BIG PRINTER ENERGY!!! The Neptune 3 Max - Big enough for you?

foreign hello we've got a new printer to try out the elegoo Neptune 3 Max and it's a big boy let's get into it [Music] welcome to making for Motorsport where we make more spend less and go faster we've got a 3D printer in for a review today and it's this the elegoo Neptune 3 Max and it is a big boy it's got a ridiculous print volume so we're going to have a bit of a play with it so we're going to set it up see what it's like to do some first prints with is it newbie friendly and then we're going to stretch its legs and do some big prints and also print some proper car parts on it so first up this printer was given to me for free by alagu for purposes of review now they've not seen this video before it goes out and they have no control over what I'm saying these are all my own words if you go to my website you can see my review policy which I ask every company to sign up to before I do a review so you can be sure I am giving you my honest opinion now I normally turn lots of these reviews down but Ella Goose slightly close to my heart because every Arduino Mega I've used for a speed we know has been elegu and they have not let me down yet so it's a brand I trust so I thought hey let's give it a go right then let's stop messing around let's get into it so as you've seen this 3D printer comes in a massive box and it is really well packaged it's only split down into two or three pieces like the base and the Gantry and the braces so that makes it really quick and easy to get together all the electrical connections are really well labeled as are the Fasteners which are referred to in the manual which is also clear and easy to follow overall it only took me about 20 minutes to build it and the fiddliest thing was how to do some of it one-handed so I could film it for you fine people on YouTube there's only one thing that had an issue with which is this sign here which told me to check the voltage selector which I could not find For Love or Money I'm assuming it's somewhere on the power supply inside which you couldn't get to without disassembly which I'm not going to do on a brand new printer so I just plugged it in second space you need lots and lots of space so specifically you need 94 centimeters for the bed fro 75 centimeters of width and 95 centimeters high if you're going to put a spool of filaments on the top of it so to make it fit I had to turn the thing sideways luckily elegu seems to have considered this with a Nifty detachable touch screen once you found all the space you need then it's time to level the bed the manual again is as clear as you like grab some paper and you can do the manual leveling first Dead easy to do and then you hit the mesh leveling and 63 points later you are good to go so the only thing left to do is to load some filament I add some fetching green esun pla plus knocking about so that went in again dead easy following the instructions using the touchscreen so now the print is set up we're going to Slicer model and print on it and I'm going to use the standard package slicer software which is basically a skinned version of cura if you're not familiar with this it's dead easy and as a point I'm going to use the standard inbuilt profiles with no tuning whatsoever anyone familiar with cure or any of the others fairly standard slicing softwares won't find this a problem at all and even if you're a total newbie there's a very clear instruction manual let's go print it so straight out of the box default profiles it's printed of Banshee perfectly well it took 1 hour 51 minutes so it's hardly a record breaker but look at it that's a pretty nice piece I'm happy with that so if you're watching the review on this channel likelihood is you're going to do functional parts so dimensional accuracy is important so we did a 40 mil test Cube right then so that is a really nice little uh calibration Cube should be 40 mil cubed and yeah okay there's maybe some little layer lines you can see from some maybe heat changes and stuff but perfectly good so how does it measure up so across X it is 40.03 so three hundredths of a millimeter too large oh even closer across y so zero point zero two larger and then on Zed 3.39.6263 so a bit further out but still pretty close so the print is good on smaller stuff detail stuff and also it's fairly accurate on these kind of dimensions but it's a big old printer and these are small things so let's print something big how does a 400 benchy grab you yep I like the sound of that we'll stick with the same material profile I'm just going to go to the extra fat so we're just using the inbuilt profiles that come with the machine so nothing that anybody couldn't do out there so the only thing I'm going to change is we're going to change the infill that's five percent and the turn the build plate adhesion off because I've had no problems with the Pei textured plate in fact it gives a really nice little surface finish so slice that send it to the printer so whilst that big boys printing let's talk about the specs on what the machine's actually got on it and to be fair we're going to need a bit of time because it's a decent list so we've already talked about the capacitive touch screen and the mesh leveling on the bed both of which I think are well executed and really needed on a machine of this size but it's got so many other bits to it as well it's got a lovely dual sided Pei spring steel build plate it's got textured and smooth sides and it's worked really well for me up to now no adhesion issues at all and it's got lots of other stuff on it it's got dual lead screws on the z-axis with dual steppers and a timing belt at the top to synchronize them a filament run out sensor thumb screws for belt tensioning quiet stepper drivers dual gear direct drive extruder so if you want to print some flexibles you can do that dead easy it's got twin part cooling fans a really handy LED light strip power cut resume Printing and it's got a lovely little tall drawer cute what we haven't talked about is the print size and it's huge you can fit my old Ender 3 inside the build volume you can fit my bamboo lab x1c inside the build volume it is absurd So speaking of absurd it's time to get this big benchy off the printer as it's been 24 hours and look at it it's magnificent so in a bit more detail look at the size of it I mean it's huge I mean this is that's a standard one there look at the difference insane so how is it done it's done really well I mean you you'd expect I mean there's there's no real fine details on this anymore I mean the 3D benchy on the back is perfectly clear but there's some big challenges with this when you scale it up and that's things like uh the archways become more of