FlashForge Guider 2S High Temp Printer Review

[Music] hey everyone back today with a review i'm excited about and that's the flashforge guider 2s [Music] this printer is all enclosed with a high temp nozzle meaning you can crank out high temp materials before i get into everything please keep in mind that i received the flash forge adventurer 4 right after this printer and i'll have that review soon that is a new model by flashforge and is able to do many of the things this printer can so stay tuned for that review soon before you finalize any decision on purchasing this machine i'll be sure to go over the specs while you watch me unbox and set up the guider 2s now this is a beast of a printer and when i say beast i really mean it this time this is the heaviest and largest package i've ever received when it comes to reviewing a printer i wish i recorded the struggle of me bringing this up my stairs so you could all have a good laugh but you can see the struggle of me getting it onto my workbench this printer is entirely assembled and really requires nothing on your end other than maybe another person to help you lift everything and then add the sticky bed sheet now this is an enclosed printer meaning it should be good for higher temp higher warping materials when i say that many of the enclosed printers i reviewed in the past weren't able to actually achieve all high temp materials due to having a subpar hotend well this hot end on this printer can go up to 300 degrees celsius meaning it can print just about every material i have personally tried up until this point it also is clearly quite large with a build volume of 280 millimeters by 250 millimeters by 300 millimeters but it all being enclosed makes it seem even larger the build plate moves up and down on this printer though it's technically a cartesian in its movements another huge benefit in this enclosed printer is the materials used inside the printer the carriages the mounts just about everything important is actually metal on this printer not plastic this is the first time i've had a printer like this every printer i've tried in the past has these mounts being plastic everything being metal means you won't have to worry about the ambient air getting too hot this printer is meant to run very hot the extruder is set up in a direct fashion which i prefer though it unfortunately doesn't have any gear ratio or dual drive features this setup reminds me a lot of the old makerbot rep2 extruders it has a filament runout detection resume printing and assisted bed leveling it also has a built-in camera for remote viewing and an actual filter on the fan so no toxic fumes or unpleasant odors escape it also has a large magnetic build plate as well as a glass build plate in case you want to print anything that requires glass to stick to it it comes with a point four millimeter nozzle stock but it comes with an extra brass point four millimeter nozzle a hardened steel point four millimeter nozzle and then brass point three point six and 0.8 millimeter nozzles i have to say this is the most complete printer i've been sent to date that doesn't mean i don't have my negative views which i will get to but it does mean that this comes at a hefty price tag this entire printer currently retails for 1999 on flashforge usa's website which would make it my most expensive printer by quite a lot let's see if it's worth it the first thing to set up is the auto bed leveling which seems to be a bit fashioned rather than a standard bl touch or easy able this has a mechanical leveling system that you set up before you start printing what looks to be a mechanical end stop extends from the side of the hot end and then goes to each corner and tells you whether it should be raised or lowered this definitely isn't as good as current bed leveling systems but it's better than not having anything built in at all the included file is really basic and doesn't show off any features or capabilities of this printer but before using unique materials i go ahead and slice my own parts they want you to use their flash print slicer though i'm personally not a big fan i've used the flash print software for a few years now and i have to be honest to say that there hasn't been any real upgrades in years they'll upgrade the software to include new printers though the setup interface and abilities are just about exactly the same as when i used flashprint a few years ago this means i'm definitely more of a fan of using cura than flashprint and luckily cura has the ability to slice for flashforge.gx files now but for this test print i'm just using flashprint for some odd reason that i'm not able to explain my benchy prints just continually had a layer shift at the same exact point i was really afraid that it was something mechanically wrong with the printer but before i decided that was the issue i went ahead and sliced a normal xyz cube and this print came out just fine without the layer shift so it just ended up being something weird with my benchy file that i've used tons of times in the past no idea what was happening there now that i know the printer is working fine and that i'm not a fan of the flash print software i go ahead and add the gx plugin to cura this allows you to print as.gx files rather than g-code so that they're ready to be read by flash print printers you just need to click gx from the drop-down file whenever you export your file i bring in the same exec benchy stl and get to slicing i'll be sure to include the website i visited which helped me to hone in the proper start g-code settings for this guider 2s i use the settings that i think will work and i'm left with what you see on the screen now unfortunately white is a little hard to see defects on my camera and lighting but it came out pretty good it isn't the best benchy i've ever printed but i can sort of read the license plate so i would consider it a success all of that said printing pla benchies is definitely not the reason you would buy this printer the reason you'd buy this printer is to go high temp high warping materials which is exactly what i test out next every material i try here is made by polymaker who are my favorite