FlashForge Creator Max 2 IDEX Review

[Music] hey everyone back today with another awesome review this time of the brand new flash forge creator max 2 independent dual extruder printer this flash forward should be available as of the release of this video and it's a pretty big upgrade from their previous flashforge creator max1 which i reviewed a while back while i go over the specs you can watch me unbox and set it up this machine is very similar to that creator max in size with a build volume of only 200 millimeters by 148 millimeters by 150 millimeters this printer can be entirely enclosed to allow for printing of higher warping materials the shipping weight of this box is a whopping 23 kilograms or 50 pounds so it's definitely a heavy printer for its build volume it also comes with two full spools of pla this printer comes in at a fairly expensive 969 dollars the most expensive printer in my arsenal so i'll have to test to see if it's worth that price now what clearly sets this printer apart from the creator max1 are these independently moving extruders i've only reviewed one other printer like this the jg maker artist d which i will link to down below though this one has the added benefits of being enclosed and a gantry style printer where the build plate moves up and down i was actually under the impression that this is a core xy machine but it seems to be cartesian similar to that ender 5. that said i always prefer to have the build volume moving up and down rather than back and forth in the y direction whenever possible one of the other things that sets this creator max 2 apart from the one while minor is that removable build plate it can be hard to remove prints in an enclosed machine such as this so the ability to remove the build plate is definitely a welcomed addition you can see the creator max 1 and 2 on the screen now and it's pretty clear that they stuck with the original design and the biggest upgrades on this are those dual independent moving extruders or idecs for short which is actually a very big upgrade in my opinion having an idex printer has so much more use than a printer attempting to do dual extrusion in any other fashion which i will show off when doing my dissolvable support test later in this video along with easy dissolvable printing the idex printer allows for duplicate printing mode where you can print two parts at the exact same time in order to save on print time as well as the ability to dual color print both of which i don't normally have much use for but i'll be testing regardless now that i'm all set up it's time for that first test print for this i actually just go ahead and just print the included model of two mirrored benchies using both of the included white and blue spools of filament all i did was click print without any tweaking and well these came out pretty good in my opinion the white benchy has a couple blemishes but the blue one came out just about as good as i could have hoped while i'm not a person who's running a print farm cranking out multiple parts i could definitely see printing two of the exact same items at the same time can be beneficial to some of you out there since these two benches seem to be modified from the original design i go ahead and slice a single standard benchy just to see how it comes out as you can see on the screen though flashforge uses a proprietary slicing software called flashprint i've become familiar with it due to the creator max it's actually a really simple slicer to use and i don't have many complaints about it other than the fact it's proprietary and slices into a file called gx rather than g code and just as expected this printed great so far the printing quality can't be complained about on my end now that we have those tests it's time to print in dual color if you've seen any of my videos on this topic before i personally don't have any reason to print a part in just two colors of the same material and if i do it's few and far between that said i'm still gonna make sure to test this properly first i go ahead and print the included model of this moai what i really like about this is how the printer decides to purge any excess material while one extruder is idle it sits out of the way and off to the side when it comes to start printing it wipes off the nozzle on the metal plate below it and then does a small wall around your print to purge if you remember my review of the jg maker artist d this purging was one of the things that frustrated me the most it was very hard to get purging down properly and well this creator max has the settings built in to work perfectly the amount of wasted material on this is extremely minimal and it definitely got the job done you can see how easily it comes off and you're left with this pretty dual colored model considering i had to do zero tweaking to get this i'm pretty stoked and if your machine did require an offset for one of these extruders that is extremely easy to do on this printer you can tell each extruder to lay down a line of material and you'll easily be able to see if one extruder is off from the other luckily i didn't need to do any tweaking in this regard but if you notice that the colors are overlapping and not lining up you can change this right when you get your printer now it's time to slice a couple of dual color models first up is this dragon holding an egg that i printed on a couple of other dual extrusion printers all it takes is setting one stl to be set to extruder 2 and the rest is easily taken care of by the slicer the purge shell wall and all the proper settings didn't need any tweaks by me and i would definitely consider this another success before moving forward onto my favorite thing about this printer i do one more fun dual colored print this time being a hairy unicorn all relevant models will be linked to in the description down below in case any of you want to print these models as well just like that previous model i'm easily able to set the hair on the unicorn to a different extruder than the rest of the model then when complete removing the purge wall shows how awesome the print is beneath it