On today's episode we're going to take a look
at this the Ender 3v ... no this is a voxlab aquila. Oh man it looks a lot like an Ender 3 v2.
In fact it's a clone. But it's a hundred dollars less on amazon than an Ender 3 v2. So let's
take a look at it on today's Filament Friday Filament Friday is brought to you every week
by the generous donations of these patreon supporters. So the creality Ender 3 v2, and the
Voxelab aquila. But who is voxlab? Well voxlab is a division of flashforge. If you're familiar
with them, they're the flashforge dreamer, flashforge adventurer printers. I've shown those
on the channel. They're really nice printers but they're a lot more expensive than
these two. So voxlab appears to be their opportunity to compete at the low end with
the leader, which is basically creality. So they've copied the v2, almost identical. The
aquila comes as a kit the same way as the v2. In fact it looks like an identical kit. It looks like
they even copied most of the manual. So assembling this takes about 45 minutes to an hour. The same
as it does for a v2. So if you look at this guy, things like the hot end, very similar to this.
In fact they even copied some of the flaws. The PTFE tube goes all the way to the nozzle.
So if you take the nozzle off you can push the PTFE tube all the way through. But when I did take
the nozzle off they had a gap in their test print so it left a little ring between the nozzle and
the PTFE tube. If I would have printed with that I probably would have had some blockage. So I just
replaced the nozzle. They did give me an extra one in here, but it looks like it's the same nozzle
as the creality machine. The only thing that's really different is the LCD. Now the LCD on the
Creality machine, the v2, is an LCD panel that's actually easier to read from the side. So if you
look straight on it's hard to read but if you tilt your head to one side it's much easier to read. So
what they did on this is take that same display, turned it 90 degrees, which forces you to look
at it at an angle. So this display is actually easier to read than the one on here. Now
there are third-party software that have made that much better, like I showed in previous
videos. Jyers third-party firmware for this makes it better. Well someone just forked that so
there's a fork and I'll put a link to this as a fork of the Jyres firmware now for the Aquila.
This I installed a bl touch. This one has two screw holes, threaded holes, to install a BL
touch and the community already has a bracket for a BL touch on there. The electronics
boards are almost identical the connectors are in the same place. Everything. There's even a
connector for the bl touch. They do have a fuse, an automotive type fuse at the power
wires, so you can easily replace that. That's something this guy doesn't have,
so there's a few features it does have. I've also noticed that voxlab now offers spare
parts for this which is one of the features I loved about creality. Or I do love about
Creality. I can get replacement parts real easy. So they're offering replacement parts for this now
because they're identical. They probably can swap but they have actual voxelab parts that you can
get so they're going at it full bore. And I love this because this has got to do nothing but bring
these prices down further. I mean we're already at a pretty low price for 3d printing but if you
can get this one which has silent drivers on x y and z, has the glass bed, has the adjusters, has
you know a nice display power supply built into the base, now sitting out here for $179. That's an
amazing price. And you can get an Ender three for $155 dollars, not this one, the the base Ender
three for hundred fifty five dollars which has come down. But that's got the crappy drivers. You
don't get the silent drivers on that you don't get a glass bed you don't get the adjusters for very
little extra money you're getting this so this this has got to cut into creality's margins so
this is going to create competitive price wars it's amazing so what about the print quality at
179 dollars well i haven't done a ton of testing i did print other sample prints i did print
some chep cubes and one thing i did find is little gaps at spots that it's under extruding so
i think their e-steps is not exactly calibrated properly i'm going to have to play with that
i did use my filament not there so that may affect things a little bit but i did use my cure
profiles that work perfectly on the v2 for me they're not working as good here the check cubes
that i printed are good but not as good as what i get on my v2 they did give me a sample print which
got a lot of different shapes i got some stringing which could be my filament versus theirs it's
good i wouldn't say it's spectacular but it's good instead of a tool drawer this doesn't have a
tool drawer like the v2 does so they give you this tool box that slides into the rail this
is a sample print but it's actually a nice print to test the walls are nice and straight and
smooth it's a pretty good print but i also found out that the bed even though i had it really
leveled very nicely using my manual bed level it lifted it warped in one spot so this clearly
and i found that with other prints this clear does not grip as well as the v2 glass bit this one
i think i'd have actually put a little glue on it so that's a little different um they don't give
you a knob like they do with the v2 but they give you this file so you can print one and it fits
nicely on here so it does work they also give you this bracket to put the spool holder on the side
and so you take the spool holder put it in here and now it's on the side so it puts this tool kind
of like this like i've showed on some of my enders and it's nice but they didn't design this to work
with the t-nuts or the screws here the screws are too short the t-nuts are too fat to fit into their
opening so i'll have to get some other screws to try it out but that's actually a nice thing to
add to their sd card and it gives you nice smooth curve so you can test look for salmon skin or
things like that and there's none it prints pretty smooth so overall i think it's got potential to
print just as good as the v2 but out of the box it needs a little more work now in full disclosure
voxlab did send me one of these printers but in reality it's still in the box it came a little
late i went and ordered this on amazon because i wanted to see what you would get if you bought one
on amazon and thank you to my patreon supporters that allows me to do that so i bought this and
tried it out like anyone who opened one from amazon i will test the one from directly from
vox lab and compare the two for right now this is the one same one that you would buy on amazon
i think it's got a lot of potential i definitely think you're getting a good printer even though
you're paying a hundred dollars less now if you want an actual creality v2 go for it it's a good
printer but keep an eye out i think there's going to be a price war here soon and that is nothing
but good in the long run i think for the community as long as they don't start cheapening these
things even more but we're getting silent drivers 32-bit boards adjusters glass bed good displays i
mean the only thing left is that they come with an auto level installed and we're almost there they
got the connector they got the brackets all you need to do is add the auto level the bl touch and
then put the firmware actually on this thing so will that be the separation you know they want to
justify a higher cost so they're going to ship it with the bl touch i don't know it could happen but
i like where this is going they do have their own slicer called voxel maker it's got an interface
similar to simplify 3d i like it but it doesn't give you the option to add a start g code or ng
code so when i asked about that they suggested i just use kira that works for me so what do
you think let me know in the comments below if you like what i'm doing here maybe check out
some of the other videos popping up and if nothing else click on the chep logo and subscribe i'll
see you next time right here at filament friday
