This, is the artillery sidewinder X2.
Which by the way is a 3d printer, maybe it will help if I keep saying that.
For algorithm reasons.
Anyway...let's have a look at it shall we?
For the first time on this channel, I received this printer to review free of charge from
the manufacturer.
I will tell you that I am quite happy with the offer to review the printer, not because
obviously, I get to play with a printer, but moreso because I have been left to review
it however I want with no conditions made other than, well, to review it and link it
below in the description which hopefully I have done.
So, everything that follows is my unedited opinions.
First up I will drag you through the build process, and before I get into explaining
that, or I guess while I explain it, I will tell you that this printer is an absolute
monster, in terms of its physical dimensions, by that I mean the footprint, and by that
I mean the amount of depth you will need to fit it.
I have a film location which fits all my existing printers, but I had some real trouble getting
this thing in shot, actually I just couldn't get the whole thing including the filament
reel.
It's huge.
Assembly is really so simple that there's almost nothing to tell you.
The printer is already assembled almost entirely, with..
I guess you could say it's just two parts that are packed in there separately so that
it lies down in the box.
The frame as seen comes out first, then the base is under it.
The packaging in printers these days is amazing, I have to say.
I mean it's not biodegradable which is a shame, it's that weird black foam again, but it's
so well formed it feels like I'm filming an episode of Mr Puzzle here taking this thing
out.
Something unique to artillery, I think, is this PCB edge connector that carries everything
from the base to the gantry - old gamers like myself, yes, I know, it's the same stuff that
end connectors from cartridge games use.
My only hope is that it won't suffer the same corrosion type of fate, but I think it would
take a while, plus being permanently connected, I'm really not that worried.
The tracks are plenty enough to carry the hotend current which is probably around 30
watts which would be just over an amp, it shouldn't be an issue.
So you have four captive screws in the base to put in, and for your info it's easier to
slide it off the edge of a table and screw them in from below.
I really liked that the screws were captive, meaning already installed and won't fall out
because they have some kind of washer in there, especially after the fiasco I had with the
geeetech where I lost the screws into the body.
I suppose if I wasn't filming it the build of this printer would have been about 10 minutes.
Unusually, even the eccentric nuts were exactly where they need to be, but the manual does
say to adjust them.
I didn't need to.
So for me, the only adjustment I had to make was to pull this blue bit of plastic here
outward to stop it binding against the belt, which was making a sort of shushing sound.
I can't comment as to whether all units will be this well adjusted or whether I have a
special review unit that's been pre-assembled, so be sure to check yours.
Let's side step for a minute though and look at specs.
This printer has a 300mm by 300mm by 400mm build volume, which is a cubic foot and a
bit, if you want to think about it that way.
Or to think of it another way, it's just huge.
It's the same size as the other large printers out there like the CR10 which has the exact
same volume, and is pitched at I guess around the same price.
Similarly this is also a direct drive printer, we'll have a look at that in a minute, and
it's got twin z-screws which is probably necessary at this size.
But it also has auto bed levelling out of the box, and this colour touch screen, yeah
an actual touch screen, and it ships with its own proprietary silent motherboard which
we will have a look at in a minute too.
And a silent power supply.
What do I mean?
Well.
This is one of my favourite features.
Listen.
Do you hear the fans?
No?
That's because they actually turn off completely when they're not needed.
I know.
It's the future, people.
Printers that don't make noise when they're idle.
If anyone knows where I can buy one of these psus for an ender....I need to know.
Where were we.
Ah, yes, the bit in the manual that gives you instructions on how to bed level.
I found them a bit confusing as they make you repeat bits that don't make sense to me.
Anyway do you see how I haven't scratched the bed?
I think I'm the only person so far to review this printer without scratching the bed with
the nozzle?
Yeah I am a bit smug about that, but here's how you calibrate the bed, it's pretty easy
actually.
So let's have a look at this hotend.
The design of the filament pushy bit here is what's known as a titan, which was designed
by e3d, it's a direct drive extruder setup, meaning it's right there on top of the heaty
bit there.
Why would you choose this instead of the alternative of having a pipey bit between the heaty bit
and the pushy bit?
Well, direct drives do generally perform better especially when it comes to retraction, and
especially when it comes to squishy stuff like TPU filament.
They also seem to cost more, I've never worked out why.
