today i'm going to be taking a look at the brand new flashforge adventurer 4 3d printer
discussing its ease of use talking about some of the more impressive features
and then i'm going to show you the print quality by printing off something
incredible welcome back to another episode of stu's reviews
this is actually a prototype of the adventure of four i was sent back
in march and i've been using it since then to get some ideas and opinions to share with you
and i've got lots to share as a disclaimer this review is going to be coming from the average user
perspective not somebody who might be a power user of 3d printers so if you are that person
sitting there and you're an absolute buffing with 60 different 3d printers in your house
this review might not be for you but if you're the average user with
interest in 3d printers already or potentially somebody who's interested in 3d printers but
hasn't already got one then hopefully this episode will give you enough opinion on the adventure of
four for you to make a decision whether this is the right one or not so with that said
let's take a look at the specs the adventurer 4 is flash forge's newest addition to its lineup
featuring a fully enclosed workspace much like its smaller sibling the adventurer 3.
the build volume sits at 22 by 20 by 25 centimeters putting it firmly in the middle
of standard consumer sizing its removable heated bed can achieve a maximum temperature of 110
degrees and the extruder with the right nozzle can hit up to 265. it does have an inbuilt camera
and although the quality is sufficient it's not the prettiest with its primary use for checking
the print hasn't turned into a spaghetti monster it can print a variety of filaments from abs pla
pc pet g placf and pet gcf and arguably this thing looks incredible and absolutely looks the part but
are these locks deceiving first of all let's talk about ease of use now this is something that i
reckon is in the forefront of most people's minds when looking at buying a 3d printer and there's
tons and tons of 3d printers out there but the biggest problem i found is many many many of them
come unassembled you have to assemble the entire thing yourself now i've actually tried to do this
before with 3d printer i believe it was the annex a6 or something like that and that didn't go too
well partly because the instructions were utterly terrible and also because i'm not the most patient
person in the world when it comes to assembling things this is why i'll never do anything like
lego so what do you need to do to assemble the adventurer 4 and get that up and going
nothing all you've got to do is plug the power cable in plug the nozzle in which i'll get onto in
a minute put some pla or other filament in there and you're done it could not be simpler honestly
this was one of the simplest processes to set up a 3d printer that i've experienced so far and it was
a massive round of applause for flashforge when i found out how easy it was to set up the only thing
you might have to do is level the bed now this does take a little bit of time but it uses flash
watches nine point auto calibration system to do that which is really really straightforward but
here's a bit of a but on the website it says auto bed leveling and i guess it does
do it automatically you don't have to manually adjust the bed does it all through the software
but auto to me sounds like you should do it itself and it would be fantastic if you could
just press a button and it did everything for you automatically and level that bed that's something
to consider but to be honest i leveled it once and since then it's been perfect ever since the design
is otherwise wonderful however and this enclosed unit is beautiful it does take up quite a lot of
space for the build volume that it's capable of but this enclosed unit the positives far outweigh
that particular downside first of all you've got a more sterile environment free from contaminants
you know dust or dirt or people prodding things because it's enclosed you're not going to damage
any prints that are on the way also it's got a hepa 13 filter meaning that it's going to filter
out pollutants from the inside which is important if you're printing in things like abs for example
also it helps you create a better consistency in things like your temperature of your nozzle
temperature of your bed and temperature of the print itself so overall the fact that this is
fully enclosed is possibly one of my favorite features about the adventurer 4 and the build
volume is much bigger than the adventurer 3 something that a lot of people were asking for
it's not just the extra build volume that has made this much bigger and quite a big unit it's also
the addition of something that will make a lot of people happy and a lot of people are asking for
this it's the ability to use one kilogram spools in the spool holder on the side which is fantastic
with the previous version the adventurer 3 you were stuck at around 500 gram half size spools
because it didn't have a very big spool holder on the side there were modifications that people did
sort of external spool holders but then having an external spool holder you're taking away
what we just spoke about the fact that this is a fully enclosed unit and it is sealed from any
contaminants the fact that this now allows the one kilogram spools people are gonna love that
they've also added a magnetic build plate which makes it so easy to remove your model it has
slight flex in it as well so that you can pop the prints straight off and that makes things
so much easier so i really like the addition of that magnetic build plate you don't have any
kind of fasteners you just simply slide it in and that's not the only thing that's quick release as
well so as i said earlier the nozzle you've got to plug in that's because these are changeable
they feature a really handy quick release system and it's utterly ingenious and it means that
you can change out different nozzle specs much quicker so if you want something with a higher
temperature you can add that in or if you want something with a slightly thicker nozzle as well
you can simply swap that out of course there is a slight downside to this the downside here
is that you'll have to source those particular nozzles from flash watch and this can get a little
bit expensive but i think for the fact that you can easily remove the entire assembly for cleaning
for changing to a different type of nozzle i just think that that is invaluable and again that's
something that outweighs the negatives so overall the design is fantastic it's a much needed upgrade
from the adventurer 3 and there's some fantastic features on here that will benefit everybody
new and returning people to 3d printers but a 3d printer is as only as good as its software so how
is that it's actually surprisingly easy to use for novices and people who are returned to 3d printers
to get a 3d print going all you need to do is find a model put it onto your usb stick show
it in the front here and away you go you can even send it over internet through wi-fi or ethernet if
you've got either of those connected and if it is connected to wi-fi or internet you can even browse
the flash forge directory online and print from anywhere in the world i could be in spain right
now and choose to print something from my printer and it will just send it to it print it for me
so it's ready when i get home i think that's fantastic and that's something that i've never
seen in a 3d printer that i've tried so far a nice touch here is that it has some onboard memory to
