FlashForge Creator 3 IDEX V2 Review and Test | Their best 3D Printer?

[Music] in this video i will review and test the flashforge creator 3 industrial grade 3d printer after the success of my last 3d printer review slash test video i got the creator 3 3d printer from flash watch and also another one more about at the end free of charge to make a minimum 25 minutes long review video on it as you can see it got even longer but i labeled all main chapters so you can jump to your favorite ones i was really happy when flashwatch contacted me because that was one of my dream to reach this point with my channel and it just came true and not to mention that i always wanted to own a filtered closed chamber size 3d printer mainly because i would like to print with carbon filaments in the future without the fear of getting carbon dust everywhere the intermittent dual extruder just makes it even better this however does not mean that i won't tell you the truth i work as a test engineer in my main job and so i made this video as professional as i could it took me more than a month mainly because of my beginner editing skills but hopefully you will like it but enough talking let's get started let's start with the unboxing look at this they are not kidding this is a huge package but it is essential to protect the printer during shipping you can see that all sides are well protected this printer is around 40 kilograms or 88 pounds so it is better to warm up before lifting it or just ask for a helping hand if you have after taking off the side panels i found some grip on it and could finally put it onto the table the best part of all unboxing is this peeling off process at the very top you can find the user guide and the quick start guide power cable and here are some extra accessories like the metal scraper the solid glue some wrenches grease unclogging pin tool and some extra tesla cubes then you can also find in the package 2 kilogram of pla filament one white and the blue one and finally the waste boxes inside the printer you can find two yellow labeled bed fixing clips one on the x-axis and another one on the y-axis they have to be removed before printing because that was just installed to fix the extruder position during transportation after that we can plug in the power cord and turn on the printer the first signs that it is live is the fan noise this timer that you can see i just added it onto the video and then you can see the flash watch logo and after around 20 seconds you get this crazy sound so you know that your printer booted up now you can raise the bed to be able to take off the last part of this packaging material [Music] so let's assembly and calibrate the printer the first task that we have to make is the battery link to avoid the nozzle to crash into the building platform before the first print you can choose which extruder do you want to use for the bed leveling process it doesn't really matter which one do you choose because they are on the same level the building platform has three fixation points one in the middle at the rear and two at the front the rear one is fixed and the two at the front you can adjust the reference point for the printer is the rear one and then goes to the front measures the height there and then compared to the reference point and tells you how many degrees do you have to turn and in which direction there are red and white dots on the knob the red means 90 and the right 45 degrees so in my case now the 225 degrees is two red dots and one wide after you adjusted the knob you can verify your adjustment and the extruder we measure again the height and let you know if the adjustment was right and now we can click on the ok and repeat the same process at the last measuring point here's a closer look about this label both extruder has a piezoelectric sensor inside which means that it has to touch the build platform and it will push up the nozzle and so it will trigger the sensor one more adjustment that i make is this anti-hosing plate which is under the nozzle until it's sparking in its place and it has to touch the nozzle to not let the melted filament flow out you can carefully bend it with your hand just be sure that it's not too high because probably it can erode the nozzle with time or just false trigger the piezoelectric sensor and corrupt your print so now you can see that it pushes down a little bit the plate but not too much so i happy with regarding the quick start guide the next step is to install the waste boxes but since the version 2 upgrade from this printer you don't really need them because of the anti-housing plate which we just adjusted before and now it's time to load the filament you have to take off the first side panel and then you can push the filament into the teflon cube through this filament sensor [Music] after both filaments are loaded you can click on the filament and load and now it will heat up both extruders and you will get a sound feedback when it's finished and here we are by the way i could not turn this off just the startup sound i don't know how is it possible if you know it please let me know in the comment section the instruction says that you have to push down this knob to be able to fit the filament through the extruder but this is just required when the extruder motor knot turns because if it's turning you can just let the filament to feed by the extruder motor and it will grab with the gears and it will feed the filament automatically so once again you can make this process till the noses are cold for the first time because there is no filament inside the extruder and then you can push down this knob push the filament all the way into the button and then start to warm up the nozzle and start the loading process and it will load automatically the filament [Music] and our next step is to calibrate the set axis which is pretty straightforward first the printer goes to the home position and then after it will move both extruders into the build