The hotend assembly is a volcano type which basically means longer nozzles like this,
oh yes, genuine e3d nozzles...for a future video...and the heat block, this is the reservoir
and conductor of heat from the heat element which sits in it and the nozzle goes through,
this is set sideways on compared to usual, this is why the nozzle needs to be longer,
and its also because the nozzle needs to be longer.
Chicken and egg I guess.
Anyway this causes the nozzle to perform better because the heat chamber is bigger, so you
expect to be able to print faster, volumetrically.
In theory.
The side cooling fan on here....exists.
The part cooling one is slightly more exciting, being fairly large and having what looks like
a custom printed nozzle on it.
I'll test that in a bit.
Of course nothing ever happens in a vacuum, and I think there's a good chance you will
know that there were some criticisms of the predecessor to this printer.
Every time I talk about these, or discuss the internals, I'm going to remind you that
I am not a qualified engineer, and I do not run an electrical safety test lab.
If I say something about the electronics, it's 100% my opinion, and not a safety assessment.
Got it?
You know what we need to do now?
"oops"
The PSU here is pretty small, and this is because it uses less power than it might,
because the bed is actually powered by the mains voltage, but there's no reason to worry
about that, it is as you can see pretty well....but never mind that, look at this.
These connections here, this is what I like to see, let me get one out to show you.
This is what we call a ferrule, I think they're called bootlace ferrules actually.
I've covered them before but it bears repeating.
Many printer manufacturers are putting tinned solder wires into screw terminals, which can
flex and loosen and basically melt the terminals over time.
The solution, or at least one solution, is ferrules, so I'm very glad to see them here.
In fact, the worst problem is usually the heated bed terminals so that's not even an
issue here anyway, but they did it anyway.
The board you see is the custom ruby board I mentioned, it looks pretty neat to me, and
notice the removable drivers which is something I like to see and is rarely seen on a stock
printer control board so far as I'm aware, usually they're soldered on, so this gives
you upgrade potential.
Also I couldn't help noting that even though theres two z motor driver slots here...and
we have two z motors on this model, they appear to be driving them off the one chip.
While that might seem mad, I did discuss this with some of the members of our discord - which
you should join by the way, link below as always - and the concensus was that it's easier
to keep the z-axis in sync with one driver.
We also discussed the timing belt on the z axis too, which is an interesting feature
as we couldn't work out what it would help to solve.
The best I could come up with is perhaps when the steppers are off, it might kind of, put
them back into alignment if they have drifted.
I guess.
Speed benchy?
Speed benchy.
I thought this wouldn't work, with quoted max speeds of 150mm/s I imagined it would
be a total mess, but look, it came out OK.
This benchy took 29 minutes, which I realise is far from a world record, but you know...it's
pretty good.
I've seen much worse, at lower speeds.
Ok moan time.
This bed is one solid piece of glass.
If you were wondering why I am so intent on not scratching it, well, look under it.
Nice yellow screws though, see this is an upgraders nightmare, because all the upgrades
have been done already.
You can't buy yellow screws to replace yellow screws.
Anyway my point is, the bed is just glass.
While this does apparently result in a ridiculously flat bed...see the octoprint analysis here...what
are you supposed to do when you scratch it beyond all usefulness?
So I have my own solution.
Which is to just forgetaboutit.
I tested by putting this garolite build plate on top.
Setting the temperature to 70, the plate reached almost temperature in pretty short time.
So my suggestion would be to throw another, light bed on top.
Spring steel would be ideal, and just clip it on with some bulldog clips or whatever
you call them where you come from.
So, it's solvable, but would have been preferable to be able to change the glass.
So are mains beds quicker to heat up?
Well, here we go then.
I'll start it in octoprint and start the timer with the other hand.
Not bad.
Especially for a 300mm bed.
I should mention that while I don't have a fancy IR thermal gun yet, it's likely that
since the design of the bed hasn't changed, neither will the hot spots that were seen
with the X1.
Or I guess I should say cold spots.
In fact, I was able to reproduce this pretty easily with my basic IR thermometer.
I don't know about you, but to me this seems like an even more compelling reason to lay
a steel bed on top of the glass bed, to distribute the heat better.
Unfortunately due to some unfortunate events I don't have the steel bed I was hoping to
have to test this, but I'm fairly confident it will spread
the heat fairly uniformly since that's what metal does.
Since we're doing tests, lets do a sound test.
