What you see before you is a cantilever printer.
It's the Kingroon KP3S 3 I've never used one of these before, and it's got some interesting
features that you wouldn't expect, so let's go.
First I want to mention how tiny this printer is.
I can't really explain so I'll show you.
Wait.. fused...deposition MOULDING?
hahaha.
It is crazy small.
I'm not really sure how you'd measure it It's actually so small that it rivals the mini
delta for size, but unlike the mini delta it actually prints well..no that's unfair
(psst..it's not haha), I lived with the mini delta for a year and got some good stuff out
of it (I didn't), this kingroon is better by a clear mile.
For the space it takes up it also gives back more bed volume too, I know you're thinking
it has a tiny bed but actually it's deceptive, it's 180mm x 180mm which converted to imperial
is 18cm x 18cm and that's actually big enough to print a phone case for most phones as you'll
see later on in the review, which is something I absolutely couldn't do on the delta.
So enough dissing the delta, let's run over the features on this KP3S version 3.0 3d printer.
It has linear rails on x and y, but not on z, that's the usual wheel thing with a rod.
Linear rails are almost unheard of on stock budget bed slingers and at the price you can
buy this for I'm not even sure if you can get another printer that uses them.
I'm personally kind of meh about the linear rails are better than wheels argument, but
they definitely look cool, in fact let me get some shots of this printer, it is definitely
quite striking in its design compared to every other printer I own.
The power supply is separate on this printer, which is unusual but also not unusual, again,
the mini delta had the same deal, it used a brick though whereas this one uses a full
blown switch mode thingy which is kind of interesting.
It means you can hide it out of sight in your fancy instagram shots and make the printer
look more cool than it would be if the ugly grey box was underneath.
Does this make you seasick?
I was quite proud of this.
How did I do it?
Magic.
As well as linear rails setting this printer apart from others, there's a glaringly obvious
difference regarding the bowden setup.
It doesn't have one.
It's a direct drive!
On a cantilever!
I'm interested to see how that performs so let's do my test print.
Okay then.
I used the default settings for this in cura, as in cura 5 with the printer added manually,
there is one by the way in the printer profiles.
It has zEE hop on by default which I find annoying so I turned that off, although I
think this print was done with z-hop on.
Either way we have one really good calibration print here.
You would expect the weight on the tool head thingy to cause all manner of chaos but I'm
not seeing it.
Ghosting 👻 is....really good.
Surprisingly good.
Didn't expect that.
Extrusion rate, flow and stuff all look fine, there is some muddying of the text but that's
probably print profiles, bridging is well within expected tolerances causing a bit of
chaos up at the top but yes I approve of this, other than the stringing which honestly is
probably the z-hop anyway, this is one of the best outputs I've seen.
Bed leveling is done via these wheels and that's all fine other than the back left one
is really hard to reach.
It didnt take me long to get it all perfect though with some outstanding first layer stuff.
Small beds like this are a lot easier to level.
The supplied bed is magnetic and removable, it's my least favourite type of bed actually,
but I've found it okay, I guess it's not as rough as the ender 3 pro one I had so it's
easier to remove stuff, and trust me you will not have issues with prints sticking to this
thing, the opposite in fact so be careful.
I would recommend though if you're going to be serious about printing just get a PEI bed,
you can get them this size, I checked.
Feeding filament in is an interesting one, because there's these two thingies that hold
the filament but the path is kind of weird if you do it that way as you can see.
I have a solution though, the extruder has a diameter to it that will fit PTFE tube so
you can do what's called a reverse bowden, and put some ptfe tube between the extruder
and wherever you end up holding the filament, it's perfect for a dry box like this.
Other solutions would include having the filament held above the printer which can be as simple
as having a shelf behind it.
This screw is actually the adjustable z-stop.
Actually I like it.
It works.
It's simple and it works.
Being a direct drive printer it should be capable of printing anything you throw at
it, including fast flexible filament printing.
FFFP.
Yup.
That's a thing now.
I wasn't 100% sure what the internals of the direct drive setup were so...let's open it
up.
And inside we have a V6 style hotend and a Titan style extruder.
This is an absolutely classic combination that is super reliable in my experience, I
believe the V6 has a ptfe insert which helps with PLA but limits temperature to, well I
wouldn't go above 230 personally.
No it doesn't.
Haha.
Me from the future ought to do the videos, he's smarter.
Anyway, long story short, I think it's metal on the hot side.
Whoop, PETG time.
But yeah something about being careful just in case.
And as expected it prints TPU really well with no nonsense.
I had to try the 70A TPU with it and zero problems there either.
With 130% flow rate it managed to get a good density to this solid block too, so I mean,
if you want a cheap printer that can print super flexible filaments of 85A and below,
this should do it.
Quick look in the bottom then!
I'm aware that there are a few versions of this board but I am honoured, because this
is my first encounter with one of these.
This is a gigadevice arm chip!
They've been popping up here and there presumably due to the ongoing chip shortage, and they
are an alternative to the STM32.
Other things to note, this is a bespoke board but it looks very similar to the robin nano
board that seems to be popping up everywhere these days, I would speculate that it's a
version of that.
(The firmware is literally called robin_nano.bin.
haha)
Also if you find yourself inside here then it's worth taking the two minutes to just
fix the bed connectors which are tinned, you don't have to ferrule them as it happens,
I checked the spec on the terminals, they are actually cool with stranded wire, but
I should qualify that statement with the fact I don't know what I'm doing as evidenced by
previous classics like ferruling over tinning, but tinned wires will eventually fail, I don't
think it's as huge an issue as it's made out to be but it's just worth doing really because
why not.
The belt on this one is absolutely fine too.
So what else?
Well here's some things I printed...
...they're all pretty decent
I think one of the things that did stand out to me while I was researching this printer
is how many user mods there are out there for it.
If you think this is a printer you can't mod because it's very bespoke in its design, you're
wrong.
I might at some point print out one of the mods that let you put the psu into the base.
So I think that just about covers it for this printer.
It seems to be surprisingly capable for its size, and as someone who doesn't print a lot
of large things, I could see this being a really good option actually, it's not nearly
as limiting as the round bed on the mini delta, but not nearly as huge as an ender 3 style
printer.
It's almost portable.
Anyway let me know what you think in the comments, especially if you have one then let everyone
know how you find it.
I will see you next time!
Thank you for watching.