plate so it can measure the height difference between the right and the left extruder now we can jump to the x axis calibration the printer first heats up the nozzles because now we actually print with the printer at the first time i don't know how is it with you but i print four years from now and i still can stare the printer during its work so after the right nose that prints a line it goes home and then comes the left extruder and tries to print the line aligned with the previously printed one [Music] after it finished the print we'll ask you if the lines are aligned or not in our case as you can see the lines are really good aligned and that's why i just going further with the next step [Music] if you have to adjust the lines you can make it so that you push on the no and then with the plus minus sign you can shift the left extruder to match with the right extruder so after the set and x-axis the only one which left is the y-axis this calibration process is similar with the x-axis one just now prints the line along the y-axis [Music] the result was again really good so i did not have to adjust anything just go further [Music] in the menu you can find the sensitivity option which shows the piezoelectric sense or sensitivity in the left and right extruder the higher the value the lower the sensitivity there is also auto leveling option if you turn on the auto leveling application it means that it stores the calibration that we will make now and it will apply these values before each print if you turn on the do leveling before printing option the printer will repeat this process every time when you start printing if the auto leveling does not give you the desired first layer quality you can use the c calibration expert mode under this option you can find the z calibration number and the diff number which is basically the difference between the right and left extruder in height and the z calibration is the distance between the build plate and the nozzles if you increase the number then the gap will be bigger between the nozzle and the build plate you can connect to this printer via wi-fi ethernet or hotspot if we check the wi-fi connection you can log in to your home network and after if you have the connection the printer automatically checks if any firmware update available if the connection was successful you can also see a small icon on the upper right corner as you can see after the printer connected to the internet i got the fever upgrade window so i clicked a yes and again a funny music after a quick restart you can check the new female version under the tools and about here i have to say that i made all my test prints with this firmware version it was interesting to see that the factory already tested the printer with some filament one very neat feature is the vlan hotspot connectivity if you place the printer somewhere where there is no wi-fi or internet connection you still can connect directly to your 3d printer via hotspot small icon also shows you when the hotspot is available if you check now the wi-fi ip you can realize that it has changed it's time to print something there was a 16 gigabyte usb stick in the package and if we check it we can find pre-sized samples that you just can print immediately under test files there are three of them so let's start with the first file which is a dual color mode print the display shows you a picture about your 3d model the remaining time which was calculated and the actual temperatures the print starts with the right extruder and after it reaches the point changing to the left extruder and continues another very handy feature is the removable flexible build plate the rough setup was good we can see from this print that the two noises are well aligned a little blob from the nozzle change is there and you can see the seams but the quality is pretty good i think this is not an error it was in the model some kind of sign but i don't know what does it mean after i remove the print i just realized that the build platform is moving around too much so i checked the screws and i realized that these four screws here were loose so i just fastened them and then it solves the problem the next file in the row was a mirror mode print because this printer uses an idex technology which means it has an independent dual extruder system you can print in mirror mode or duplicate mode with it during printing you can turn on and off the light if you don't want to stare it then you can turn it off there is also a z-axis compensation option but this works just before the print started so for example if you know that the layer is too high you can restart the print and before the first layer printed you can adjust the first layer height the third file on the stick is a dual color print with multiple extruder changes during the print process this part was printed with a wall around it which prevents against deflects caused by the ozine filament during the travel movement of the extruder between the parking position and the printed part let's check what's on the pen drive we have the flash print this is the slicer two guides the quick start and the user guide the test files that we already printed and some videos about the setup process okay regarding the user guys i would recommend you to use the ones which are on the pen drive because the printed one is an older version if we check you can see that the number is four and this is a number three version and if we go to the page where it shows what's in the kit then you can clearly see the difference and this one is the difference the nozzle brush i spent some time to look for it in the package but now you know you can also find an option in the menu where you can choose between the steel brush and the end using plate as far as i know since 2019 december all creator 3 printers are version 2 ones if you are wondering what are the differences between the version 1 and version 2 printers the enhanced extruder design the removable magnetic