a challenge some of the overhangs and the bridging I mean look at the top of this window here I mean this bridging four centimeters worth of bridging on a completely untuned printer there's a couple of kind of um loose bits of filament but nothing but a little bit of touch up wouldn't wouldn't fix but look at the size of it this is now my prize possession but the time I think we did something a little more practical with the printer and I've got a problem so I recently went and did an event in my mini and it didn't work very well because I broke the drive shaft listen carefully yep there it is but as if that wasn't my only issue on the 200 mile drive home on the trailer it lost one of its wheel arches so I could just go and buy a whole new set for like 40 quid or I could print it sounds a lot more fun yeah let's do that but before I could print it on the massive build volume of the Neptune 3 Max I needed a 3D model fortunately I had the one from the other side so I 3D scanned that and sent the STL to my mate Dave of dc3design.com UK who then modeled it up properly in Fusion so it looked all pretty thanks for the headache Dave that was a bit of a challenge by the way David is available to do some Custom Design if you're interested and he recently did this great work for a GI Yaris but anyway once I had the 3D model all nice and tidy I then threw out the printer and started printing unfortunately the print failed because it looks like it's been pulled from the bed by the prince snagging on this ribbon cable feeding the hot end now if you check out mandic really's review of this printer and I suggest you do because it is very good then he's already spotted this issue and fixed it with a 3D print that is freely available on thanks so instead of Reinventing the wheel I downloaded that STL and send it to my bambalab x1c because I needed it quick half an hour later it was printed and I was fitting it to the Neptune 3 Max and so far looking good which leads me to the first problem with the printer in the I'm having to print replacement parts or upgrades for it this soon especially such an obvious issue but in the scheme of things it's not really a massive problem and the solution is already out there so thank you to mandic really and if you guys are interested in more of the techie side of 3D printing I suggest you check him out it is a fantastic Channel highly underrated and unsubscribed so go have a look which brings me to the second issue I have with this printer it's slow now it's a big old bedslinger and that is a big old heated bed to move around so it's never going to be as fast as a smaller printer a core XY or any of the new Clipper based uh bed Slingers like the Neptune 4 or the any cubic Cobra 2 but when it does move it needs to move the plastic so because it only comes with a 0.4 nozzle and with a you know it's a fairly standard Mark 8 hot end that you'd get on a you know a standard end of three it means it's just not moving the plastic for me it's too much of a compromise yes if it's going to be your only printer stick with the 0.4 nozzle so you can do fine detail models and the big stuff you're just gonna have to wait a bit longer for the big stuff but as someone who's going to have it as their big printer this thing needs to be faster on the beat models so that's the negatives of the printer out the way so I just went and started Another Printer however I was using petg and I was very unhappy with the surface finish even after drying it for 12 hours and keeping it in a filament dryer and I've never gone well with PCG so I gave it up as a bad job and went to some PLA and 17 hours later on the standard profile the Neptune 3 Max gave me a wonderfully smooth tidy print and then printing the other side couldn't have been easier just used this button in the curabase slicer and it flipped the model and I just press print 17 hours later again a lovely model in pla off the Lagoon Neptune free MAX so I can only presume it's that petg that is to blame I've never got on with it and there you have it all fitted to the car looking lovely and they even show a bit of a weight saving as well but it's going on a diet now I've spent a bit of time with this printer would I recommend it absolutely it's been a pleasure from the moment I opened the box all the way through to the last print and it's got all the features that you would expect from a modern printer that just makes it a joy to use whether you're a newbie and this is your only printer and you want something flexible you can do small things with and large formats or you're an experience maker and you want a big boy to add to your Arsenal it will do that role for you and it's only really the fact that it doesn't have the high speeds you get with Clipper input shaping and maybe a more powerful hot end to help it melt some plastic faster that's holding it back as a printer I'm going to pause myself there now it's took me a while to get this review out for various reasons and if you're a patron you'll understand slightly more but all of the downsides I've flagged in this video and all the negatives I just talked about have already been solved by elegoo themselves with the Neptune 4 Max printer yes the successor has already come out and IT addresses pretty much all of those issues it retains the same build volume But it includes Clipper with input shaping and pressure advance and all that good stuff so you get some really impressive speeds from a big bed Slinger 500 millimeters per second and you've got all the other good stuff including the massive build volume that we have on the Neptune 3 Max minus about 20 mil at the top and all of the other lovely features and you've also got a 60 watt heater block that goes up to 300 degrees so you can do the high-end materials and you can also push a bit more filament with the bigger nozzles so it looks like the Neptune formats is going to be a fantastic printer but none of that makes the three max any less of a great printer and if you can get one for the right price because I think the new models just come in and you don't mind waiting that little bit longer for your prints well I reckon you could bag a great machine at a great price so if you've enjoyed this review then please hit the thumbs up it really does help and consider subscribing if you want to see more videos like this or if you really want to help then head over to the patreon and join These Fine human beings here and maybe get a little bit extra but that's it from me for now so thanks for watching be good and if you can't be good don't get caught

Channel: Making for Motorsport

Views: 7,597

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Id: Rjg1ROniELQ

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 05 2023