with a little bit of heat gunning you get this model that you see on the screen now like i mentioned earlier this is definitely fun but honestly not very useful in my opinion if you happen to need something in only two colors great this will work perfectly but other than that i don't really see much use what i do see a lot of use for is dissolvable support printing if you followed me for a bit you'll know i have done a lot of testing in this regard i have a full detailed video going over my successes and failures linked to in the description down below but from what i've learned it isn't worth attempting dissolvable supports unless you have a printer with independently moving extruders to very quickly summarize when using a printer with dual extruders going into a single hot end dissolvable printing can be pretty much impossible this is often due to nozzle clogs which makes a lot of sense considering the two materials you're extruding have different compositions and melting points when printing using dual extruders with connected nozzles such as that creator max1 i had you are going to be consistently dealing with knocking prints over along with that for some reason i have a lot of trouble getting the dissolvable support material to stick with any other method than independent extruders first up in my testing is my favorite dissolvable support test design this impossible gearbox which i tested extensively in that dissolvable support printing video if you want tips on the settings i use or what materials stick with what make sure to watch the detailed video in the description because i won't be covering that immense amount of detail in this video through that video i found that polydissolve works great with pla and so i get to just using that not only did this gearbox print great on the first attempt the minimal amount of wasted purge material makes me happy because this means you can be using more expensive dissolvable options without wasting a ton of money that said this video will only be covering pla with polydissolve now to dissolve the polydissolve i fill up hot water into a container throw the gearbox in and then put the box onto a moving warm build plate the larger the container the better but i actually just used the same container i used in the past just know that the dissolving process will be drastically sped up when using a larger container with more water to dissolve in i like this method of heating a build plate and making the basic g-code to rattle the build plate back and forth because it's simple and most of you out there have the ability to do this but at the end of the day you want warm water that is below the glass transition temperature of your main material that is consistently moving if you're printing with a material that has a glass transition temperature above the boiling point of water you can actually just throw your part into boiling water and speed the process up though we can't obviously do that with pla and just as expected the poly dissolve is entirely gone within about eight hours of rattling on my print bed these gears turn perfectly i hope you can see that with this model it would have been impossible to print this without dissolvable supports if you just use parent support material you would have been left with a print that was impossible to spin and this all worked on my first attempt happy with my results i get to the hardest dissolvable support test i do this bunny trapped in a cage remember that all the design files will be linked to in the description if you want to test them yourself i know that a print like this isn't very practical but it's perfect for a video like this in order to show off what's possible if you've seen my previous attempts at dissolvable supports you'll know that this print was near 100 impossible for me to complete until i started using independently moving extruders and well we are left with another awesome print with very minimal wasted purge material all i then do is remove that purge wall and throw the entire print into another warm bucket of water and start the rattling process all over again since this print has a lot more dissolvable material it would have been a lot smarter for me to use a larger container but since i wasn't in a rush i dissolve as much as i can clean the water out and refill it and then dissolve the rest and here is that result there are a couple of droopy overhangs in the cage and some undissolved remnants of polydissolve but other than that i couldn't have really hoped for better results i assumed that another pass in the container or just a larger container would have gotten the rest of the goop off but even so it's pretty easy to brush off remember i spent weeks trying to get this to work with dissolvable supports with the palette as well with every other non-idex method to zero success this printer succeeded on my first attempt i let the print dry and you can see the results here i wouldn't say this is a perfect print but it's definitely better than all of my other attempts on non-idex printers before calling this video quits though i do one more dissolvable test print this time printing my favorite model on the internet i won't be linking to this one though in the description so you might have to hunt a little bit this was a large model and used the entire build plate of the creator max 2 and it also required 2 passes of water as well again you should use a larger container than i am in this video if you want your dissolving process to go a lot faster than mine and aside from the tiny bit of goop to clean off all of the poly dissolve has disappeared i clean off that little bit of goop let it dry and you can see it on the screen now the undersides are extremely clean and i definitely like the results this print unlike the other two is not impossible without dissolvable sports but it definitely adds to the fun and cleanliness of the underside i personally wouldn't use dissolvable supports when printing in pla on a print that doesn't require but this process would be the same when printing an abs petg tpu nylon or any other type of material that you're able