On today's episode we're gonna take a look at the Sovol sv01 this is a $299
3d printer that shares a lot of components with the creality machines
like what i have back here. in fact they actually buy some other components
direct from creality and then they add upgrades to this machine that a lot
of people were looking for in their creality printers including direct drive
but does it make it a better 3d printer than the creality machines? well
we're gonna find out on today's filament friday. This weeks Filament friday is brought to you by
these patreon supporters. before I get into the details of where the upgrades
are let me first say that this is very similar in assembly to a CR 10 or CR 10
mini and that the upper section is all assembled and the bottom section is
mostly assembled so really it's just four bolts to mount this top section to
the bottom and then you have to mount the LCD and connect the wires and you're
pretty much there. it's a real easy assembly now they do give you a really
nice manual. step-by-step takes you through everything including some setup
at the end of how to level your bed and get the software going so they did a
good job in explaining that and it did go together pretty easy I really didn't
have many issues at all. when I received the printer I did not receive any source
code they were not releasing it. I explained to him you're running Marlin
you need to release the source code they agreed so they're working on releasing
it to the public and they did send me a copy of it that I can't share but at
least I could see what was in it and it is indeed running Marlin one point one
point six. so I'm releasing this video with their promise that they're gonna
release the source code to the public and meet the Marlin requirements. now
when I looked over the source code I saw that they had thermal runaway protection
enabled along with some of the features that are in the menu so it told me they
probably are running a higher memory board. turns out that was the first
upgrade. this definitely has a higher memory board than the Ender three or the
CR ten-mini in fact they're buying the exact same board that's used in the CR
10s. now you could say that the SVO1 is a CR 10S mini because it has a lot
of the same features that the original CR 10s has
such as filament run out sensor it's got dual threaded rods and this was the
first, CR 10s was the first one to get dual threaded rods on any Creality
machine so they've copied that and they drive it from the same board. now I took
the threaded rod off of mine because I didn't like the way it was driven.
sometimes the motors would jump and I had the level thrown off so I reduced
down to a single threaded rod like a CR 10 so it'll be interesting how well this
one performs. this one has a glass bed just like the CR-10S only this
one includes like an ultra based top, it's a clone, I ended up just flipping it
over most of the time just using glue because I didn't find it worked that great.
but they do include the glass bed which makes it much more level than say and
Ender 3. some people have complained that their beds a little bit worked. I
also found the performance with that glass bed it's actually better than what
I was getting in my CR 10s I'm not seeing any ringing any ghosting I'll
show you that in the prints. the biggest difference then is really this direct
drive and I was kind of excited about it because I want to print the really
flexible materials specifically I like to try out the ninjaflex that's the real
rubbery stuff. pretty difficult to print on most printers although I did use the
EZR extruder and got it to work on my Ender three. I was curious how well it
would print on this direct drive extruder.
I'll show you how that turned out. this machine also has the orange Springs that
are underneath the bed the same as a CR 10s
they're a little bit stronger than the ones that come on the Ender three so
some people prefer that because it holds the bed a little better. Ive found if you
get the adjustment in the middle of the spring so you got tight adjustments
either way my bed really doesn't change much on the Ender three but that is an upgrade
that this machine has. the other thing this has that the CR 10's doesn't have is
integrated electronics built right into the bottom case. so it's an all-in-one
printer everything comes with you versus a CR 10 s where the box is totally
separate the electronics are here it's a little harder to move around so that's a
nice feature now it does make the SD card a little harder to get to in the
front but the on/off switch is right here on the side versus in the back I
like that a lot better. the build area is 280 millimeters by 240 millimeters by
300 millimeters tall which is very similar to a CR 10 mini
just laid out slightly different it's definitely bigger than in Ender three. I
laid my under three Pro magnetic bed on top of it here and you can see you have
a lot bigger build area on this printer I took the cover off the bottom of the
printer and that exposed the electronics it was like 12 screws to take off you
can see the circuit board a blower or cooling fan and then the power supply
when I focus on the board you can see it's an actual Creality version 2.2
I'm pretty sure this is the one used in the CR 10 s and it's got a ATmega 2560
so it's the larger microcontroller with more i/o and more memory so 256 K of
space plenty of room for the full Marlin also included is a meanwell power
supply 24 volts fourteen point six amps so it's a decent power supply I believe
it's a similar one used in the Ender three pro they do include 200 grams of
white PLA to print with so it's nice. pretty decent size roll and they only
give you one sample file to print so I use this in the first prints and you'll
see it didn't turn out that great. the Z height switch is mounted separately that
comes separate you mount with these two screws and tighten it up and it is
adjustable you can move it up and down on the rail and this is nice because you
can get your bed leveled so the springs are pretty tight but in between
movements so I did adjust this before I leveled my bed.
