mark which suprised me especially with the current COVID-19 status. As usual I’ll show step-by step photos of the unboxing and then move onto Assembly. 

I was impressed to see the cardboard angle line to help with edge rigidity in the box.

And Here is the instruction Manual

Overall it was very well packaged and nothing appeared to be damaged from transport.

Assembly overview
The assembly complexity of this printer is right at the bottom end with the Genius, just a few basic steps and you’re going. It took me about 20 minutes all up, and I did it100% off of the included instruction booklet that I showed above. I will list out the steps below.
Insert the gantry in the base

Put the spring washers on the included M5 screws

Insert the M5 screws under the base to screw through into the bottom of the gantry.

Mount the filament holder on top with the 4 screws and pre-installed slot nuts, plug in the filament run-out sensor.

Plug in the Z-axis steppers, and the z and x-axis limit switches.

Untape, straighten and plug the x-axis ribbon cable into the extruder unit.

Repeat the same for the y-axis ribbbon but plug it into the base of the printer

This is the end of the assembly, but the instructions asked to check the eccentric nuts so i felt around for axis movement and loose rollers and only found one roller on the z-axis was loose so I adjusted it

here’s a picture of the finished machine

So this concludes the assembly procedure, i’ll move on.

What were the first print results (included test print)?
There was an included test print on the USB stick, but no filament so i put some transparent blue filament in I had out.
If you would like to see the menus, check out my review of the Artillery Genius, the software is the same.
The first layer looked quite nice, I tried to get a pic of it:

and here is the whole printer, while printing

The finished test print on the bed

and removed

How can I setup this printer in cura?
I will cover CURA setup in my next post about this printer, If I forget it please remind me.

Are there any quirks about this printer?
Not really, this is a very nice machine. The only one thing I liked about the genius that this didn’t have is the PCI-express style connector for the gantry to the base but I understand that this is a slightly older design and i can’t see any real issues with the way the ribbon cable attaches.

Are the special features of this printer useful?
This printer has pretty much all the features. 24V, silent steppers, AC heated bed, direct drive titan extruder, dual lead screw with a sync belt etc.

What are some good points about this printer?

• Dual lead screw with sync belt
• Silent steppers
• 24V Power Supply
• Excellent Cable Management
• Titan style direct drive extruder
• Touchscreen interface
• AC heated bed
• very sleek finish

What are some bad points about this printer?

• Cost is slightly higher than other printers I’ve reviewed, you get what you pay for.

Final thoughts – Who should purchase this printer?
This printer is very well finished and time will tell it’s overall reliability (I will give updates). This printer is excellent for someone new to the hobby or experienced, it is good because you don’t need to know a lot to get it functioning and it smooths out the steep learning curve of 3D Printing. i really like the build quality and product finish that artillery is able to offer and I look forward to reviewing more of their machines in the future.

I’m far from finished with this review and will cover CURA setup, print settings and tpu printing very soon. I hope to 3D print a quite complex mask with this printer from TPU soon, so you have that to look forward to 

.

Leave a Comment

This printer is now for sale at the link below for $279 using offer code “BGGenius” get it while you can!!

First things first, here’s a link to the Artillery Genius 3d Printer: Artillery Genius DIY 3D Printer

I chose the Artillery Genius for a few reasons, mainly because it’s something different. I wanted to keep the same size and price class as the Ender 3 XS Pro and Anet A8 Plus that I previously reviewed, but look into a few different main features. The main eye catching feature of this printer for me is that it has an AC heated bed which is unheard of at this price point. It also looks like a generally higher quality printer than the Anet or Creality counterparts but time will tell here.

Upon opening the box i found the printer was mostly assembled and there were a lot less pieces than any printer I have received so far.
Here are some pictures of the unboxing process:

So my initial thoughts:

• Everything seems more polished than traditional printers
• It still has the basic V slot design, with the bottom being the same as a standard V slot printer but with cover sheeting (I assume this is the same as the CR10 Pro models)
• The blue injection moulded parts appear nice
• The printer has ribbon cables to run everything on the gantry, I like how they look and move but time will tell their reliability
• There is a PCIE x 1 slot utilised to link between the gantry and base, making assembly very simple.

Now, assembly is fully shown in 2 pages on the book that is included, basically screw on the gantry, install the spool rollers and plug a few cables in.

Here’s the PCI express interface I talk about:

For main assembly, I slotted in the gantry and tipped the printer to its side to insert the bolts from below:

Then I had to plug in a few cables at the bottom for the stepper motors and end stop like this one:

The filament spool holder setup is a bit different, which I like as new ideas are good for hobbies:

The instructions said to adjust the V slot eccentric nuts if anything was loose, and I found that everything on the gantry was nice and tight but the bed had a little bit of movement in the Y direction (Up and Down). I moved the eccentric nuts with the included (and very nice) spanner while wobbling the bed until it stopped wobbling but not so far that it was tight to slide. In this picture you can see the eccentric nuts under the bed frame:

Now, Here is the assembled printer:

I followed the instructions for bed levelling, it reccommended the paper method, but oh I love how easy it is to bed level with the touch screen. I took photos of each step of the menus here:

It recommended heating nozzle and bed for 1min before levelling, so I did:

And now here is the Levelling menu, just press on each corner and adjust the bed, no auto level>disable steppers and manual movement stuff…

Here’s some pics from levelling

Levelling went smoothly, I did it with paper all around and then quickly double checked and touched up by eye, which was suuuuper easy with the button presses.
I have noticed by this point but the steppers are nice and quiet, even at high speeds!