filament manufacturers they're kind enough to send me these spools for free but i do prefer polymaker regardless since they really seem to know what they're doing care about their products and have good technical data for every material they offer first up was standard abs i rarely use abs anymore just because there's so many new material options that are easier to print with similar properties but regardless i know it's still popular with makers i've gone over quite a few times how you can help reduce warping on prints but the ultimate best way is to keep the ambient air hot so that stress can be released slowly from the material with the print bed at 100 degrees celsius i go ahead and print both a strength test and a large mechanical piece both at 100 infill the higher the infill and larger the print the higher the chance you'll have warping and delamination issues and this first test came out great no warping or delamination though the exact same is true for my asa tests i have very limited experience with asa but it is supposed to be an alternative to abs that is a little easier to print and since that's the case i had similarly great results with polylite asa both of these parts are printed at 100 infill as well and now comes for the real test i say that because both asa and abs print at around 250 degrees celsius or less meaning you can print them on just about any enclosed printer whether or not they have an all metal hot end polycarbonate though is a different story first up was polylite polycarbonate which is their less expensive version of pc i do the same thing with this test having a strength bar and a very large mechanical part print at a hundred percent infill this print had the extruder at 265 degrees celsius meaning it wouldn't have been possible on anything other than an all metal hotend and as you can see i have absolutely zero complaints here this came out far better than i expected this upper is very strong and has pretty much zero defects that i can see with my naked eye this print would be more than impossible on a printer that isn't enclosed and with my confidence very high i get to printing my last high temp material polymax pc this stuff boasts the strongest craziest stats of any material i've personally tested you could see them on the screen now to see what i mean be sure to check out the materials science video i made with polymaker as well as the materials science chapter in my book 3d printing failures so you can see exactly how amazing these stats are on the screen now show off the differences between their material options unfortunately though this was the first issue on any print i tried for this video minus that weird layer shift i had at the beginning it looks like both my strength test and my very large mechanical part warped slightly i actually think the nozzle was slightly too far from the build plate which caused this warping and it likely could have been eliminated if i had fixed that beforehand but you can see what i mean by this slight warping luckily though there was zero delamination and i would assume that this print is perfectly usable now you can see i printed a bunch of strength tests and parts for an ftc nine in these materials but all of my tests will be for a future video my plan is to do a unique strength test for each of polymaker's materials though that may take a month or so before i can get to work on it before finalizing this review i want to use their online printing especially since this has a camera on board unfortunately though they do want you to use their own proprietary system either by connecting your flash print to the printer or by using their polar cloud i used polar cloud in the past for the adventurer 3 and to be honest i don't really see any updates in the couple of years since i tried that you're able to heat your build plate and extruder upload g-code and start prints they have their own slicer though i don't test it out for this video another unfortunate thing is that i wasn't able to get this camera to work out of the box you can see on the screen how it just doesn't show the camera even when i clicked into the printer there are no options on the touchscreen to turn on the camera like there was for the adventurer 3 so i was at a bit of a loss as to what to do so i went ahead online and researched a bit on reddit and elsewhere someone suggested removing the flash drive and then restarting the printer and voila the camera now works and shows up on polar cloud that is a bit frustrating because i don't think that i saw that anywhere in the limited instructions provided by flashforge unfortunately though it seems like the camera is at like one frame per 10 seconds or something very sketchy when i type the ip address into the url with this question mark action equal stream at the end the camera shows up and is much higher frame rate and works smoothly not exactly sure why polar cloud shows it so sketchy but in order to test this out i go ahead and slice a large vase and print it in asa by uploading the file into polar cloud this face is just to test out polar cloud printing with the camera though it should also serve to show off the max build volume of a machine like this and i actually just saved as g code not gx for this print and polar cloud figured it out and converted it to work with the geider 2s so you don't need to go that extra gx step when using polar cloud unfortunately though this camera is even more sketchy when running a print which i really don't understand because it still runs perfectly smooth when going directly to the ip address i mentioned earlier at the end of the day i unfortunately think this camera and online usage is not utilized to its fullest if this printer was connected to octoprint instead of polar cloud we could move the printer axes send g-code film time lapses and do many other unique things with octoprint plugins so while i'm happy that this online cloud printing with the camera exists it just seems very underutilized okay now that i've tested just about everything available on this printer let's go over the pros and cons starting with the pros this printer is enclosed and has strong metal parts meaning