I leveled the bed and then I started printing the sample print there's only
one and it starts to print out a raft and after it gets the raft on it was
pretty smooth the raft went down good it started to print at calibration cube and
I let this print until it was close to finished and then I decided to cut the
filament but look at the light stayed on. it still thinks there's filament so
something was wrong in the sensor it was stuck and it actually was because I went
back in wiggled a piece of filament in it and then it's
light went off and it gave me a change filament error. so I let it finish
printing and it did run out of filament. I cut it too short but it just
didn't look that great it was kind of rough and of course the top like I said
I ran out of filament but it just is not smooth for a first print especially
for their sample prints since they sliced it so I decided to print my calibration
cube the check calibration cube with that same filament that was included and
it just looks rough and my CHEP Pawn looks terrible
I tried printing a benchy but it broke off the bed and this is when I flipped
the glass over and started using glue and glass and then I just decided to use
Atomic's candy apple red filament and it started to print a lot better this was a
lot better although the CHEP pawn still didn't look
great it was better but not great the benchy looked better but a lot of
stringing and I had retractions set way high. I used the traction settings for
an Ender three I should have had under extrusion not this so here they are next
to each other and clearly Ender three prints were a lot better. I did try some
petg I didn't see a major difference between the two these are fan ducts. I
printed so it did print that fine one area is really impressed on the
CHEP cube there's no ghosting no vibrations showing up on the y-axis. when
you have a glass bed that's moving you tend to get ghosting or ringing because
of the weight moving back and forth the one on the left is in Ender 3 without
glass the one on the right is Ender3 with glass so I'm getting ringing
there but look at the Sovol SV01 it's a glass bed moving back and forth
no ringing no ghosting this is impressive they got their acceleration
and jerk settings just right I just want to know what was inside this
hot end because it wasn't performing as I expected and it looked like an e3d v6
was inside when I took the side cover off but when I took that out
I could see it had a gold base which tipped me off that there's something
going on here and when I look closely you could see this is a Creality
block heat block. Creality nozzle, it's even got the two screw holes to go into
Creality heatsink but the heatsink itself is an e3d style nice and round so
you can use the e3d fan and then it's got this plastic piece on top that goes
up between the gears but the bottom of it spreads out like an upside-down
funnel and that's why I had problems with flexible materials. you can see how
much that could wiggle around if there's any back pressure it'll just curl up and
go into that funnel and then block the filament and that's exactly what it did.
you can see on this piece of filament how it's got wavy lines that was
actually curled up filament inside that funnel and blocked it from printing and
it did this multiple times so that's why I couldn't print the super flexible
ninjaflex on this machine. Overall I think this is
a very solid machine a really nice build area and a lot of nice features included
for $299 including a boot loader so you can upgrade the memory if you're into
that you want to make this machine into what you want it to be I think it's a
great machine to work from I just don't like the hot end I'm really disappointed
in that piece together. it seems like an E3d style heatsink and then the
Ender 3 or just creality heat block. they just don't seem to work together the way
you'd expect. in that case I would put an actual E3D V6 on this guy and then fix
that that funnelled piece of plastic that doesn't allow me to you know print
the real flexible stuff and then I think you got what could be a really really
good printer for still a relatively low cost so that's the one area I would hope