Should You Get The Voxelab Aquila Over The Ender 3 V2?

just over two months ago we reviewed the creality ender 3v2 which after my positive experience for the past two years with the original i was very excited for well since that review i've gotten a flood of requests of people asking me to review the voxel lab aquala 3d printer and looking at the specs looking at the photos it looks nearly identical to the ender 3v2 however the key thing that so many people seem interested in was the price difference between the two with the ender 3v2 being right now between 260 to 280 dollars and the aquila being between 170 to 180 it is substantially cheaper and puts it in the same price bracket as actually the original ender three with the many viewer requests and the massive price difference between the two i was definitely interested in seeing what this printer was all about voxel lab did end up reaching out to me asking if i was interested in taking a look at this aquila which i said yes and i have been putting it through its paces so in today's video we will look at the aquila's specs which spoiler alert are basically a one to one to the ender 3v2 talk about the setup my experience of course print quality and then i will give you my final opinion on this 3d printer this has got to be one of the most requested reviews that i've had in a very long time so i hope that you guys are excited and without further ado let's get right into today's video [Music] massive thanks to thanks for sponsoring today's video with over 2 million index models in their database and growing regularly thanks finds the exact model that you're looking for thanks just some pretty unique features like the ability to perform a geometric search or the recently added ar mode that i love i'm a very visual person and having the ability to place a 3d model in your space before actually printing it for reference can be quite useful also it's a lot of fun and can make for some great photos there are also great collaboration functionality baked right in like the ability to create a private team for working on projects where you can keep track of things like different model versions as well as revisions you also have the ability to follow a user's project which is great for any that are actively being updated things has been developing new features for their site constantly and i'm really looking forward to seeing this platform continue to expand links will be in the description so you can find out more and check out things for yourself for anyone that's not familiar with voxtolab you are not alone and i hadn't actually heard of them until the last few months here well they did let me know in an email that they are actually a sub brand of flashforge which makes a lot more sense because flash forge has been around for a very long time and i think that even in 2014 when i bought my first printer they were making 3d printers at that point as well so in a typical fashion to the 3d printer reviews we do on this channel let's first run through this printer's specs the aquala which i am tempted to call the aquila but i don't think that's right has a 220 by 220 by 250 millimeter build volume it's made up of the traditional aluminum extrusions that we see on almost every printer nowadays it is a 24 volt system running a 32-bit board with their flavor of marlin and it has silent tmc2208 stepper drivers the bed is made up of the glass ultra base style material and it does have manual bed leveling which will be done via the four large knobs similar also to the ender 3v2 there are two mounting holes on the hot end assembly or the hot end housing which looks like they are to be able to mount something like a bl touch if you do want to add auto bed leveling there's actually a pre-compiled firmware from voxelab which should make that a very easy upgrade should you want to do so as far as the hot end goes it is not all metal and it looks identical to the standard creality hotend which one thing that's awesome about that is that it looks like if you wanted to upgrade to something like the micro swiss all metal hotend that's a drop in for the creality printers you might actually be able to just drop that into the aquala as well it uses a plastic bowden style extruder and the bowden tubing is a little bit more translucent than i'm used to seeing which i do like as it makes it easier to see if there's some filament stuck especially if it's like a clear or natural color as far as connectivity goes you can print via microsd card over the screen or tethered with a micro usb cable the screen on the aquila is also the same format as the under 3v2 but it's fitted to the printer on its side which i'm actually a huge fan of for those that did not see my ender 3v2 review one of my biggest gripes about the printer was with the lcd screen but more specifically the ui running on that lcd screen although i did make a video showing you how to flash it with a third-party firmware the interface on the aqualus stock is much better than the v2 stock screen firmware in my opinion the x and y-axis have built-in belt tensioners and i did not get into the power supply because i wanted to leave the cable management as is but based on a very nice write-up from 3dprintbeginner.com it appears to be a meanwhile power supply which was actually quite surprising to me considering again the price of this printer before assembling the printer i went ahead and took off the bottom housing so that way we could take a quick look at the main board the board is very reminiscent of the creality controller board in its form factor and although i didn't have a spare one to confirm i wouldn't be surprised if a creality or big tree tech board could be a drop in replacement should you decide that's something you need or want to do it is a fairly compact board and the stepper motor drivers are surface mounted there's one blower fan to help with removing heat from the board and a slit in the aluminum in which the cables are fed through the aqualis showed up packaged very nicely however i did want to state that it does only come with a tiny coil of filament which isn't all that uncommon but if you do end up getting this printer you'll definitely want to pick up either one or two extra spools of filament so that way you can do some printing all the screws were neatly labeled in their own individual packages which is something i really like to see and it helps to speed up or expedite the install and assembly process and there was a hard copy of