I have the ender 3 v2 which is becoming one of the most popular printers out there, and
it's got silent drivers but not silent fans...here's the ender when it's preheated to normal values,
and here's the X2.
Big difference there.
Remember this is a logarithmic scale, and my ears can tell you this is huge.
Same when printing, not that the ender makes any servo noise generally but the fans are
intolerable, but the X2 manages to still make nearly no noise and I am not exaggerating.
A few times I've had to turn around while working to check because I can't hear it at
all and I wondered if it was still on.
If you want a totally silent, really truly silent printer out of the box then this is
as close as you are going to get.
Even with the part cooling fan on full, it's just so insanely quiet.
Next up - I tried octoprint out, obviously since I showed you a screenshot earlier.
It works absolutely fine, no plugins or hacks, everything works as it should.
If you aren't using octoprint on your printer, then check it out.
With the new pi zero 2 out, if you can get hold of it, it's a no brainer.
Especially if your printer has no preheat menu like this one, not sure what that is
all about, you have to preheat by either choosing filament change...which is a cool function
actually, watch...
So...firmware.
This printer runs your standard marlin 2 - how do I know?
Well, this is always a good sign, artillery3d have uploaded it to github.
I have had a poke round here, and I can confirm that while some choices are suspect, 270C
for a ptfe lined hot end max temp isn't ideal, but the safety features in marlin all seem
to be enabled.
Which is something I would expect, but I checked anyway.
For the record, a metal hotend does exist, so I guess that might explain the former point,
but it is worth repeating that you should not heat the stock hotend beyond around 235-240.
Now, being a volcano style hotend, and a big printer, one of the things I wanted to do
on it was swap out the nozzle to a 0.6 or 0.8, and I have, as you saw earlier, got the
nozzles from E3D to do that.
Not only to print faster, because that's what happens when you put bigger nozzles on, you
can increase line height a fair bit, and print significantly faster, like we're talking half
the time or less.
The issue is I just don't want to make this review any longer, so I will be doing this,
just not now.
Before we do wind up, I want to show you some of the test prints I have done, I try to generally
print things I need, if possible, to save on waste, especially if I'm doing larger tests,
so here's a really cool box for my wowstick, this came out really well, I'm very happy
with it.
To test the first layer and calibration I printed a couple of these card kits to assemble
and they came out perfect, no curling or warping, as you would expect with auto bed levelling.
I also tested for z-banding as angus had noticed it, but I'm not seeing it.
I mean maybe...but it's no worse than my ender I think.
I can't really say why I'm not seeing it, I haven't done anything to try to prevent
it, I'm printing pretty fast.
This headphone stand I've wanted to print for a while, I had one before, gave it to
someone, never got round to printing one myself.
Fits with room to spare on this bed.
I suppose I should come to some conclusions then!
Should we do pros and cons?
If you insist.
The main pros that I consider really worth picking up this printer for would be the bed
size, the auto bed levelling that works out of the box, how quiet it is, the quick bed
heat time, the apparent reliability that I've had in terms of bed adhesion.
Cons are the choice of non removable glass plate, and the cold spot issues that come
with that.
This is a huge theoretical downside with this printer, I guess the decision may have been
made around reducing the weight of the bed, but I feel like it's more important to have
temperature stability over the bed, albeit I didn't experience any problems myself, knowing
that the bed temperature isn't uniform is going to drive me to try to solve that.
I would really like to see some options for changing this bed to a more typical glass
on metal setup.
Also the lack of a simple preheat in the firmware, ironically there is a cooldown but no preheat
- this would be a simple firmware fix, and the filament holder, oh, I didn't have time
to show you the filament holder.
It works, and that's all I have to say about that, I guess we can moan about it, but in
its defence...it has bearings in it, so it doesn't creak and groan.
But yeah I don't understand the design.
Well, what do you think?
Comment below and tell me.
I guess the first takeaway is that artillery appear, at least as far as I can tell, to
have resolved all the serious type of concerns one by one of the previous model's reviews,
which we have to give credit for.
What we seem to have as a result then, noting that I'm still not qualified to say so, but
is potentially a machine that's now not only safer, but actually potentially slightly ahead
of similar models in terms of safety oriented design decisions.
In summary then, if you are looking to prioritize size, silence and quality of life functions
like auto bed levelling and filament sensing, over the inconvenience and thermal situation
of the bed, then this is the printer for you.