Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Five heads are better than one – Prusa XL”.
You know what you need more head: how about five, the new prusa XL – we just got this in – and I’ve been really excited about this for a long time. So this is the semi-assembled, so I’m probably going to rip all the parts out and then disappear for a little while we’ got a rip tab. Oh, she ripped good, always looks bigger in person. Doesn’T it first thing I know notice immediately, is the size of the gummy bear bag has increased a lot.
The instructions tell you when to eat. How many it’s actually Great Looks like we’ve got some filament already, which is nice, the Galaxy black, oh yeah, that’s right! We got a little receipt for all the pre-flight checks that they’ve done for us. It has a full LCD control panel, just like the mark, 4S and all of the other ones. There’S our multi-tool extruder. Let’S have a look at that.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. This is exciting, so it’s going to be five of these, so here is the next Struder, with the automatic tool changing system on it. Oh yeah, oh yeah, that’s going to be great! Now this model does come in a few different varieties from like one head to up to five. It’S a really good way to do multimaterial, especially if you’re going to be changing colors.
So you can do multiple colors or you can do. Multiple types of filament looks like they’ve, also sent us a nice little care package. I don’t think this is standard.
We have a second uh heated bed. This is the X cell Pei spring Shield sheet, which is really nice and then a whole bunch of filament. Oh, my God, yeah we got some BR of filament. Look at all of this okay, all right. Maybe we will be doing multicolor prints.
Today, ooh, it looks like they’ve sent us some spare nozzles, that’s pretty cool. These are hardened, which means we can print things like carbon, fiber, impregnated, nylon and stuff like that, and these are part of the next Struder system, which means that changing these out is pretty simple. My understanding is that we can’t mix nozzle diameter, so these are all 0.4 mm. This model comes with both ethernet and Wi-Fi capabilities.
It shares a lot of similarities between the markv, but they have the new segmented bed. So the markv has one giant bed, whereas this one has what looks like 16 individual segments, and each of these can heat up uh individually, which means that you’re not heating up an entire bed. If you’re only going to be printing right on the front or right in the center, which is kind of cool, of course, you know giant build area, so this one is 14 in by 14 in x, 14 in which is absolutely massive, which is really cool to See uh – and this is spring steel and magnetic so it just kind of sits in with a couple little locating pins at the back and then snaps down, which is great.
Let’S get this out looks like we have linear rails for each of the motion systems compared to something like the Mark 4, which has one motor that controls the x axis. This has two which work in Tandon to control both the X and the the Y. Just like the markv, each of these extruder assemblies have a load cell built in which means that we can home and calibrate and do everything that we need directly through the nozzle. All of these are direct drive, extruders. So there’s a little stepper motor in here which will pull the filament through we’ve got channels on the side here with filament run out.
So this will pop into the carriage here and then these two locking tabs head over and click in and then that holds the whole extruder assembly. So we’ll have five of them at the back here and then the whole head assembly here Will come there and then release them and undock them and then move away and pick up the next. One really really neat system very excited looks like we’re going to have to install the LCD and control panel ourselves, that’s going to go right about there and it looks pretty much identical to the markv. Both printers seem to share a lot of similarities, which is kind of nice. I believe this one does have chamber illumination, but I think that’s mostly. Some of the differences looks like our XY plate.
Here is a giant block of mil aluminum, which is awesome to see and then of course, yeah. The linear rails are also great still got some traditional 3D printed Parts like these uh top Z, AIS, supports and things like that. But most of it seems to be really quite high. Quality aluminum parts looks like they’ve, given us a test print in here, which is cool to see turning it around to have a look at the back. I believe these have three separate power supplies you’re, going to have five heaters, plus the entire bed you’re going to need. Quite a bit of power looks like we’ve got our standard, aluminum Extrusion channels, which kind of make up most of the frame, and it’s got some nice blanking plates in here kind of like your original creality, or something like that and here’s one of the mounts for The extruders they’re going to sort of sit back here and that’ll feed your power and your data and all of your filament through there.