build plate four fans at the back from which two blows in fresh cold air to the extruders and the other two sucks out the air from the chamber through a theater and finally a more universal spool holder design speaking about the spool order i took some filament spools that i had at home and tried them out but as you can see small narrow spools are no problem but wider ones are still not comfortable i also measure the absolute maximum size which still fits and end up with these numbers maximum width is 70 millimeter or 2.8 inches maximum diameter is 210 millimeters or 8.3 inches and the minimum hole size is 40 millimeters or 1.6 inches filaments that are sensible for humidity like pva tpu pc or ptg are not required to store here because during the printing it can absorb water from the humid air i also made a dry box solution for my filaments if you are interested to make it i put a link into the description where i show how can you make your own but there is no hole here where you can feed the filament through without taking off the side panels which ruins the closed chamber concept if you are planning to use this kind of filaments with this printer and my favorite part is the testing because the build platform flatness is a very serious requirement by 3d printing i insert the digital dial gauge onto the right extruder stepper motor with a double-sided tape which is not professional but it good enough for this job now with the help of the flash print slices software we can connect to the printer and move the head and build platform from your pc this way we can also set up a reference zero point where we can go back easily all the time when we need it when i leveled the build platform with the built-in leveling function i always got a minimum 45 degrees value for adjustment but i wanted to make it more precise and in this way i could level the platform much better after i finished the leveling i went back to the save zero point and checked to be a platform level in an age letter shape by the way the left camera picture comes from the built-in camera which this 3d printer also has out of the box the resolution however is fairly low with its 800 x pixels or half a megapixel but it is good enough to check out our 3d printing process time to time as you can see the fluctuation is inside the one tenth of a millimeter range so i am happy with this result the next test shows the noise level and power measurement in different stages [Music] around this printer has two led lights one called flashlight which lights up the printing chamber and the other one called the ambient light is the flashforge logo background light now i just turn them on and off but as you can see it is possible to set up their brightness also if you turn off both lights you can save around four and a half watts [Music] the preheating power is pretty much the same as preheating at the start of this 3d print i just would like to show you that it does not matter what is the setup temperature till the build platform reaches that level it will give its maximum power that is another question how much power does it need to keep the platform on this temperature it depends on the temperature difference between the build platform and its ambient temperature in our case the printing chamber helps to keep the surrounding air warm and so minimizing the heating power requirements and costs now i heat up the build plate and the two extruders simultaneously and so we can see that the power difference is around 100 watt which means that each extruder probably equipped with a 50 watt heat cartridge which is needed to handle such high temperature as 300 320 degrees celsius which this printer capable of for comparison a prusa mk3 3d printer uses a 40 watt version in the following i tested how much time does the pill platform need to heat up from 25 to 100 degrees celsius and also how does the temperature distribution look as you can see it takes around 12 minutes to reach this temperature the printer is also equipped with filament runouts and source in this test i check what is happening if the filament runs out [Music] as you can see after the sensor was triggered the printer prints a little bit more and then stop printing and moves back to its parking position after it reached that it will give you a sound feedback now you have to first unload manually the filament which was run out and then you have to reload it [Music] after you pulled out the filament from the teflon cube you can start the reloading process it would be nice if the printer prints further after a filament run out event to use up the rest of the filament from the teflon tube it has a fixed length so it would be just some changes on the firmware to do that when i finished the unloading process the extruder moved back over the anti-housing plate so now when i load the filament again it can not flow out i had to press done and ok to get the extruder back again to the open area but now it starts oozing the filament so i started again the loading process and after that it moved back finally to the right position these movements are clearly changed up which should be fixed as you can see the filament runout event is pretty complex it could be as easy as letting the teflon cube length sprinting then automatically unload the filament and prompt the user to remove the rest and reload the filament so speaking about modifying the firmware i collected several issues that hopefully flash watch with fixing the future and make this printer more user friendly and more efficient printer for example when you post a print the build platform moves down and extruders are going to the back of the printer till this point is fine but after you continue your print the wheel platform moves back first and then the extruder comes back its restarting points i would prefer the exact opposite movement by restarting the print as posing it which means move back the extruder to their position where the print was paused so you have