This Color Mixing 3D Printer Is Not What I Expected - Cetus 2 Honest Review

this is the 3D printer I never knew I needed and to be honest I'd never even heard of tier time or the cdis2 before they reached out and asked if they could send this to me for review but when I saw the spec sheet I knew it was worth a closer look I have a lot of 3D printers and they can do a variety of different things but none of them can do quite what this one can do this is an on-the-fly switching dual direct drive Extrusion printer it can print in multiple colors it can print gradients and it can mix two colors to create a new one now mixing Extrusion isn't exactly new there's printers that have been on the market for a while that can do exactly that but the ones that are out there are starting to show their age the cdis2 is a modern take on that technology which incorporates recent advancements such as direct drive Extrusion linear rails and auto bed leveling with the nozzle as the probe so this shows a lot of promise and we're going to find out whether it lives up to the expectations so without further Ado let's get in to the cetus 2. the major selling point of the seed is 2 is its ability to switch colors on the fly with very little waste this is made possible thanks to the unique filament path which converges a short distance above the nozzle Outlet meaning that a very small volume of material needs to be extruded to cleanly switch between colors when compared to other multi-color systems that required the entire hot end to be purged the result is less waste and more efficient filament swabs in a direct comparison to the bamboo AMS the same model printed on the cetus II generates significantly less perch so this all sounds good in theory but let's see if it holds up in practice the cetus 2 retails for 5.99 us and comes mostly pre-assembled with only a few steps to get up and running the construction is very solid with an all metal frame that consists of aluminum extrusions and powder coated Steel the Gantry has a cantilever design with linear rails on X and Y Z axis motion is achieved with a single lead screw and two of the beefiest smooth rods I've ever seen I mean just wow the print ad attaches with a single screw to the carriage on the y-axis and is connected to the main board via a flat flexible cable and a short ribbon cable the bed is stationary and made from powder coated steel with the carborundum glass build plate a filament Rhino sensor mounts on the back panel and is used to detect filament presence monitor filament mileage and detect clogs a dual sided spool holder can accommodate two spools for multi-color printing color-coded PTFE tubes carry the filament to the Dual direct drive extruder and a reverse Bowden configuration a 4.3 inch color touchscreen provides the interface to the operation upon power-up we'll need to initialize the printer before we're able to heat the nozzle or start a print this causes all axes to be homed and will be required every time the printer is power cycled a strain gauge on the printhead enables bed leveling using the nozzle as a probe eliminating the need to set the Zed offset as is customary with any new printer we'll update the firmware before proceeding we can then use the controls on screen to load filament into each of the extruders with that done we'll start one of the test prints on the supplied SD card this is a classic multi-color test the dual color tree frog right away we're presented with the differentiating factor the Extrusion has switched from Blue to Orange on the fly without hesitation and with zero Purge so we're off to a good start but things quickly took a turn for the worse during the second test print the printer stopped extruding appearing to have a clogged nozzle it was at that point that I observed the hot end cooling fans seem to be running rather slowly a test with the multimeter revealed that these 12 volt fans were only being supplied with a little over three in order to troubleshoot I opened up the base of the printer to have a look around I spotted a 12 volt Buck converter on the motherboard and probed it to verify the voltage when it 2 was reading around 3 volts I knew it must be faulty fortunately the printer was supplied with a spare after swapping that out the fans were now running at full speed an attempt to load filament was unsuccessful due to the heat Creep from inadequate cooling that resulted in a severe clog I was now faced with disassembling the entire printhead if it's any consolation at least I now have a better sense of how this dual Extrusion system is constructed the disassembly was extensive but I was able to clear the clock back up and running I started another test print from the SD card the first few layers were going down well but suddenly the printing stopped the head raised to a parked position and a message was displayed on the LCD screen nozzle 2 2 cool great I hit resume and after a short reheat period the print was running again I tried a few more Prints but kept coming back to a paused print with the same error message at this point I reached out to tier time support and explained my issue they replied quickly and offered to send me a replacement hot and assembly at no charge a week later the replacement part arrived and I was tasked with disassembling the printhead again to install it with this being a dual Extrusion system we have two distinct heater cartridges and thermistors these slide into the custom heat block and are held in place with thermal paste with everything assembled it was time for another test print this completed successfully and looked reasonable besides some filament buildup on the seam line note the absence of a purge Tower next I tried slicing my own model using tier times proprietary slicer called up Studio this was sliced with a purge Tower which can yield cleaner transitions than on-the-fly switching for certain models the slicer has a learning curve but is feature Rich with most of the usual parameters we're used to seeing as well as quite a few that I've never seen before in any other Slicer in addition to the basic configurations we can also use the slicer to paint models and imprint patterns on them when it's time to print the accompanying host software called wand can upload the print files directly to the printer using its onboard Wi-Fi module if you're like me and prefer to use open source slicers the cdis2 is also compatible with Cura although the setup is a bit complicated requiring the use of third-party plugins and G-Code