Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Best 3D Printer for 2018: The Raise 3d N2”.
All right so we’ve completed our annual shootout of digital fabrication, 3d printer machines and this machine. The raze 3d n2 is uh one of our top machines this year, tied for first place and um well, just getting into it. There’S no getting around. This thing is big. It’S big, it’s very big.
It has a bigger brother, too, the n2 plus which we tested last year, but uh yeah, it’s a big machine, so just from the top. What are some of the things that made this one of the top machines? One of the one of those machines that tied for first place in this shootout – well, obviously the print quality. That’S the big thing that we test. That’S a big thing that we look at is how how well does the printer perform and it performed fantastically this year.
Uh the the n2 plus did well last year, they’ve continued updating software and the n2 did just a great job this year. It has a lot of really great features that we like um. You know obviously fully enclosed, which you know really helps with print performance uh. They use really high-end uh ball screws for their z-axis.
So you have a nice smooth, z, travel, making sure that there’s no wobble, they just really built this thing. Well, yeah uh! So let’s kind of go down the numbers of the machine um. It is a bit of an extensive machine, it’s what about three thousand dollars yeah, it’s pretty pretty close um, it uses 1.75 millimeter filament um, and it has a dual dual extruder here, which is great, and we have a lot of duals this year this year. Multi-Extrusion’S really catching on, we think yeah and as far as the hot ends uh, what kind of temperatures and filaments can use with this printer.
So it’s totally open filament, so you can use whatever you want. We do have it loaded up with the end tooth filament right now. One thing to keep an eye out on is when you are putting your filament in or your spools, because it keeps the spools inside. If your spools are a little too wide, it gets hard to shut the door so watch how thick your spools are, but you can always operate it with the door open and, of course, with the overall large size of the machine.
You do get a pretty sizable. Build envelope, the numbers are around 300 millimeters, which, if your imperial measurements, it’s about a cubic foot of build envelope and, of course, as far as printing interface, you do have this really nice touch screen interface. It might take a little bit of getting used to to find where all the filament loading unloading controls and things like that are, but what are some of the other options that this thing presents? Well, the touch screen interface is really something that sets this machine. Apart from a lot of the others, not only you know, obviously is it.
A tablet gives you the touch screen, but it allows you to connect the machine in pretty much any way you would want to to be able to print. It has internal storage that you can upload to via wi-fi or via usb. You also can print from usb stick.
It takes an sd card. So, no matter how you like to print you can you can add on to this machine. Another kind of nifty thing is because it has wi-fi built in it, has the what’s essentially an android tablet under the hood, you can hook up a usb webcam to it also and have a camera on your machine great. So you get that you know kind of offside, uh, printer monitoring, yeah. If you don’t want to be in the room with it, to check on your machine right and when you’ve got a foot cube, build area, you’ve got long prints so being able to monitor them.
Not sitting on top of the machine, all the time is pretty nice. Now the machine is not perfect. I there it does have some interesting and finicky elements of the way you level the bed and well.
It is surprising to see with as refined as this machine is. It’S still using things like binder clips to hold the build plate in place yeah. We would love to see some actual clips on there that were custom designed for the machine. Take up a little bit. Less space, so you don’t have to worry about running the extruder into them or anything like that uh and it would be nice if there were.
It was an easier way to level out the build platform. They say it comes factory, pre-leveled um. I’Ve never talked to anyone that owns one of these and i actually know a decent number of people that do that. There’S cane fully leveled out, but once you get that trammed in correctly it it stays pretty rock solid, yeah, so uh, what’s the software tool chain for this printer look like so while this printer uses g-code, so you could use another slicer to be able to use It race3d does have their own proprietary slicer for doing it, which is really great and again. Slicers. Go and print profiles go just, as importantly hand-to-hand as the mechanics of the machine of how our scores turn out. So the work that raise3d has done in their slicer really does help. This thing perform the way it does and that software comes with extra features that work over the wi-fi being able to upload your models over wi-fi being able to monitor the the print status and control a lot of things that you would normally control on a touch Screen but being able to just do them from your computer over wi-fi is pretty nice.
So obviously, if you’re going to be using the ray 3dn2 you’re going to need to commit a pretty sizable area of your workspace to it, but you are going to get some really really exceptional prints out of this machine. Yeah. Really, if you have the budget and you have the space, it’s really hard to go wrong with these machines, i’m still using the n2 plus, which gives another foot taller to this machine. I use it as one of my standard workhorses because it just keeps printing and printing and printing giving me great results.
The enclosure really helps make a lot of problems. Environmental problems not be an issue anymore yeah. If, if you have the space – and you have the money, it’s really a hard machine to be you .