the assembly manual as well as a pdf version on the included microsd card because i've been seeing more manufacturers actually include a video on how to assemble the printer i did check for that but at least in my aqua there was no assembly video however the pdf guide and the printed manual guide were more than enough for me to very easily get this printer up and assembled assembling the aquala was basically a deja vu of me assembling the ender 3v2 and in that video i mentioned that the one thing that tripped me out was the x-axis belt tensioner the demonstration or the diagram in the guide that came with that printer didn't seem very obvious to me which is why i did reference a video when assembling that however i was already aware of how to do it on this printer since i've done it essentially once before and the illustration in the aquila pdf in my opinion was a little bit easier to understand once assembled i powered on the printer homed everything and did a quick manual bed leveling before plugging in the micro sd card to see if there were any pre-sliced files i loaded up some red pla that i had laying around and normally i only print out maybe one or two of the precise files on a 3d printer because they're normally sliced very very fine layer resolution and sort of weird models but in this instance i ended up printing out all four and i was a huge fan of the models they chose because two of the four were actually functional one was a extruder knob that you printed out and then it would allow you to easily feed or retract filament from the hot end which i thought was cool another one was a tiny little tool caddy that basically slid into the aluminum extrusions and would allow you to hold the different allen keys or clippers or spatula and stuff like that and then another one was a simple hook as well as one that just had some basic shapes but i did like that two of the sample parts are actually functional things that i at least the extruder knob will end up using for sure but i thought they did a really great job and although i still think that they were probably sliced at a bit higher resolution than i would have done just to show off the quality that their machine can achieve i was still very pleased with the results on all of these all the prints turned out crisp and i was very happy with the results i did get to test out the power loss recovery not because i wanted to per se but because we actually had a electrical issue here where something is going on with the breaker and a couple of the outlets haven't been working correctly so i had to kill the power for an hour about halfway through this print and when i turned it back on i got to see the power loss option come up on the menu basically it detected it asked if i wanted to continue i hit yes but as it went to home the x-axis and begin printing again it took the part right with it so i think that it's definitely something more practical if you accidentally flip a switch or if it's just a quick power going out or whatever happens but if you've got a part and the bed's completely cooled down it's going to be pretty tough no matter what the printer is unless it's really stuck down to be able to resume but i can't at least vouch that it does indeed have power loss recovery and it would have worked should my part or would my part not have completely come off the build plate when it tried to resume now that the test prints were done i went ahead and hopped over to the computer to slice up some files and check out what kind of software they had on the micro sd card on the sd card they did have something called vox lab slicer that i did open very briefly i'm not sure if it's based on cura but really unless i'm forced to use something else i prefer native cura luckily on the sd card they have a very simple parameters for adding the aquila and even a profile that you can import which is exactly what i ended up doing chaos coretech has been releasing a ton of awesome models so i hopped over to their things page to see what recent models they had released i found an awesome sugar skull which is perfect because i know some of this will be a great gift for i downloaded the model imported it into cura and i kept most of the parameters as is i slightly tweaked a few things and added a skirt which is standard for all the files i print and i loaded up a spool of this gold dust proto pasta htpla which i had laying around and i figured would be perfect for this model and i hit print and wow this did not disappoint there's one section on the model that after slicing i realized could have used the tiniest bit of supports but damn the end result looks so good looking at it through a camera lens doesn't really do it justice but i was beyond pleased with the results and hopefully you could at least get the general idea of how good this print actually turned out next up my buddy chris better known as krusty online released a very practical print of a holder for boxes of nitrile gloves now he does a ton of resin 3d printing and having your gloves able to be mounted to your printer or workbench is super handy and something i could definitely see me using although the geometries weren't the most complex this was a very large print and even with me opting for .3 or 300 micron layer lines it took over 24 hours i printed this in matterhacker's natural build series pla and it turned out great i actually didn't realize that the shell of the phenom is magnetic but it is and so the model that chris created has the ability to basically drill mount it or embed magnets so that way you can slap it on something like the phenom and so because i don't have a ton of space here like i complain about all the time um having the ability to have my gloves just up on the side of the machine is super handy and i cannot wait to actually be able to do some resin printing and use that and i always do this but i want to state that any of the models that i print or talk about in this video will be in the description so if you want to print them out for yourself or check them out you can do so as well with the sample prints that were included on the micro sd card and these two large prints i think we were at around 80 if not over 80 print hours and i was really happy with the results i was getting with pla so for fun i decided to throw some petg at the printer and i had a little bit maybe half a spool left of some blue engine that i used for a previous project that i figured that i would throw on the machine and see how it