a good clearance between the extruder and the already printed parts and just after this point raise the build platform back now i stop the left extruder and as you can see the extruder stays where you stubbed it i would prefer to let it go back to its parking position in this shaky close-up you can see that the movement stopped but the filament is oozing further out from the extruder another not optimum movement order when you use a so-called set hope between extruder changes and when one extruder finishes its trap the beard plate moves down and the extruder parks but then before the other extruder comes the build platform moves up first and just after that comes the extruder it is more risky as the other way around the auto leveling process could be also much faster with not moving the build platform so far from the extruder between all measuring points it would be enough to use one or two millimeters of clearance and so it would not take one cycle 13 seconds long just around two so by the nine measuring points it means 100 second faster leveling which compared to the actual 127 seconds is a 470 percent quicker solution and you know time is money if you look it closer the right extruder have not parked back over the anti-using plate and it is now waiting for the heat up process before a print so it means when it starts printing you have a good chance to have hosed out filament right at the start restart the print with auto leveling can take almost 5 minutes long because the extruders have to cool down before the leveling process when you manually pause the print it has a delay which can be fairly long as you can see here it is not that big of an issue just good to know if you want to pause your print to insert for example magnets or nuts into them then you should use the pose at heights slices settings with this option the printer will automatically post the print at the given heights [Music] [Music] during printing there is a z-axis compensation option which is just applies to the following layer rather than the actually printed one which makes this feature pretty much useless it would be nice to see a live height adjustment solution here another nice feature would be a smarter extruder heating solution now if you print something like this sample the printer will heat up both extruders from the beginning even if there is just a little white part at the very end of your print process the white extruder stays also warm for the whole printing time which can easily cause clogging with time because of the burned filament inside the nozzle and finally the vibrations the printer is equipped with 12 millimeter linear rods which is a huge mess and also pretty much an overclean my opinion probably a 10 millimeter or even an eight millimeter rod would be enough the beds however seem to be too small for this mess i would go with a 10 millimeter bright one this moving mess causing a lot of vibrations that you can see here i plan to put this printer next to my ender 5 plus but seeing that i have to find out some dampening solution probably a rubber mat would work to be able to print with both printers simultaneously without any issues [Music] let's start first with the cons noise level this printer with its 60 decibels is definitely loud you don't want to be in the same room when it sprints mainly this noise is caused by the fans and it has minimum eight of them four for the chamber filtration two for the extruders and then other two for the electronic parts constant part cooling you cannot turn off the part cooling because it's shared with the heat brake cooling fan some high temp materials though like abs pc or nylon do not require part cooling to reach better layer adhesion what you can do basically print a little cap and put it onto the fan exhaust to block its airflow slow start and restart time limited slicer compatibility other than the stock flash print slicer which is not so advanced yet you can use the cura and simplify 3d slices but there are no official printer profiles available i just could find some on team givers and on the creator 3 facebook group i put the links into the description if you're interested buggy fimber as you could see there is a huge potential for further improvements but hopefully my feedback will also help to eliminate these issues and finally the vibrations and the pros pre-assembly printer closed and filtered chamber perfect for printing filaments like abs asa pc nylon and carbon filled ones nine point auto leveling an idex system independent dual extruder system which makes possible to print two parts at the same time in mirror or duplicate mode no purge tower needed by filament change and so it prints quicker high temperature printing up to 300 degrees celsius with the stock or 320 degree celsius with a hardened nozzle which are available in 0.4 or 0.6 millimeter diameter removable magnetic bill plate for connectivity wi-fi hotspot ethernet and flash cloud a built-in camera and finally a multi-machine control this is really helpful if you use more printers simultaneously as a conclusion i think this 3d printer has a solid hardware which has less advanced femur and slices solutions after flashforge develop them further what they continuously do it has the potential to be one of the best price to quality ratio professional close chambered with independent dual extruder equipped 3d printer on the market and as i said at the beginning i got two printers from flashwatch the other one is the creator pro 2 which is more of a consumer level 3d printer if you're curious about that review also then consider to subscribe to my channel and ring the bell to get notified when i uploading that video till then happy printing and see you next time [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Dombi3D

Views: 18,036

Keywords: FlashForge, 3D printer, review, unboxing, test, creator3, Filament

Id: 8hlkY2RoDGo

Length: 36min 59sec (2219 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021