Lastly after I added an old almost empty roll of white filament for a test, I put the test print on, here’s a pic of the first layer:

Unfortunately this test print was somewhat underwhelming. It didn’t have consistent extrusion and the finish wasn’t nice.

So I decided after the underwhelming test print I would set this up in CURA so I have a known start place and go from there. Technically there is no CURA profile for this printer, but since It is basically an Ender 3 I created an Ender 3 profile and then renamed it and changed the start and end G code to what i prefer on my Ender 3. Really nothing else was required for changes which is good. I will probably export and upload the profile to my blog when I complete this review if anyone wants it.

Now for print settings I didn’t change that much from the basic ender 3 settings, the main one was that I changed retraction from 5mm to 1mm as this printer has a direct drive extruder.

I wanted to print a baby yoda, so I scaled the model down 50% and put it on the USB stick included with the printer.

For changes on the printer itself, I tightened the preload on the spring for the extruder drive, which was quite easy with the small knob on the back. I did this because the last print was under-extruding and I noticed the drive gear was slipping on the filament and it even made a bit of a mess of chunks of filament.

Now, THIS is the result (First pic showing the tree supports):

After this success, i scaled the model back up to 100% and went again.

And one in green, because Yoda..

So I’ve gotta say, the quality of these prints is impeccable, I did use a 0.12 layer height because I know that this is an intricate and curvy model, but WOW I am impressed.

No visible layer lines, no layer shift, no nothing just a perfect print, on the SECOND print, with my guessed CURA settings….. No benchmarks, no nothing lol.

Let me know your thoughts 

Leave a Comment

Hey Guys!

So it’s been what, 2 months since I introduced myself to 3D Printing here, and I have another review for you… The Anet A8 Plus.

Now I’d like to preface this with the note that I know about all the issues with the original Anet A8 and I have steered clear and I came into this expecting things to be negative.

So I got the DIY version of the Anet A8 Plus, found HERE, as it’s a bit cheaper and lets be honest if you want to learn about a printer and how to look after it, building it might be a good idea. I will note though that you need to know what you’re doing to some degree when building a printer or you will have issues, small things like adding pre-tension etc make a big difference. Let’s get started.

The Anet A8 Plus, came in a box of similar size to my Ender 3 Pro, except there was almost nothing pre-assembled, it was basically a box of parts:

It was at this point that I realised……

So after a few days I brought myself to having a crack at assembling this guy, I made a tidy area and pulled out a few things I thought I needed. I decided to attempt full assembly using only the included instruction book, which was a paper copy in comparison to the ender 3’s PDF on the SD card which was nice. I have steps of the assembly photographed, so I will list them out and then do a general speel on assembly.

So overall the assembly was uneventful, but very time consuming, I did this over 3 evenings after work, totaling in the neighbourhood of 10 hours. There are just a lot of little things that take as much time to figure out as they do to actually do. I found the general quality of the parts to be acceptable, and i can tell there is a noticeable improvement in the quality of the 3D printed parts from other people online that have received this printer. The one thing I might say is that the linear roller bearings are not smooth and they have a little play against the guide rod, but I may be able to fix this by packing them with some more grease.

Some important notes about the assembly, the x axis belt retention setup is 3D printed and i found that the belt would slip in one half of it when it got to tension and lose tension, so I got the belt set at the right length and super glued it into the 3d printed part, this has fixed the issue but will mean i’ll need to re-print the part if I replace the belt.

The y axis linear rods should be installed with some pre-tension, this means installing them, loosening the top retention screws 1/4 turn, raising the locking collars and then re-tightening the retention screws to that the rails are tight. This will have an effect on the finished product of your 3d printed parts and it’s good to keep this mindset of putting extra effort into maintaining pre-tension and reducing tolerances throughout the assembly process as you will get a better finished result (often better than a factory assembled printer.

I must say I was pleased to find that this is a factory 24V model, meaning that you could easily upgrade to a 24v silent driver board and everything else wouldn’t need changing, it also means the hot end and bed heat up quickly. 

I found the instructions to be suprisingly good and unlike 99% of chinese instructions I have used, the only place they are lacking is in the hot end installation. They should be much clearer about how to install the hot end and thermistor as this is critical for avoiding damage (and fire).