printed for this i had found an ender 3 power supply fan silencer and i decided to print it out as far as my parameters i bumped the bed to 70 celsius the hot end to 240 celsius i dropped the speed down from the 70 millimeter second that i had raised it to down to 60 millimeters a second and i lowered the fan speed to 50 percent adhesion was great and the only thing i noticed was very fine hairs from stringing i'm not going to fault it on the printer and since this was a very quick profile adjusting things like retraction speeds temps and cooling can really help to remove these next up i found a mount for the bq h2 direct drive all metal hot end combo and i decided to print that out it was quite a bit more complex than the ender 3 uh cooling fan and required some support so i figured we'd give it a go and kind of see how the printer fared with that again there was still some slight stringing but the part in my opinion turned out great the supports came off with no problem and i was very pleased with this part i'm actually really looking forward to testing out this h2 extruder i've been sitting on it for a little bit and just trying to figure out what printer what project i want to implement it into in my review of the ender 3v2 i mentioned that overall my experience was great and i could definitely see it for somebody that maybe wants the ender 3 upgraded but doesn't want to have to do all of the manual upgrades especially doing like the board swap but there was two things that i said i wasn't crazy about one was that i felt the fans were quite loud and like i mentioned earlier in this video the user interface on the lcd screen to me was an afterthought and definitely something i was disappointed with so how does the aquila fare in those two regards compared to the ender3v2 i think that the user interface on the aquala printer is much better than that of the stock ender 3v2 and the fact that they have it laying down in landscape mode versus portrait mode i don't know hopefully you know what that means but the fact that they have it laying down definitely solves my one biggest issue with the ender 3v2 screen which was that when you're browsing like the file explorer where you have your prints names you couldn't see very much of the print name because of how skinny the screen was having the printer's screen rectangular gives you basically double the distance and so you can see the entirety or at least the majority of the name of your file that you're printing which was again one of my biggest gripes as far as the fans go i am a little bit disappointed to say that the fans are loud i didn't do a side by side with like a decibel reader but the fans are definitely not quiet on the aqua which is disappointing because similar to the v2 with those silent drivers the motion you can't hear the printer actually moving around all you can hear is the fans which in the hot end again are quite noisy similar to the last printer i reviewed which was this sr the aquala does one thing that i find a bit annoying with the lcd screen and that is that anytime you select something it beeps and i can totally understand if somebody wants that feedback and likes that feature i personally don't i just think that it's noisy i do a lot of printing late at night and because i am in such a central location in this tiny place that beeping can get very very annoying and i don't mind that it's there i just think that if you have a beeping system in your ui or in your menu system there should be a way to disable it under the menu i checked everything and did not see it i believe that aquila has made some upgrades to their lcd screen and this is certainly something i'm sure that they could patch in an upgrade but it is worth noting that it is also a small thing maybe but still a bit of an annoyance to me so again the main question that people have been asking me is is the aquila a better value than the nd3 v2 given that its price point is between 80 to 100 less and looking online the technical specifications are nearly a one-to-one and having just tested out the ender 3v2 and now testing out the aquala i'm really blown away and at least pleased to report to all of you guys that yeah it really is in my opinion a better value you are really getting the same experience as the v2 but at a fraction of the cost i don't know how aqualar voxlab was able to really do it and especially containing things like the mean mo power supply but there's nothing about this printer that to me screams it is any in any way shape or form inferior to that of the ender 3v2 so if you've been waiting for reassurance i'm here to tell you that yeah i do think that it's a solid printer and the fact that it's in the same price range as the ender 3 which it's clearly a step up from is really really impressive i'm really curious to see long term whether uh voxelab and the aqua are able to maintain this price point or how creality responds if they end up lowering their price point but yeah for right now with the current pricing that these two different machines are going at it is pretty crazy how much they were able to shave shave off of the price and still give you essentially the exact same printer so that is the voxelab aquala if you've got any questions about anything that i covered or maybe did not cover let me know in the comments down below and i will do my best to answer and if i don't have the answer to the question i have no problem reaching out to voxel lab directly and trying to get that answer for you don't forget to like and subscribe for more great videos we make a video every single saturday so there is always fresh content coming your way and if you do want to support the channel furthermore links will be down below over to my patreon where there are some really awesome rewards huge thank you to all my current patreon supporters i really appreciate each and every one of you guys allowing me to come back each and every single week spending more time doing what i love which is making content for each of you to enjoy on that note this has been daniel from modbot and i look forward to seeing you guys in my next video peace guys

Channel: ModBot

Views: 58,145

Keywords: voxelab 3d printer, voxelab aquila, aquila 3d printer, aquila review, ender 3 v2, aquila vs ender 3 v2, sub $200 3d printer, best 3d printer under $200, ender 2 v2 clone, best budget 3d printer 2021, voxelab 3d printer review, aquila 3d printer review

Id: wYURsMaoy1I

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021