to get dissolvable supports to work on you can see my tests with other material types in that detailed video in the description well now that i have all those tests let's go through the pros and cons starting with the pros this is an independent extruder printer i only have one other type of this machine and it's really the only way to go if you want to print in multiple material types the entire printer can be enclosed meaning you can print abs or other high warping materials a lot easier while the slicer is proprietary the settings are definitely dialed in this makes it a lot easier for someone who isn't well versed in 3d printing to get a clean print those settings include a great way to purge material creating a very thin shell wall around the print making sure not to waste too much material similar to the above two points it works right out of the box i can't tell you how many headaches i've had in the past printing two different material types at once and so this machine can definitely save you an immense amount of frustrations just by it working as it should this gantry style of printer means that the build plate moves up and down rather than rattling back and forth this is always my personal preferred method of printing when possible these independent extruders are perfectly calibrated and can print duplicate parts dual color or dissolvable supports without any issues not a single failure in my tests in this video this has an upgraded removable magnetic build plate which really helps remove prints when compared to that creator max1 and now for the cons it has a pretty small build plate all things considered even though it's a heavy machine the build volume is actually less than that of an ender 3. during setup the z height was actually a little annoying to hone in with when using that magnetic build plate the build plate is moved up and down via only one lead screw rather than two this means that the front of the machine can rattle a bit and isn't as sturdy as having two lead screws i added something to my ender 5 to help with the stabilization and this creator max 2 could definitely benefit from something similar as well and this is a big one the hot end doesn't seem to be all metal meaning that its max printing temperature is only 240 degrees celsius this is unfortunately a big negative because this printer is enclosed and would be great with dissolvable support material if you're able to use hotter temp materials my favorite nylon copa by polymaker prints above 250 degrees celsius and it's a perfect match to combine with polydissolve for clean undersides unfortunately because of this lack of an all metal hot end i can't print it these extruders seem to be very similar to those old makerbot rep 2s from nearly a decade ago i would have hoped they would have improved upon this maybe use dual drive or a larger gear ratio but not so much to be honest though i didn't experience a single stepper skip or any extrusion issues so they may work just fine for your project the entire printer seems very proprietary and difficult to do upgrades on i'm not saying it's impossible to swap the hot ender extruder but i am saying it likely wouldn't be an easy process along with the printer seeming to be difficult to do hardware upgrades it also uses proprietary flash print and gx files while the software is very easy to use it's also nice to have other options and now for my final thoughts if this printer had a dual drive extruder with a gear ratio as well as an all metal hot end then this would be the beast of all beasts in my opinion able to achieve any print you want within this build volume that said this printer is quite expensive coming in at just under a thousand dollars while this honestly now is one of my favorite printers in my arsenal it's going to be difficult for me to say that it's worth that 969 dollar price tag what you need to ask yourself is do i need to print dissolvable supports the answer is yes then i can 100 recommend this printer while the jg maker artist d had a lower price tag and a larger build volume its software and usability wasn't quite as easy as this and it was set up to have that build plate rattle back and forth this creator max 2 really was plug and play and its printed dissolvable supports prints without any hiccups and barely wasted any material at all that said that artist d seems to be a bit easier to modify if needed so you're gonna have to think about this before purchasing there are obviously other idex options out there i just haven't tested them if you have zero plans to ever print with dissolvable support material and you don't see much use in dual color printing like myself then it likely isn't worth it if you plan on printing in one material at a time there are a lot of other cheaper options out there that can print above 240 degrees celsius and be easily modified so this is now one of my favorite printers the price tag just needs to be justified for your use case before i can recommend it entirely well i hope that got everything across in this video i know i didn't test a lot of unique material types but i would assume they work with dissolvable supports just as well as my in-depth video did minus the ability to print above 240 degrees celsius if you have any questions about this printer and want to let me know about anything i missed make sure to leave it in the comments down below thank you all for watching i'll be back soon with further reviews tutorials and fun prints stay safe out there are you new to 3d printing or would like to get some more information the brand new 2020 edition of my book 3d printing failures is now available on amazon this 2020 edition has had every chapter rewritten and updated and there are even six brand new chapters one of these chapters is a detailed explanation of material science and 3d printing by nicholas tocoteu a polymaker which i think makes this book worth it on its own check out now linked in the description down below

Channel: The 3D Print General

Views: 17,372

Keywords: 3D Printing, 3D print

Id: jBA6d1T463U

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021