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