Flashforge 3D PRO via eBay has
Flashforge Adventurer 5M High-Speed 600 mm/s Auto Leveling Wi-Fi 3D Printer (AD5M) on sale for $279 - $41.85 (15%) off when you apply coupon code
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$237.15.
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About this product:
- Full-auto one-click leveling, flawless first layer
- PEI Flexible magnetic printing platform, quickly remove the model
- CoreXY, rapid yet stable, up to 600mm/s print speed
- 4.3-inch touchscreen simplifies printing operations
- Quick-release nozzle, snap-on design, 3-second replacement
- Supports high-speed filament
- 220 × 220 × 220 mm is sufficient space for most prints
Top Comments
In the ~300 hours I've printed with the machine I've had very few print failures and most were on me. I had one failure that was due to the print head fan cover getting pulled off. It's just held on with magnets and clips. No idea how it got caught but it was pulled off during a print and resulted in a print failure. The other failure I've had is when I push my luck getting parts to stick to the build plate. My preference is to avoid using brims or rafts and even supports when possible. When you can pull it off you get less waste. However, sometimes you push your luck and the result is a print that fails to adhere to the build surface. My feeling is the print failures I've had would likely have failed on other good printers as they were more about pushing the limits of the state of the FDM art rather than the printer having a feeding or other issue.
To reduce my risk of build plate failures I have a spare build plate with a masking tape surface. The tape surface holds the print better vs the standard PEI plate. However, the tape surface doesn't look as nice on the printed part. For PLA I always recommend using a tape surface if you have adhesion issues. Also, if you use the taped build plate, run the auto level at the start of the print (it doesn't add much time).
Speed wise this is a fast printer. It's one of the fastest consumer printers on the market. However, I feel like most of the "500 mm/s" printers are producing reasonably similar speeds. One might take 7 hr while this FF takes 6hr. Yeah, that's a difference but if you put that same print job on an Ender 3 Pro it would take 20. If you put it on the Ender 3 V3 SE it would take 12.
The fans are louder on this one. Not crazy loud but not quiet. The noise levels were helped by buying/printing the housing kit FF offers. I so far only print PLA since the printer is in my office (no ABS or other bad fume resins in the office). The enclosure makes the printer better for ABS and other more sensitive filaments. It also reduces print noise and keeps dust off the print bed when off. I got the kit for $30 when it was on sale. It also consumed about 1.5 rolls of filament, so perhaps $20 in material ( I way reduced the infill density on the thick top parts to save filament and print time)
So for about $300 after taxes and free shipping I have an reasonably enclosed printer that does a great job with PLA prints.
Would I buy this over the Elegoo Centauri ($200+shipping) or Centauri Carbon ($300+ shipping)? Hard to say but probably not. Not because I don't think the FF 5M is a great printer. It is great and I'm very happy with mine. However, at my near $300 I'm just the cost of shipping (and several months of waiting ) away from the, on paper, nicer Centauri Carbon. Compared to the Centauri (the open frame model) the on paper differences are very smaller but they are also basically the same price after shipping.
The biggest pros I see to the FF5M are the much faster bed leveling (2 min vs something like 30) but that's only important if, like me, you change out build plates for various jobs. The other thing is the FF5M ships now vs in mid to late July. Oh, the FF5M also can do wired or wireless networking. For shop/print farm use the wired networking likely matters but most home users are likely on wireless. I guess you can also install Kliper on the printer vs using the locked down FF version already installed. I've never bothered with either.
The Elegoo has a moderately larger build volume. This printer has a 220x220x220 tall build volume which copies the Ender family. It can use low cost Ender sized build plates. The height was only a problem for me once but I've run into the XY limits a few times. However, with Bambu's success, more people are focusing on the 255x255mm size (and around 255mm height). So files modeled to fit Bambu's larger build area may not fit on the older Ender sized area.
I'm not sure which printer has better software or workflow. I also don't know if the Elegoo has any significant reliability issues/bugs. The FF does not at this point. That's only a FF win if Elegoo has and doesn't fix issues.
The FF 5M will not get a multi color unit in the future. The Elegoo is supposed to.
FF's 280* nozzle temp will limit you if you try to print some higher temp filaments. This doesn't affect PLA and honestly, if you are trying to print those filaments you probably should start with an enclosed printer for best results.
The FF's power switch is on the back, in the center. Depending on where you place it this could be hard to get to.
So if you can wait I would keep watching Elegoo reviews and feedback and probably get one of the Elegoos. However, if you are looking to get printing now, this is a really nice printer and I have no trouble saying it "just works".
Out of the box it's very fast and does good quality prints. Very quick to setup. I've had some random failures (bed adhesion failure, random stop part way through the print), but most prints have been trouble free.
Mechanically this is identical to the pro version. You can buy an enclosure kit (plexiglass and screws, you print the rest) and camera off Aliexpress. When I got it it was $28 and $19 respectively, probably more post tariffs.
I'd recommend it, especially at this price it's a huge improvement over traditional bed slingers without getting into the higher cost of other corexy models.
41 Comments
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The Kobra S1 is an XY printer that you can get for about $20-25 more on Aliexpress after a coupon. It has the ability to add multicolor now.
Both are obviously more expensive than this. I read all these horror stories about the Flashforge. Of course, Anycubic has it's own share.
If so what are your arguments?
That said, I wouldn't buy one as a purely economic decision. Buy it because you get a kick out of printing crap. It's a lot of fun. But yeah, you can save a lot on gifts, home decor, etc.
