Uniformation GKTWO Six Months Of Use Later Review

hi greedy 3Ds if you're here today you're not here for an in-depth review and an unboxing of the uniformation gk2 there's plenty of videos on the tinter web to show you that in fact I've done an unboxing and a thorough review which you can see here today you're here because you want to know what it's been like for me using this over the last 6 months so let's talk about the gk2 let's talk about my experiences with it and let's talk about some of the good things and the bad things that experienced stay tuned so I bought this gk2 back in June 2023 in the middle of a British summer but I didn't buy it for the British summertime I bought it for the typical British wintertime where as you can see temperatures fall well down down to below freezing now I print outside in this wonderful man cave but in the winter time in the UK it gets very very cold so I needed a printer that could deal with that cold and provide prints that worked in minus well sometimes minus degrees and the unification gk2 has a built-in heater but we'll come back to that later so how have I got on over the last 6 months using this printer as my main printer let me tell you about some of the things that I really really like about it let's start with his aesthetic it looks nice and I like the green but that's a personal preference but what I really do like about its aesthetic is this lid I've only got a small space to work in out here and when I have to take the lid off a printer and find somewhere to put it and then as you've seen in my previous videos get resin all over the thing it's a bit of a nightmare so the fact that this gk2 allows me to to lift the lid without taking it off get up my 3D print put a 3D print back on it is easy it is simple I really like that view I like also the fact that the USB stick is easy to get hold of now that's a point of contention with some people but I like it at the front I don't want to go fiting around the back of my FR I don't want to go fiting around the side of my printer space for me is at a premium and I have the USB stick at the front now for some people that doesn't work for them but for me it does work and I like it so let's now start at the top of the printer and work our way down let's look at the build plates and I'll put the dimensions for the build volume here so you can see them again this isn't an in-depth review but let's put them there as a refresher for you the build plate itself is a quick release build plate there's no big knobs you need to FID with on the gk2 literally onehanded I can tell take the bill plate off quickly and get my print out and I really like that now I did wonder how is this mechanism going to cope with months and months of use well let me tell you I've had zero problems with it the mechanism is as firm today as it was on day one it has proved to be fantastic and I really like that let's work our way down into the vat itself now the vat itself is a quick release vat no little knobs you have to fiddle with to get the vat out good grief it gets worse and worse but the vat has caused me a couple of problems and as much as I like the quick release function of it I have had a couple of issues with the vat and let me tell you about those the first issue that I had with the vat was it got stuck in the printer and for love the money using my brute strength alone I could not get it out I did manage to get it out eventually and there is a simple trick to know how to get it out and if you want to know what that simple trick is I'll I'll put a link to the video that I made about that at the end of this video but it's not quite as drastic as it first may appear however the vat did get stuck in the machine and that was down to the fap actually splitting and allowing some of the resin to ooze into the bottom and solidify under the ultraviolet light and that is why it broke so that was the first problem I had with the vat the second problem was it became loose it started to wobble when I looked at the bottom of the vat you will see there are four little feet that hold the vat in position at the bottom of the printer now these work really really well and it holds it in wonderfully but when I looked at mine I realized that three of the four metallic little Clips had broken off now I don't know if that was down to me maybe it was the time I tried to pull the V out or whether they've just broken through wear and tear but either way three of the four Clips broke completely meaning that the vat now was not holding so when the bill plate lifted on the first or second print the VAP would lift with it which is no good for printing I did contact uniformation I contacted their help Department via Facebook and within a day I'd had a contact back asking me for a video and a photograph of what was going on underneath the V which I duly sent I had a reply within literally half an hour saying that I needed some new feet for the vat and there was a link sent to me to download these new feet and I had to print these new feet and connect them on now that's okay if you've got a printer if you haven't got a printer you're in a little bit of a dilemma of what to do maybe you can get someone else to print it but that's a little bit awkward the fact is I needed four of these little Clips I needed three but four always comes in handy and I was lucky enough to have another printer that I could print them on but what gk2 did also do for me is in the post straight away away from China they sent me four brand new metallic Clips which arrived within a week to 7 to 10 days is but they did arrive they were free of charge and they were given to me and that's an amazing amazing customer service what I would suggest you do I will put a link in the description to where you can download these little feet from I suggest you download them just in case you're going to need them and I also suggest you print them in a high quality strong resum nothing brittle remember these hold your vat in position so I'll put a link in the description where you can get them from print them with something firm if you're going to do them on an fdm and I don't see why you can't maybe consider using something a little bit tougher than pla now I've changed the fap twice on the resin tray the first time because I absolutely battered it to death with print after print after print and it needed to be replaced the replacing process was no harder than any other replacement fep that I've done and I was really lucky that uniformation sent me a couple of spare ones with the printer if I had to buy those particular FEPS they are quite expensive as you can see here this was taken from Amazon in uh the end of November 2023 they're quite expensive the other thing I needed