substitutions to get everything working it also requires that you set your filament diameter to 0.4 millimeters and configure a zed offset in the profile despite the fact that we're homing with the nozzle both of which seem strange to me after quite a bit of trial and error and numerous test prints I finally got the qrg code printing unfortunately the excitement didn't last long the printer was under extruding and despite my attempts to increase the flow rate in the slicer nothing changed at this point I decided to remove the nozzle and have a closer look what I found shocked me this is a close-up of the original nozzle I removed from the machine when I replaced the original hot end assembly and this is the nozzle that I was just printing with this is a 0.4 millimeter orifice this is bad Machining and poor quality control you can see here how the two filaments enter the heat block and converge as they enter the nozzle I reinstalled the original nozzle and the Extrusion issue appears to be resolved a second attempt on the curabensi yielded a much better result although not quite as good as the one from up Studio next I wanted to try the color mixing functionality I sliced a two-part container in app studio and printed it with a 50 50 mixing ratio using blue and orange filament my expectation was that the two colors would mix to create a new one in reality the result was more akin to dual Extrusion filaments with distinct regions of each color varying around the circumference of the bottle this phase mode print sliced in Cura was better mixed resulting in a nice green color however when rotated the variation in shade becomes readily apparent the next test was four benches printed simultaneously with different mixing ratios from left to right we have pure yellow 3070 yellow blue 50 50 yellow blue and pure blue this was sliced in Cura with the mixing ratios being configured in the extruder setup the result was pretty good but not perfect with evident color bleed between the models this could be improved by printing these separately or by using a purge Tower I then tried printing with petg the first test showed evidence of color bleeding despite the use of a purge Tower it was then that I realized that both colors were being purged for every layer meaning that even a pure Green Layer would have purple perch creating unnecessary waste and resulting in color bleed extruder 1 Green in this case always prints the perimeters of the tower while extruder 2 purple prints the infill thus Purge volume is controlled indirectly by the size of the Tower the number of perimeters and the density of the fill more perimeters means more Purge volume when transitioning from purple to Green denser infill means more volume when transitioning from green to purple this is a very imprecise and roundabout way of determining Purge volume especially when compared to other multi-color systems in which the purge volume can be specified directly with the purge Tower disabled the transitions will occur on the perimeter of the model this might be okay for a larger model with fewer color swaps but for a model like this this results in a lot of color bleed this leads us to Shadow Purge an advertised feature of this printer that is not at all well documented in order to enable it you must select the infill preferred option under the seam settings with this ticked the transitions will be placed in the infill of the model rather than on the Outer Perimeter this improves the result but it's still not perfect for this particular model because with the single perimeter which is the default The Purge material can be seen through the outer shell with the number of parameters increased The Purge is moved from the infill to the inner wall making the result even worse so let's summarize here's The Good the Bad and the Ugly of the cetus II the good it can do something none of my other printers can which is combined filaments the frame is solid and makes use of some nice components it can monitor filament consumption and detect clogs the slicer has some unique features not seen anywhere else the bad this thing is not nice to look at the wiring seems like an afterthought the side ribbon cable drastically increases the footprint of the machine and the rainbow ribbon cables make this new printer look dated already files uploaded from the slicer are all given the same generic name overriding any previous versions and making it impossible to reprint old jobs without re-slicing the firmware is proprietary making it incompatible with modern slicers without significant workarounds the touchscreen has very limited options lacking any temperature or baby stepping controls during printing the hotend cooling fans run all the time even when the printer isn't heated generating unnecessary noise there is no obvious way to set the part cooling fan speed in the slicer or on the printer meaning it runs at full speed for every layer the remote upload only works to send files from op Studio meaning any Cura slice prints will need to be loaded on the SD card and it inserted manually into the printer the advertised color mixing is more like co-extrusion which is unique in its own right but not what I was expecting the ugly the quality control is seriously lacking with multiple components needing to be replaced right out of the box on my machine the printer is advertised as having power loss recovery instead after a blackout my printer came back on with the bed temperature set to 110 degrees Celsius which is a serious concern in my short time working with this machine I have seen just about every error code nozzle's too cool bed too hot the list goes on your experience may be different but based on mine I could only recommend this printer to an advanced user with money to burn and time to spare the hardware is okay but in order to make this printer worthwhile it is in need of some significant updates to both firmware and software perhaps the CS3 will be better but this seat is too unfortunately did not live up to expectations so that has been the cetus too what do you guys think let me know in the comments down below while you're there if you enjoyed the video please hit that like button and make sure to subscribe for more content my name is Taylor this is ygk3d and until next time happy 3D printing [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] foreign

Channel: YGK3D

Views: 7,888

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Id: skBYPBukt70

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023