The wiring was a little complex but everything was relatively well labelled and I was able to figure it out, it was definitely challenging though and cable managing that many wires is not far short of a nightmare. The included wire wrap is not great and I would recommend ordering some plastic conduit much like what comes on the creality printers, or just printing the wire guides right off the bat.

Now to the results part, Bed levelling worked well, and from the get go I actually installed some of the larger levelling knobs i had lying around, and the included glass bed seems to be quite flat. I did level the x axis rail by measuring the height both sides and turning the y-axis steppers to the same height before turning on the printer, this makes the bed levelling work better and reduces natural layer shift. 

Here is my “perfect” first layer with the included roll of white PLA:

And here are some of my small prints, all of these were done on the ender 3 pro except for 1, I challenge you to figure out which one is from the Anet A8 Plus (note the one on the Anet was printed at 70mm/s as I was testing the speed capabilities):

Finally, here are some roller guides and rollers i printed for my ender 3 enclosure on the Anet A8 Plus:

So final thoughts, would I purchase the Anet A8 Plus myself? Definitely yes, it has surpassed my expectations and I feel it is like a CR10 Competitor with some Pro features and close to an Ender 3 pro price point.

I like that it has a direct drive extruder too, although it does look to be a less advanced extruder it seems to work just fine, I will be getting to printing TPU on it this week so I look forward to the results of that. I will be able to compare results to the Bowden TPU prints I have been doing on the Ender 3 Pro.

Please let me know what questions you guys may have and what your thoughts on this printer are.

Cheers,

Leave a Comment

Alright! I’ve had the Ender 3 XS Pro from banggood for a bit over a month now. Here’s a link to the item: Ender 3 XS Pro

So I’ll make it clear, Banggood supplied this for my review, but I’m no noob in the 3D printing space, I’ll give a brief history:
I started out with a XYZ Davinci V1.0, and printed mostly ABS, then got an UpBox, and in the last 3 or 4 years i was running a farm of a few ultimaker 2’s, but I nolonger have any of these and wanted to try out the creality side as a friend has had a CR10 for a long while now and I helped him with it and liked it. I also currently have a CR10 S5 I picked up second hand for cheap, it has been mistreated and took some work but is now doing perfect prints.

Now, onto the Ender 3 XS Pro, technically Creality only offers the Ender 3 XS and the Ender 3 Pro as individual printers, but what Banggood does is take an Ender 3 Pro and do all of the XS mods to it (or vice versa) so you’re basically getting the best of both worlds.
Here’s how it came in the box, pretty standard for an ender 3:

Setup time was about 2 hours of fluffing around, I purposely only used the included instructions (on the SD card) and not a youtube video to see if I had any issues. Even the cables were clearly marked and I didn’t have any real issues with assembly of the unit. If I was to do it again, I’m pretty sure i could assemble it and be doing the first benchy in under an hour. Here’s the assembled printer:

So levelling the bed was easy, and I was able to use the included instructions for this too. I just used the paper method, and since the bed was already set up with the large adjustment knobs it was very easy to do and i was suprised how sturdy the structure was. For an adhesive for every print i’ve done so far I have just used a medium coat of my wifes hairspray, re-applicating each print and then cleaning off with metho and paper towel every 5 or so prints. I started printing with the included PLA, and I used CURA, with the settings on this webpage: http://www.emcu.eu/configure-ultimaker-c…l-ender-3/
This is how the first print came out:

After all my filament came in…. here’s the filament tower next to my wife:

Oh yeah, so after the filament came in I decided to give the Saintsmart 95A TPU a go, and it took some tuning of the settings but at a print speed of 35-40mm/s and keeping retraction on I was able to get some really beautiful TPU results, here’s a XT60E-M and SMA mount I modelled in solidworks and printed on the Ender 3 XS-pro:

Overall, I like the ender 3 very much, and if I was to buy another one I’d get this pre-modified one from Banggood again as it saved a lot of time and hassle, and to be honest this thing works better than the Ultimakers i was using….. but that might upset some people. Let me know what you’d like to see me print on the ender 3, and if you guys would be interested in my dry box project:

As far as modifications are concerned, I’d recommend an updated fan duct, I went for the Hero me, and I printed it in Esun ABS+ on the ender 3 as well, I had some warping issues, but a warmer room or enclosure would’ve fixed this.I found that the upgraded duct helped significantly with big overhangs without supports, I found I could go even up to 65-70 degrees with this duct! Anyhow here’s the finished result of that fan duct:

Also, here’s a comparison pic between my ender and my cr10 s5…. biiiig size difference!

Please let me know any questions you guys may have that i haven’t covered in this review, I’ll be sure to make a video in the near future, but that’ll probably be a comparison between the ender and the CR10 S5, while they are polar opposites it still seems there are people trying to figure out which one to get!

Banggood has asked me to mention their black friday sales from November 27th-30th. If you’re interested in this printer it’ll be a good time to pick one up at a cheap price. Here’s the link to the main page for the black friday sales: Banggood black Friday sale

Leave a Comment