I watch tons of 3D printing videos on YouTube and am always jealous of the print quality these folks are getting with their FDM printers. Specifically, I'm envious of these perfect surfaces printers are achieving. My first printer from 2014 is "ok" - very fussy with settings, a lot of work to get a decent print. My second printer is a basic Ender 3. So much better than my first printer, but still not getting flat walls and perfect surfaces. About two weeks ago I bought my third FDM printer - the new Anycubic Kobra 2. It's a direct drive bed-slinger supposedly capable of 250mm/s print speeds. For reference, I think I usually print at 40-60mm/s on the Ender 3. Anycubic had a sale on it, then threw in an extra 20 bucks off coupon so it entered my price range. First impression: very pleased! Without any tweaking, I'm getting those smooth surfaces I wanted. It comes with a flex plate which I'm happy with its adhesion. It has auto-levelling that works! My first printer from 2014 has auto-leveling but it didn't work very well. Printing at high speeds has its drawbacks - print direction changes can product undesirable artifacts. Supposedly however, this printer's firmware can be updated in the future to utilize a computational technique called "input shaping" which anticipates the physics of a print head's direction changes and adjusts acceleration and speeds in such a way that negates the typical artifacts mentioned above. FDM printing has really been making advances lately. Anyway, some sample prints... First up a house I'm working on with the resin printers. Thought I'd see how it prints in FDM: Here's the drive thru section of my neighborhood Taco Bell, which got turned into a Dunkin Donuts / Baskin Robins, printed with the free filament provided w/the printer. Here you can see blobbiness around the edges that I'll need to fix: Last up, a single WPA bridge section modeled from a prototype in my grandmother's home town. I really like how it turned out: These were all printed at 150mm/s, so about 3 times as fast as my Ender 3. Can't wait to start tweaking settings for better results. -Mike
Wow, looking good for an FDM! I think this is one of the first times I can look at a print and not immediately dismiss it as an FDM print. I'm gonna stop looking now, you already helped me get into laser cutting, I don't have the space for a new FDM printer
This printer looks very interesting. Really want to hear more about how its working for you. Been eyeing an Ender 3 but this one looks like its better? Prices are comparable too so tough decision.
Mike, did you order direct from Anycubic? if so could you please tell me the ETA to expect on shipping. I just placed an order; I also was offered a great deal with a full spool of white filament for 288.00 plus free shipping.
Yep - I ordered direct from Anycubic. If I remember right I ordered late on a Friday night and got the printer the following Wednesday. They have a warehouse in the US so it's not coming from oversees. I've ordered at least three, maybe four other printers (resin) from them over the years and the shipping has always been fairly prompt. I'm still really liking this thing. Seems like a poor man's Prussa in that for the most part it just works and print quality is great. I'd like to have more slicing profile options, like a ~.12 layer height, but since it's still new the profiles available are pretty limited. Maybe I'll take another look over the weekend to see if any of the other early adopters have created profiles for download. Cheers -Mike
Are you using the Cura slicer? If so, did you use the already posted Anycubic Kobra profile for slicing? I noticed the Kobra 2 is not yet listed.
No, I figured I'd start with Prusa Slicer since I had it previously installed to test out. The MicroSD/USB card packaged with the printer comes with a copy that has the Kobra 2 settings pre-installed.
Thanks for the input. I am expecting my printer before the weekend, so I was looking at Cura and noticed they didn't have the Kobra 2 listed. I guess I will be using Prusa to kick things off.
I started with an Ender 3 and had the normal learning curve, was even able to print usable Battlemechs for a tabletop game called Battletech. Decided to get the Ender 6 when it came out as it had a slightly larger bed and was auto leveling. It was nothing but headaches from day 1 and factory customer service was useless. And actually when learning on my Ender 3, if it hadn't been for the Facebook pages and Fat Dragon Games, I would have been in deep trouble. SO I will find someone who wants to fight with this one, telling them what it does, and get a better unit. It's sad, the 3 was a far better machine than the 6.
Never really seen anything on the '6'. I was recently in Bend, OR visiting my sister and family. While there I helped my 11 year old great-nephew with an Ender 3 Neo he had and was having continued print problems with. He is a really sharp kid and had been using Tinker Cad and tried Fusion without luck. I spent a couple hours with him with Fusion and he saw the light, learned quickly, saw all that he could do easily with it and is now a full Fusion convert. Back to the printer....his problem was getting the first layer down on the build plate. It was sticking some places and not others resulting in failed prints right from the beginning. A common problem with any of these printers if the bed isn't level. The Neo has auto-leveling. It and probably others that claim to have auto-leveling are using a term that is very misleading in my view. It doesn't level the bed at all. It runs a sensor over the bed's surface and collects data on how out of level it is. Then during the print it moves the print head up and down while printing to make up for it. Most beds are flat enough that this isn't needed. The problem is they aren't level/parallel to the movement of the head tipping in one corner and up in the opposite corner. This is easy to fix if you level it like you would a machine that doesn't have auto-leveling. My Ender 3 Pro's don't have auto-leveling and after helping him glad they don't. I run a program and can level the bed when needed (not very often) in about a minute. I do this if I see the skirt isn't laying down at the beginning of the print and I can't adjust it on the fly as it is laid down. We leveled his bed manually, couldn't use the program I have, and it took a little longer (about 5 minutes). Now the auto-leveling only has to make very small adjustments during the print if any and he is getting great prints and the frustration is gone. These printers are great, love mine, but aren't just plug and play or at least down the road you will have to learn how to adjust, fix, unplug or repair them to keep them running like they should. They are working to thousands of an inch/mm tolerances. Get these off just a bit and your prints will fail or suffer. The solutions to problems you might/will encounter aren't hard to deal with. If you buy a popular printer you can find tons of YouTubes to help you. I like this about the Ender as it is probably the most supported filament printer out there. When I bought a resin printer I switched to AnyCubic for the same reason. Not that it was better but so well supported. Sumner
That explains quite a bit. When new the 6 worked well, but is now a problem child sitting unused. I may fight some more with it during these warmer months, but it has become a pain rather than a pleasure, sadly.
Here is what we used to manually level his Neo and should work for you. I takes longer than what I use but we couldn't use it. Still once you do this you might not have to touch it for months..... https://youtu.be/nzIkCerorrk Hope it helps, Sumner
Can you not just copy another profile and edit it to .12 layer height? I know in Cura you can. You may have to tweak some other settings (for example, with thinner layers you'll likely want more top and bottom layers), but if you have a profile that works well at a thicker layer setting it shouldn't take much to get it to work at .12.
You don't have to have a profile for your particular printer, just pick one with similar specs and adjust it if necessary. For example, when I first got my Anycubic Mega S they didn't have a profile for it in Cura so I used the Prusa Mendel I3 profile.
For sure - it's the tweaking step I'd like to expedite if someone else has already figured it out. I'm still dialing in the .2 layer profile for some small stringing issues that manifest on certain geometries.