it can print high temp materials easily the hotend can reach 300 degrees celsius which would cover almost any material i would personally use the heated build plate can get up to 120 degrees celsius which should print just about any material you require and should also allow for the ambient air to get quite hot it's honestly the most professional printer i've personally used this would fit perfectly in any business classroom or library it printed polycarbonate like a champ something i've been unable to say until this machine it connects to wifi and has a built-in camera it has a filter something that is extremely beneficial for harmful particulates and 3d printing something that isn't discussed enough i'm not educated enough to tell you exactly the issues and how bad it can be but i would assume that melting legos in your oven and breathing in the fumes wouldn't be good for your lungs which is similar to standing over and watching your abs print and breathing in the fumes when it's unfiltered it comes with not only a backup nozzle but nozzles of different sizes and a hardened steel nozzle so you can print just about any material you want it has a filament runout detection and power loss recovery the printer movements are very quiet though the fans are pretty loud the build plate is easy to remove and they include a glass build plate so you can print in anything from pla to nylon to polycarbonate something i haven't seen many other machines offer and overall it's an extremely well-built machine the upgraded metal internals and overall size make this printer quite heavy and now for the cons the printer only has one lead screw and one set of smooth rods when two would definitely be preferable on a machine such as this especially with its size that said the build plate is definitely sturdier than something on like the ender 5 likely due to those mounts being metal the spool holder that attaches the back of the printer does not hold all types of spools just using a standard kilogram spool of polymaker required me to use a separate spool feeder they want you to use flashprint something i'm not a fan of that said cura works fine just requires a bit of tweaking while having bed leveling is normally in the pro section i only include it in this cons since it's not quite as useful as something as simple as the bl touch that said it's definitely better than having nothing the touchscreen leaves a lot to be desired it has a weird home button on the right side that isn't too useful and i accidentally touched the wrong item on the screen frequently polar cloud is not very useful and it hasn't been upgraded in the years since the adventurer 3 i reviewed i wish it had half the capabilities that octoprint does the built-in camera is extremely underutilized even after figuring out the issues i had the only thing we could do is watch the print at a very low frame rate no time lapses or anything too useful and the final con in my opinion is the price with so many printers on the market competing for your price two thousand dollars is a steep hill to climb all right now for my final thoughts first things first when i say a printer is enclosed it technically isn't fully enclosed it's forced to have openings and weird quirks in order to prevent it from infringing on patents this has been the case in 3d printing since i got into it though i believe that will start to change now that patents are coming to expire it also wasn't possible to sell a printer that was actively heated until these patents expire and all printers weren't allowed to be fully enclosed but i believe this will change over the coming year or two this machine is a couple of years old and it's easy to see that it is there are quite a few things on this printer that i find outdated such as the touchscreen which isn't super responsive the way the bed leveling occurs the fact that it has a non-geared extruder as well as a few other options but that's exactly what this printer is since it came out in either 2017 or 2018 my final thoughts up until this point make it seem like it's an outdated machine but this is also the only machine i've ever tested on this channel which can actually print high temp materials without any issues it's the only printer i have with all metal internals and is meant to run hot i could print materials in this printer that i can't on any other that i own that said i feel two thousand dollars it just needs a couple of upgrades i think that this printer would be a steal at a thousand to fifteen hundred though it's a little hard for me to justify a two thousand i mean that's a lot of money we're talking about i've been seeing a bunch of voron 3d printer builds over the past couple of weeks and if you're the type to want to build your own printer from scratch you can get this enclosed high temp building along with some other upgrades for a less expensive price because of this i think this printer is perfect for an educational or business setting it's hard for me to recommend this to an enthusiast just because of that price tag being 10 times more than something like the ender 3. now if you want to print high temp materials i personally haven't tested a great alternative as of making this video if you do not want to print in high temp materials then you can completely ignore this whole review there's no point in spending two thousand dollars that said i'm currently running tests on the enclosed adventurer iv by flash forge and it comes with a hotend that can reach 265 degrees celsius which is the highest that i went in this video i'll be running each of the materials you saw in this video on that printer so let's see if a newer model can print similarly but for less than half the price i will have that review for you in about a week or so make sure to also subscribe since i really want to do a unique strength test with all of these materials that you'll hopefully enjoy thank you all for watching i'll be back soon with further reviews tutorials and fun prints

Channel: The 3D Print General

Views: 12,636

Keywords: 3D Printing, 3D print, flashforge, enclosed, 3d printer, review

Id: yiCK4tqnMYs

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021