That said, I wouldn't buy one as a purely economic decision. Buy it because you get a kick out of printing crap. It's a lot of fun. But yeah, you can save a lot on gifts, home decor, etc.
What about shelves? Is it practically with as much material it takes to print shelves for like a closet?
Shelves would not be very sturdy made out of plastic. Look at things like gridfinity or honeycomb wall storage for idea on what is good for storing with 3d printing
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Funny, I found a gridfinity steam controller stand (I didn't want the grid at the bottom but it was the only one I could find) and had it printed (guy at work did it for maybe cuz I was complaining the steam controller didn't have a nice docking station). I got 1 free print.
In the ~300 hours I've printed with the machine I've had very few print failures and most were on me. I had one failure that was due to the print head fan cover getting pulled off. It's just held on with magnets and clips. No idea how it got caught but it was pulled off during a print and resulted in a print failure. The other failure I've had is when I push my luck getting parts to stick to the build plate. My preference is to avoid using brims or rafts and even supports when possible. When you can pull it off you get less waste. However, sometimes you push your luck and the result is a print that fails to adhere to the build surface. My feeling is the print failures I've had would likely have failed on other good printers as they were more about pushing the limits of the state of the FDM art rather than the printer having a feeding or other issue.
To reduce my risk of build plate failures I have a spare build plate with a masking tape surface. The tape surface holds the print better vs the standard PEI plate. However, the tape surface doesn't look as nice on the printed part. For PLA I always recommend using a tape surface if you have adhesion issues. Also, if you use the taped build plate, run the auto level at the start of the print (it doesn't add much time).
Speed wise this is a fast printer. It's one of the fastest consumer printers on the market. However, I feel like most of the "500 mm/s" printers are producing reasonably similar speeds. One might take 7 hr while this FF takes 6hr. Yeah, that's a difference but if you put that same print job on an Ender 3 Pro it would take 20. If you put it on the Ender 3 V3 SE it would take 12.
The fans are louder on this one. Not crazy loud but not quiet. The noise levels were helped by buying/printing the housing kit FF offers. I so far only print PLA since the printer is in my office (no ABS or other bad fume resins in the office). The enclosure makes the printer better for ABS and other more sensitive filaments. It also reduces print noise and keeps dust off the print bed when off. I got the kit for $30 when it was on sale. It also consumed about 1.5 rolls of filament, so perhaps $20 in material ( I way reduced the infill density on the thick top parts to save filament and print time)
So for about $300 after taxes and free shipping I have an reasonably enclosed printer that does a great job with PLA prints.
Would I buy this over the Elegoo Centauri ($200+shipping) or Centauri Carbon ($300+ shipping)? Hard to say but probably not. Not because I don't think the FF 5M is a great printer. It is great and I'm very happy with mine. However, at my near $300 I'm just the cost of shipping (and several months of waiting ) away from the, on paper, nicer Centauri Carbon. Compared to the Centauri (the open frame model) the on paper differences are very smaller but they are also basically the same price after shipping.
The biggest pros I see to the FF5M are the much faster bed leveling (2 min vs something like 30) but that's only important if, like me, you change out build plates for various jobs. The other thing is the FF5M ships now vs in mid to late July. Oh, the FF5M also can do wired or wireless networking. For shop/print farm use the wired networking likely matters but most home users are likely on wireless. I guess you can also install Kliper on the printer vs using the locked down FF version already installed. I've never bothered with either.
The Elegoo has a moderately larger build volume. This printer has a 220x220x220 tall build volume which copies the Ender family. It can use low cost Ender sized build plates. The height was only a problem for me once but I've run into the XY limits a few times. However, with Bambu's success, more people are focusing on the 255x255mm size (and around 255mm height). So files modeled to fit Bambu's larger build area may not fit on the older Ender sized area.
I'm not sure which printer has better software or workflow. I also don't know if the Elegoo has any significant reliability issues/bugs. The FF does not at this point. That's only a FF win if Elegoo has and doesn't fix issues.
The FF 5M will not get a multi color unit in the future. The Elegoo is supposed to.
FF's 280* nozzle temp will limit you if you try to print some higher temp filaments. This doesn't affect PLA and honestly, if you are trying to print those filaments you probably should start with an enclosed printer for best results.
The FF's power switch is on the back, in the center. Depending on where you place it this could be hard to get to.
So if you can wait I would keep watching Elegoo reviews and feedback and probably get one of the Elegoos. However, if you are looking to get printing now, this is a really nice printer and I have no trouble saying it "just works".
I've gotta say, with it's wonky latest FW and etc. I didn't get to enjoy my AD5M after using it for ~100hrs.
I dislike the fact every time i boot up or restart now, it asks me to update FW in a pop-up (not sure if you can disable that prompt on older FWs... but I had to do a rollback per FF's advice, because my printer was freezing mid print and after prints constantly. Alongside that, I have wifi issues and my extruder board failed on me during my ownership).
My only huge plus, is that FF has REALLY great CS. I got my parts in less than a week. Working through the diagnosis/issues were painstaking though. It took me 2 weeks of back and forth emails for them to finally figure out what was wrong.
(1 nozzle, 1 extruder board, 1 extruder cable - I replaced one by one, to see what the problem was, played musical chairs and swapped out good and bad parts, and FF was right on the money.... all 3 parts broke all at the same time oddly).
Their ribbon cables are pretty stout, just not sure how long ribbon cables last flexing back and forth constantly (as you print).
End of the day, IMO.... Take this printer for what it is, a $200 printer. It's a really REALLY great for the price you pay, just don't expect it to perform like a $600 one.