It’S got these two locating pins on the back, so this slots in here like that and it looks like we’ve – got some incredibly powerful magnets that kind of keep it located. It’S really important that these are in the same position. Every single time with we have a single cable which connects to the hot end. These are probably just going to fall down here and plug into the control box, which it looks like it’s right here on this side of the control box.
We have our ethernet Jack and there’s also a USBC Port, even though I’m not quite sure what that’s for yet, I’m going to flip it on its back and let’s have a look at what the bottom inails we’ve got. Our Z Drive Motors here and then nice big metal sheet at the bottom. Oh look at all of those. You can see the individual cables which go to every single of the 16 heating zones.
Ah, okay, here’s a spool holder: let’s have a look at that they’re telescoping, so they kind of – I guess just snap into each other. That’S nice! Oh they’re, going to go into these channels here, easy and then they’re adjustable cuz. I’Ve got some big spools. We print with some large spools cuz. We do so much all the time here. We have quite a nice toolkit. It looks like we’ve, given us a full-size screwdriver, even though we probably won’t be using that that would be illegal. Uh was where was a pair of pliers and some Allen keys and wrenches, which we’re going to need to do all the screwing.
Little thumb drive here, which is great for firmware or printing, but you don’t actually need that, as this has proofs to connect everything built in which allows you to manage multiple of these for a print form if necessary. I think we have about eight or so Mark. Fours now, which are all connected over ethernet and controllable from one central location, which is great, I really like seeing ethernet on printers, because it’s a little bit more reliable and a lot more faster, although if you want you can run this completely offline, absolutely no cloud Service necessary, they know who I’m talking about. Each of these nozzles need to be put in and then ran, and then it has to go through all of its pre-flight checks.
There’S a hole right in the center, where you put a little Peg and then you’re going to be moving each of these nozzles onto that. To make sure that their Z height is known perfectly and then it’ll kind of bump into all of the sides of them. And so it knows its X and Y coordinates and then it’ll store all of those offsets internally and then you won’t have to worry about that again now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone with this thing for a little while, but not before, I Tell you about our sponsor thanks to War Thunder for sponsoring today’s video War Thunder is a free-to-play and comprehensive vehicular combat game. There’S an arsenal of over 2500 different vehicles for you to Pilot War Thunder is about the details like how it feels to drive the war machine, The Sounds it makes and how they fall apart, as you defeat your enemies, their signature x-ray damage system lets you see How each vehicle falls apart and exactly where a vehicle is hit, so you can strategize for the next battle join over 70 million people around the world on PC and consoles with crossplay down at the links below hello future Dan.
Here uh, I let a print run overnight. We did a nice multicolor Kirby. This little guy took about 4 and 1/2 hours compared to some of the other little layer tests that I did. I want to try this one overnight.
As this one has, inter layer, nozzle changes compared to the little tests that I start started out with which every layer was a different material. I also switched the bed type. This is the textured bed compared to the smooth one that we tried. These tests on.
You can see on both of them that it’s left these long stringing things after it purges all the nozzles before it starts printing on both of them. Like I didn’t clean up any of the mess that it left cuz. I kind of wanted to see how that ended up and yeah. It’S a bit, it’s a bit of a messy printer, but I mean these are kind of easy to deal with uh. I normally keep a little waist basket next to my printers anyway, but this one in particular, is a bit snotty all right. Let’S see how it releases from the bed: okay, just slides off instantly – that’s kind of great somebody put a gummy bear in here, whatever uh, and we have a new type of purge Tower too, which is kind of cool yeah. This is a five color print. Looking at this, it seems pretty good.
There wasn’t really any stringing or much at all between the purge Tower and the part itself not also seeing too much of the Z height ringing. The Joel, the 3D printing, based greatest goat of all time, noticed when in his review as well, there’s some slight overhang stuff there. But that seems pretty. Okay and other people are also noticing that there was some blobbing in between where you know a little bit of a different color would stay stuck to one of the nozzles, maybe a little tiny bit in the eye there, but I’m not noticing too much might just Be a larger particular piece in the marble pla that they sent it’s pretty good mechanical strength between the two colors is also really good and kind of nice thing was that I just colored this inside PR slicer itself um, so software works well for just filling a Pre-Existing singular model Purge towers, are kind of cool in this system. The time between layer changes is nearly instant. It just basically go z, z, z and then continues, which is really nice uh.