to replace twice on this printer was the screen protector now when it comes to you it will have a screen protector in situ so that is a bonus but when I had my leak I needed to change that screen protector and when my Feer died the screen protector just looked a little bit grubby so I changed it then again they're not the cheapest things to buy and I'll put a link in the description of where you can get them from if you need them but when I did have a few printing problems with it when the fep had reached the end of its life once I changed the fap and I changed the screen protector everything went back to normal so let's talk about its print quality I've used this as my mainint printer now since June I have battered this thing day in Day Out 24 hours a day print after print after print I have made some fantastic Creations on this and you can see here that they are the quality of them is absolutely fantastic once you've died your resin in and sometimes that's the biggest problem with any printer is getting the resin settings right once you've died your printer settings in this thing throws out some incredible prints as you can see here and one of the reasons why it throws out such incredible prints is because as we spoke about right at the start it's got a heater so I know I can safely print day night time summertime wintertime when the weather plummets when the weather Rises the heater is automatic you don't have to do anything unless you want to fiddle but you don't have to once you press the print button on the gk2 the first thing that happens well the second thing that happens we'll come back to the first thing is that the the heater will heat your resin up until it reaches a satisfactory agreable temperature and for me it's about 30° and it will print and I have had virtually no failures at all you're always going to get the odd failure but nothing that can be blamed or attributed to the gk2 now I said it's the second thing it does the first thing that it does is it copies your 3D print file from the little USB stick across to its hard drive now that is a fantastic thing and it's a wonderful thing to know that it's sat there on the hard drive the only problem with that is if the hard drive fails you're going to need to replace the hard drive it's not just a case of a USB stick that you need to swap over because it's G faulty so although I think that is a positive that could be a negative if it fails it hasn't failed on me I hastened to add so is there anything that I would like to improve on the gk2 moving forward which may be able to be fixed with a firmware upgrade it may be able to be fixed with the next generation of gk2 well I think there is a couple of things that I would like to change one is you cannot preheat your resin this has to happen during the printing process which means if you wanted to save a little bit of time like preh hinting your pla printer with this resin printer you can't do that you have to literally press print and wait for it all to heat up now is that a negative for me it would just save me a a little bit of time when I'm printing but it's not a game changer just moving back to the hard drive when the hard drive starts to get a little bit full and you want to delete files from it you have to delete those files individually I cannot find a way of deleting them on mass there is no erase all function now again is that a good thing or is that a bad thing because you may not want to delete some of the files on it and and a delete all may cause that to happen but there should be at Le at least a function where I can select a couple of prints to remove to delete them and I think that would be a really easy fix to do so uniformation gk2 I'll leave that one with you coming back to the feat I do think it would be very advantageous for uniformation to include a link with the description of the printer maybe in the book to a download link where you could print these feet from and get them all ready just in case you had a problem with your vat I think that would be a really useful move now one of the other things that is a concern for me is the fill level on the vat there is no discernable fill level yes there's this little Ingress here that you should not fill past but it wouldn't be too hard to fill past it and beginners might not realize that and that will cause a disaster if it overflows into the mechanism of the printer so uniformation may be a clearer do not f past this line level would help so above all and in conclusion what are my thoughts of the uniformation gk2 after 6 months of solid use this printer is an absolute Workhorse it is an absolute godsend and it is by far the best printer that I've ever ever used when it comes to resin now it's not cheap the cost of this printer you can probably get two maybe three satins for it but when you look at the Quality when you look at the built-in heater when you look at all the innovations that uniformation are achieving with this printer and when you look at what this thing turns out on a daytoday basis the money that I spent on this printer is absolutely well worth it and I look forward to the next generation of uniformation gk2 with built-in Wi-Fi which it doesn't have at the moment although there is a module that you can get from uniformation that does allow you to monitor your print remotely um there's no camera on here would have been nice if we had a bit of a camera setting maybe on the next itineration of the new gk3 if that is even in the making but as resin printers go and I've owned a few of them this is by far the best I've had the most reliable I've had and again by far has given me the best results now I hope you've enjoyed that six-month review I think it's important to do reviews months and months down the line it's all too easy to tell you what people think of these things when they use it for a day or two but 6 months later you'll start to find all the nooks and crannies of the good and the bad in this if you like what you see today on greedy 3D please subscribe to the channel your subscription is important and every one of them is appreciated if you want to join the patreon there'll be a link in the description where you can do that and I want to say here a great big thank you to my patrons for supporting the channel so far if you want to buy yourself a gk2 there'll be a link in the description uh it is an affiliate link and a little bit will kick back to me but it won't cost you guys anymore but if you want to buy one please follow the link in the description and I'll see you real real soon on greedy [Music] 3D of

Channel: Greedy 3D

Views: 18,349

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Id: 41-Hck3HxPI

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 19 2023