This Budget i3 Packs A Punch! (Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro)

for the longest time when I pictured elegu I always pictured resin printers this may be because they're Mars and Saturn printers seem to have been the Catalyst that propelled the company forward but in reality they've been making fdm printers for just as long in early 2021 we looked at the Neptune 2 and a few months ago eligue released the latest in the family the Neptune 4 and 4 Pro bringing with it some serious upgrades shortly after eligu reached out asking if I was interested in testing out the Neptune 4 Pro after skipping the Neptune 3 and seeing what this printer offered for 299 dollars I agreed and over the past couple of months I've been putting it through its Paces so in today's video we will be diving into the Neptune 4 Pro we'll go over the printer Spanx what the setup process was like how it has performed and I will give you my overall thoughts based on my time with this printer so far so with all that being said and without further Ado let's get right into today's video [Music] massive thanks to microswiss for sponsoring today's video microswiss manufactures hotends extruders and nozzles for over 30 different 3D printers and are constantly expanding their most recent NG Revo combines e3d's rapid change Revo technology with their popular NG extruder I've been running their upgrades for over three years and have printed everything from pla to carbon fiber nylon with them I love that they are us-based and all of their products are machined in-house this helps them to maintain the extremely high level of quality their customers have grown to expect another huge perk is that their upgrades are made for specific machines making them drop in Replacements in most instances this expedites the upgrade process and allows you to get up and running again quickly links are in the description to find out more about the various upgrades they offer or to pick up your own like we typically do let's first run through the printer specs the LED Neptune 4 Pro is an I3 style 3D printer with a build volume of 225 5 by 225 by 265 millimeters the printer is primarily constructed of custom aluminum extrusions with a fair bit of the panels and covers being injection molded for motion X and Y use linear guides while Z uses traditional roller Wheels the nice thing about the linear guides is that there is no eccentric nut adjusting that needs to happen the tool head on the Neptune 4 Pro is a massive upgrade compared to the previous generation of budget 3D printers that I've tested it has a dual gear direct drive extruder using a Nema 14 to reduce weight a high flow all metal hotend two 40-15 Park cooling fans an LED light and an inductive probe the hot end could hit 300 Celsius out of the box and the heat block is not volcano long but it's definitely got a larger melt Zone than say a standard V6 the bed uses a magnetic powder coated Pei print surface and although it looks like a standard PCB bed heater it's actually segmented there are two zones an inner 100 watt heater and an outer 150 watt heater that depending on the slice G-Code 5 file will only heat the needed section using a thermal camera I was able to get a decent picture of what the center Zone looks like when only that portion is heated the X and Y axis both have built-in built tensioners the z-axis has dual lead screws and motors for evenly lifting the printhead but they are tied to the same driver although I would have preferred for them to be on their own for tramming elegu does have them connected with a belt which will ensure that they stay in sync with each other on top of the printer under the spool holder there is a filament run out sensor and underneath the top Extrusion is a PCB with LEDs mounted to light up the printer's workspace as for connectivity there is MicroSD full-size USB USBC and ethernet interfacing with the printer is done through the 4.3 inch touchscreen on the front of the printer when going to print it does take a few seconds to load the file's image but the screen is responsive has a stretchy telephone style cord and attaches to its mounting points with magnets making interfacing with the printer a pretty enjoyable experience one very interesting inclusion with this printer is the four 40 20 fans strapped to the back of the X Extrusion these add a ton of cooling to the printer and turn on when the layer cooling fan is enabled in the slicer if you don't want to use them they can be turned off using the toggle switch on top of their housing for firmware unlike the previous Neptunes this one is running Clipper firmware which does allow it to take advantage of things like input shaping for reaching much faster speeds we'll touch a bit more on firmware and Clipper a little bit later in this video before powering on the printer I did crack open the bottom to take a look at the electronics what I found was a znp k1v1.0 board that looks to be a custom version of the MKS Skipper we covered just a couple of months ago this board has both the Clipper host running as well as the MCU for all the printers Hardware the Neptune 4 Pro came packaged really nicely and the setup wasn't much different than any other mostly assembled 3D printer in total there were 20 screws to install which is a few more than normal for similar form factor printers primarily due to the tool head and ax Extrusion fans needing to be mounted onto the printer's frame powering on the printer for the first time you really would have no way of knowing it was running Clipper over Marlin based on the way the screen looks before printing you need to go to the level menu where we'll have you set the Z offset do a manual level to get the bed as flat as possible before it runs its massive 11 by 11 Point bed mesh once it finishes be sure to click the save icon on the screen to save those values to the printer's firmware the final step before you do anything is applying the included grease to the linear guides since the guides are metal and the wheels are also metal having this crease will help to prevent any premature wearing I started off by loading in some PLA and printing the Buddha file on the included USB flash drive I noticed right away that the speeds were definitely quicker than I was used to on a small test model but the noise of the fans was also definitely much louder I was curious to see just how loud this printer was so I pulled out my phone and from about a foot away I got around 63 decibels with the layer cooling fan at 100 and 60 decibels with the added four back fans on max speed needless to say this is not a quiet printer that being said as much as it would be nice for fast printers to have a quiet mode those two things just really don't go hand in hand higher travel and flow needs more Cooling and noise is just one of the trade-offs of being able to