On 7/9/21 2:37 PM, Ralph Stirling wrote:
Did you get any of the options for that SV01?
I bought the SV01 from Amazon for $224 including two day shipping. It's bare bones. I would have liked the silent stepper motherboard upgrade but it wasn't offered at Amazon. If I need to replace the motherboard, I'll upgrade at that time. It's not very noisy without the upgrade. It's next to me on my desk. It's not nearly as noisy as my laser printer. It doesn't bother me and nobody can hear it when I'm talking to people on the phone. Probably half of the noise is from the fans and not the stepper motors. Some people have used larger and slower turning fans to reduce the fan noise, although the stepper motor music is probably the more objectionable noise from a qualitative perspective.
The generic textured glass bed works very well. I've printed a lot of flexible TPU in 96A to 98A durometer. Most of it was without any bed heating but I now heat the bed to 60C and print the first layer with a nozzle temperature of 230C, then turn off bed heating to save power and lower the nozzle to 210C to reduce stringing after the first layer. No glue stick, which makes turnover between parts very fast and easy. Just TPU on glass. Best (quality + speed) is at 50 mm/s print speed and 3 mm of retraction. I have the slicer keep the print head within the infill of the print to avoid traversing open areas whenever possible and there is essentially no stringing with 98A TPU.
There are more options when buying the SV01 directly from Sovol's website, but there's probably a bit more of a premium price for the factory upgrades than there should be. It's about the same price as buying the upgrades after buying the printer, but with them doing the labor. I'm very happy with the inexpensive Keep It Simple bare bones version from Amazon. I expected to need to upgrade the extruder, but I've been very pleased with the stock extruder. There's no programmed filament loading. To unload and load filament, use the scroll wheel user interface to preheat the nozzle (I always use the ABS profile to get it good and hot), pull the filament tension lever to disengage the drive roller, press the old filament down to manually extrude some filament and rapidly withdraw the filament to clear the nozzle, then push in the new filament until 100 mm or so has been extruded from the nozzle. So far, the extruder has been 100% maintenance free, and I've done a lot of printing with TPU, which is a worst case for jams.
The PLA test cube sample print that was on the microSD card had the highest print quality I've seen from a hobby grade 3D printer. The print quality was almost as good as a friend's expensive Statasys commercial 3D printer.
The tiny microSD card in the weird location is my biggest gripe. Some fiddly left handed dexterity is needed to insert the microSD card. Each time, I spend a minute fiddling with it. One time, I missed the slot on the motherboard and the microSD card fell into the electronics enclosure and I was forced to remove the bottom panel to remove the microSD card. This would only be a minor aggravation for a print farm that prints the same parts, but I use this for prototyping and one-off parts that I design, so I'll probably get a Raspberry Pi and use OctoPrint rather than fiddling with the PIA microSD card. On the plus side, the power switch is conveniently located on the right side of the printer instead of being next to the power cord on the back of the printer, so it's easy to turn off the power before removing the microSD card, and turn on the power after inserting the microSD card.
Anyone not printing flexible filaments may be better served with a Bowden style extruder for faster print speeds. Properly tuned, a modern Bowden design can print TPU, particularly the higher durometer versions. For most applications, the flexibility of the part is much more a factor of the wall thickness and fill percentage. I've been printing a very squishy padded part with relatively stiff 98A TPU using one layer (.4 mm) wall thickness and 20% fill. 10% felt too squishy, like it was an air filled pocket. 20% infill feels like a moderate density closed cell foam.
With a 240mm X 280mm X 300mm build volume, I need to print something goofy like a waste paper basket or lampshade, although the real benefit for me will be volume printing a large array of parts, or maybe larger mechanical one-off parts such as fixtures, brackets, vacuforming plugs, composite fiberglass molds, etc.
My first 3D printer was an ORDbot Hadron that I built from parts. I've always poo-pooed the 3D printers using Delrin rollers in slotted aluminum for the motion control components as well as the structural frame, but the modern versions work very well. It's not difficult to keep the slots and rollers clean in an office environment, and the motion is very smooth. I initially believed it was better to have an XY gantry over a bed that moved only in the downward direction, but after seeing the SV01, I now think there's an advantage in the design where the bed moves in Y and the extruder moves in X on the gantry. It's more difficult to tune the acceleration and jerk parameters when the extruder is moving in X and the extruder and gantry are moving in Y. Separating the motion so the extruder is only moving in X and the bed is only moving in Y seems to result in less following error for the nozzle. I'm getting high quality prints, at higher speeds than I thought possible.
I love the fact that I can buy inexpensive and readily available Ender parts and the open architecture of the SV01 makes it easy to repair. I replaced the extruder heater after ten hours of use (the only maintenance issue I've had in a month of nearly continuous printing) and the repair was a piece of cake compared to my QIDI 3D printer where everything is enclosed and the proprietary parts are no longer available from the manufacturer.
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