This model printed in about 4 and 1/2 hours and contained over 14,500 individual layer changes which is insane for that amount of time and yeah on the the inside. You can kind of wow that’s strong all right on the inside. You can kind of see how it builds out. Those interesting little layer lines this not too much in here. It’S mostly empty uh, depending on the severity of the layer, change or how many are in one layer.
It’Ll, do you know a couple little lines and it’ll do a little bit of a drag and then go back and change its tool head. It’S really neat. This is kind of exactly the level of performance that I would expect from prusia um.
The build quality is excellent. The printing performance is excellent and uh the instructions were also excellent um. I wasn’t expecting it to be this kind of simple to put together. This is the fully assembled one where, basically, all I had to do is just attach the hotends and that went together really nicely.
The full calibration included in the software is easy to follow and um very simple. It fits our giant spools of you know 2 and 12 kg of pla, which is great. I think some of the issue comes down to maybe price and who is going to be buying something like this. I know definitely we’re going to be using it here. We don’t have a printer with this size, build volume and certainly not something. That’S easy to use.
Um it’ll fit right into the rest of our pushe ecosystem, with their little ethernet and Wi-Fi connected thing, but I mean they’ll even allow you to break a little piece on the circuit board and load unsigned firmware too. If you wanted to go a bit further with it, I know there’s some complaints about camera compatibility, but that’s not really something we care too much or value here. This printer here would be the most expensive offer they do, which is the fully assembled and the five head system, which comes it to $ 4,000, which is a pretty hefty price to pay for something like this um. There are other offerings that are cheaper. That will do multimaterial the price category, and the kind of competence of this would be for somebody who wants prints to happen constantly without worry. You can just kind of you’ll know that it’s mostly going to work 90 % of the time, because you have 5 nozzles compared to a single nozzle or even another multi- nozzle, which has to purge the nozzle every single time that it does a color change. Pull the filament back cut it, you know, do whatever like that. All of these are just ready to go, and so the layer times for doing this little wipe Tower are really quick when I’m prototyping stuff for here I’ll, do multiple revisions on a nice, fast printer and then I’ll batch print them on our puses, because they’re, reliable And they’re dimensionally accurate and we just know they work, you just set it and then leave.
Maybe I’m going to be doing five or six different types of materials on one plate. Maybe I want to test a prototype in five different materials simultaneously. That’S that’s kind of your option. I think this would probably be a lot better for multimaterial rather than multi color.
If you want to think about it that way, I think the opposite end of the spectrum, the on head, semi-assembled variety, which may be more like a home user or a hobbyist, or something like that who has time to spare uh, which is $ 2,000, is probably Going to be the best entry point into a build volume of this size, now that’s about twice the price of an entry level Mark 4, but you get a hell of a lot more build volume. I was doing some parts recently and I needed to do a giant, motherboard tray, and I had to segment that into five or six different pieces, instead of just being able to print it on something like this, which is great so having a massive build. Volume can be useful you can buy both of the expansion boards that are included in this model, including the extra hot end one and the Wi-Fi card. That kind of just slot in like PCR cards are kind of neat. I’M also happy to see that they’re, including each of the individual little bed, tiles cuz. I might maybe want to buy those for another project that I’m working on as a reminder, this kind of isn’t a review. This is just First Impressions and unboxing, so I think this printer warrants maybe a little bit more research. I am very happy with this, though I think this is going to meet our needs perfectly, because we’re distributed around the buildings having this printer web connected with five filaments loaded, is really useful, because somebody from any building can connect into this and then just pick a Filament, that’s loaded into it and print the effectively that way.
The lack of built-in camera, though, does make it difficult to start a print to make sure that there’s not already a part still waiting there like this was sitting overnight and then I come in in the morning and start another one and then just destroy it. I don’t know, I think you did a great job, good job prusia you make you make good things. If you like this, why don’t you check out the video that we did on the prusia markv? We have loads of those and we love them. Love love them.
We love the bru, my precious bru .