print faster after the first print I installed the included slicer which is eligu Cura and begin slicing up my own files for most of the printing I just kept the default settings which are set to 250 millimeters a second on infill 200 for inner walls and 130 for outer this was what the default accelerations value the elegue set in Clipper at 5K print quality was okay but fairly Hit or Miss depending on the part printed I saw pretty obvious signs of ringing and some under Extrusion I believe the reason for this is that the default values that lagu has set is really pushing this printer to its Max as far as its output goes when I drop the speeds down to 200 millimeters per second cap and slightly raise the hot end temperature I really saw an improve movement in print quality I did reach out to elegu and recommend that they also include a secondary profile that lowers those speeds down a little bit for those that want still quick speeds but want to focus a bit more on the part quality the default one in my opinion is better for quick functional parts or prototyping which is fine but it needs another that emphasizes quality more than speed the good news is that based on what I'm seeing this Pinter's Hardware is definitely capable of printing high quality prints and it's just that the slicer and settings need a bit more refinement as for firmware as mentioned this is running Clipper firmware but unless you've read that online you really would have no way of knowing this appears to be intentional and it isn't necessarily a bad thing there are many out there that would like to have the speeds that Clipper allows but they have no interest in tinkering and having to SSH into the device or playing around with different config files sort of a baby's first Clipper printer and I do feel that for the most part this does check that box however there are some room for improvements on the firmware side through Ethernet you can hook this printer up to your network and access the fluid web interface which is great however out of the box it does not have wireless connection mandic really did a great video on getting the wireless set up on this printer which I did follow but I found that I had to reinstall my Wi-Fi dongle each time the printer powered off no matter what settings I tweaked or permissions I tried to change it just wasn't a very consistent experience when trying to use wireless I did also reach out to elugu about this saying that I think that the wireless aspect is something that they should be focusing on and it does sound like possibly that may be coming at some point but as of right now this is the current experience that exists and the current experience that I've had over Wireless for ninety percent of the printing I did I just used the included USB flash drive printing locally for the printer which worked great so if that's the workflow that you like anyways then it is a very smooth experience the final thing I would like to see added to the firmware is front-facing input shaping what I mean by that is that right now there are input shaping values in the config when you receive this printer although this printer's stock is going to be fairly repeatable as far as input shaping values the location of the printer can have an impact on these values so a one shoe fits all is not really a great solution with the USB port on the front it wouldn't be hard for elegu to include an accelerometer an amount and instructions that have the user Mount the accelerometer onto the tool head and onto the bed and just run a quick input shaping through the screen to give you better or more accurate results I have nothing against the preset values and I do think that it is a great inclusion but again for someone that wants to fine tune it a bit more it would be a really nice addition overall the elegu Neptune 4 Pro is a solid budget 3D printer for 300 from a hardware standpoint other than maybe the noise I have very little complaint the great looking tool head is very capable there is plenty of cooling and I am a fan of the linear guides the team made some great decisions when they specced out this printer for the slicer Cura is not my favorite but much of it just comes down to personal preference and it is not a bad choice the biggest thing I'm seeing again is a bit more refinement of the profile with some additional options lastly the firmware is going to be fine for most that just want to use the printer to print but for existing Clipper users or those that want to do some further tuning I would love to see Wireless addressed and input shaping brought to the screen's menu this past year we have seen the rise of ready to go core XY 3D printers and as much as I am a fan of this back in 2014 when I bought my first 3D printer there's no way I would have been able to just shell out 600 for a new hobby I scraped up a couple of months savings to get a 3D printer on sale for 450 which at that time was pretty close to bottom of the market having options like this at 300 is fantastic for anyone getting into 3D printing or just not needing the absolute maximum amount of speed possible elegue has squeezed a lot into the Neptune 4 Pro and it is great to see how far this line of printers has come since my review of the Neptune 2 a couple of years ago and that has been in the elegu Neptune 4 Pro I hope that you enjoyed this video and I was able to answer the majority of your questions if you do have any other questions please let me know in the comments down below and as always if I don't have the answer to your question I have no problem reaching out to alagu directly to try to get that answered for you for anyone interested in finding out more or picking up one of these for yourself I believe they're on pre-order and shipping in September that was the last thing I saw but I have links Down Below in the description over to elegu's website on that note don't forget to like And subscribe for more great videos we make a video every single week so there's always fresh content coming your way and if you do want to support the channel furthermore I'll have links Down Below in the description over to our patreon where there are some really awesome rewards huge thank you to all of our existing patreon supporters I appreciate each and every one of you for allowing me to come back every single week and spend more time doing what I love which is making content for you all to enjoy on that note this has been Daniel from modbot I look forward to seeing you guys in my next video peace guys

Channel: ModBot

Views: 39,074

Keywords: elegoo, elegoo neptune, elegoo klipper, neptune 4, neptune 4 pro, budget klipper printer, best budget 3d printer, 3d printer, best 3d printer 2023, klipper, klipper firmware, printers with klipper, ender 3 alternative

Id: XDVHfb1Dsn4

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023