store the prints that you've printed meaning if somebody removed the usb stick halfway through
a print it doesn't matter because that print will have moved across onto the onboard memory
the same with losing internet connection if your wi-fi drops it doesn't matter
it can still print because it's had that stored on the internal memory and that's a really nice touch
to allow the printer to continue despite failures around it it also has another failsafe as well
when it comes to the power if for example the power dies for whatever reason then it will resume
that print when the power comes back on and that is just a really awesome feature and together with
the fact that it has that on board memory to store the print it just means that the likelihood of you
having a really long print ruined by internet disconnection or usb stick disappearing or power
going those are mitigated and you're not going to have any problems continuing a print and finishing
it if any of those things happen so a round of applause for that but there is always a slight
but and that is that when the nozzle heats back up after resuming a print or when you're starting a
print the retraction of the filament isn't enough and you will get quite a lot of filament coming
through at the very very beginning or obviously when you're resuming a print now this can affect
the print a little tiny bit and it could be sold in the software if say for example when
it finishes a print it retracts a bit of the pla so you're not getting as much pull through when it
heats up but to be honest if you're using things like a raft or brim then that kind of extra little
bit will just be deposited elsewhere and you're not going to get any issues with the print the
only way that this will affect you really is when resuming a print after something like a power cut
as well as being able to resume a print halfway through if there's a power cut you can also change
the settings of the print halfway through now for a lot of people this won't be that relevant but i
found it extremely useful at trying to work out the best way to print with a very awkward type
of filament in here at the moment is some marble effect pla which i've used to print the incredible
print which we'll see in a few minutes but it's awkward as hell when i printed using the standard
settings which was absolutely fine with the white pla that i'd used previously it just didn't work
what was happening was essentially the outside was printing fine but when it was printed in fill
the structure on the inside of the print it was stringing like help so the printer was obviously
moving too fast or not enough pla was coming out so halfway through i decided to change some of the
parameters slow it down increase the temperature until it was printing that infill correctly
at which point i was able to restart that print with the new settings and away i go now this
ability to change it midway through was absolutely invaluable at finding the best possible settings
for this particular pla and since then i've moved on to print loads of stuff with this pla with the
same settings and i've not had a single issue it's very unlikely that you'll need to do this
if you're using a standard color pla white red black if you're using something particular maybe
like wood or metal or marble style filaments you might need to change some of those settings mid
way through to get the best quality print that you can but the ability to experiment that's what i
liked so that's the printer itself now what about the quality of the prints that come out of it
now in theory every single printer should print the same quality if they've got the same abilities
so if you've got it set at 0.2 millimeters then it should print the same quality but
that's always often not the case but since having this i've printed loads of stuff i've printed a
game boy stand a raspberry pi case some tool clips obviously a benchy boat which is used as
the standard for 3d printer tests which came out very well at super high resolution you can hardly
see the layers with the naked eye but i wanted to test it with something harder something more
challenging something that would fill the maximum volume of what this can think and print something
with detail something with support potentially something with a few 3d model errors in it as
well to see how well the printer handled that so i came up with my own idea and designed my own thing
to print to see how well it managed printed in the awkward marble pla over 36 hours at a slow
32 millimeters a second and at a soaring heat of 226 degrees i give you stulius caesar
at a standard resolution of 0.2 millimeters per layer it's come out as an utter work of art
and so has the print but i'm more than impressed about how this printer has performed
other than a few small areas where the supports are attached to the model this thing looks near
perfect and i am super impressed how well this has come out it barely looks like
a 3d printed model and this was at standard resolution as well so i am massively impressed
and the thing is to go even further this thing and the software that flashprint provide completely
knocked it out the park with the errors of that model now i'm not a 3d model artist at all and
i have no idea what i'm doing all i did was i scanned my face using the hedges app from the
app store i took that scan and then spliced my own face onto a statue of julius caesar using blender
by essentially using the rudimentary sculpting tools and dragging his face behind my own
if you hide my face this looks absolutely horrific but you can see how bad this 3d model is there's
lots of weird little artifacts everywhere vertices and faces that shouldn't be there it's just a huge
thumbs up from me with the fact that this can take an utter cowboy of a botched job
splicing two models together and make something as perfect as it has done so i am utterly amazed
so the price the price of this thing comes to 799 dollars which is around if it translates
directly about 550 pounds now i think that is a fantastic price for the level of features
that you get in this thing it is on the more expensive side of some of the same volume 3d
printers out there but i think the features that this thing has puts it in a league of its own
and it almost makes it a professional level printer in my eyes i just think it's incredible
i love the locks i love the size i love the feature set and i think people who are new
to printing are going to find this incredibly easy to use and i think those that aren't new
to printing who already have 3d printers are going to love some of the more advanced features of this
thing and i'm going to love the ability to print out some really complex things with simplicity
and that concludes my review of the flash forward adventurer iv a fantastic upgrade on the adventure
of three it's really obvious that flash watch have listened to people's feedback on that particular
model and implemented what people want in this like i said the only two things i feel that they
could improve upon is maybe changing the software so that it retracts the pla before it ends the
print so that on the next print you're not getting a bit of runoff but also i would love to see
some form of absolute automatic leveling so you can press a button and it just completely
automatically levels it for you without having to manually change the height of that nozzle in the
software but other than that this is damn near a perfect printer for everybody if you enjoyed
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