Our collaboration with Elegoo continues with the Neptune 4 Plus.
After our experience with the excellent Mars 5 Ultra, everyone was pretty onboard with more 3D printing capability at home. The Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus is a FDM printer. For the uninitiated that is a filament printer which requires spools of filament rather than the liquid resin type.
First Impressions
Unlike the Mars 5 Ultra, the Neptune 4 Plus (hereby referred to as the Neptune going forward) requires quite a bit more assembly work before it is ready for duty.
Whilst it is not quite a flat pack like an Ikea furniture, there is enough to do that you need to allocate a good hour or more to assemble the pieces. I got Jo to pop around again to help out, and with her experience gleaned from assembling her army of 3D printers.
The Mars and the resin printing process where the build plate is lowered into the resin vat and the print is done upside down. In contrast the Neptune (and FDM printing in general) prints from bottom up in the normal orientation.
The Neptune 4 Plus is the second largest printer in the Elegoo Neptune range with a print volume of 320 x 320 x 385 mm³. The machine itself is quite a bit bigger at 578 x 533 x 640 mm³ so you will want to leave some room for it. For now mine is sitting at one end of my dining table.
Assembly and First Use
Elegoo dedicates fives pages of the user manual to setup and installation. I confess I was juggling chores whilst I outsourced the heavy lifting to Jo to do.
The job was not particularly difficult, but it is always prudent to take your time and check and double check before committing to a step. The tools, parts and fasteners are all clearly identified in the user manual. Jo even commented that the included tools are of decent quality.
There is a gantry frame which comes in one large piece which is the main part. Having listened to user feedback, the Neptune also comes with two support structs to reduce wobble and banding. Cables will need to be connected in the appropriate sockets which handily is either unique, or labelled.
There is a addendum in an eye catching yellow sheet that gives important information on auto levelling and Y-Axis slider plate wobble.
Levelling the print bed is not automagic. Whilst the Elegoo will perform it’s own tests, it will also invite you to check with a sheet of paper. The target to aim for is a small level of resistance when sliding a sheet of paper between the print bed and the print head. Last thing you want is to jam the print head into the print bed. Alternately you do not want the print head too far away either.
The Neptune has six dials under the print bed – one in each corner and one each on the left and right side in the middle. This gives good control to ensure that the entire print bed is as level as possible. We did have to adjust it manually to complete the calibration, which is not unexpected.
The build plate is attached to the bed with magnets, and they are a decent strength too. It keeps the plate in place securely and it won’t be going anywhere by accident.
In Use
My review unit comes included with 1kg of PLA 1.75mm in white. This gets put on the filament spool holder at the very top of the gantry unit. The filament is then fed through the filament detection sensor, which is meant to wobble quite freely on its mount. This is to ensure the filament flow is not restricted, but as the name says, detect that it has ran out and then stop the machine to prevent damage.
The filament is then fed through the nozzle and out the other side. Now we are in a position to do our first print.
Using the touchscreen, you prepare the machine by selecting the temperature for the build plate and the nozzle. There are some presets available that you can select. For example the PLA preset will heat the nozzle to 205 deg C and the bed to 60 deg C respectively.
The preparation process here takes a few minutes to complete. The nozzle will reach it’s operating temperature pretty quickly, but the plate will take a bit longer.
Our first print for calibration is of course, the infamous #3Dbenchy. Benchy is a 3D model specifically designed for testing and benchmarking 3D printers. Elegoo provides the gcode file in a USB drive that can be used immediately. It takes roughly 8 minutes to print and is a great way to ensure your settings, calibration, levelling are all dialled in before you commit to a 30 hour print. I have been told to expect to print lots of these over the 3D printing journey.
For those new to 3D printing, gcode is machine specific file that tells the machine how to print your design. What does gcode (or rather, G-Code) stand for? Geometric Code. It instructs the machine where to move, how fast to move and what path to follow. The code is machine specific as it must know the coordinates of every component in the x, y and z axis. This means the file Elegoo provided in the USB has been coded specifically for the Neptune 4 Plus. Skipping ahead a little, creating, or slicing gcode files is the last step before printing. Generally files come in STL or similar format (e.g. 3MF) depending on what software you use. STL is pretty common though.
Jo turned her critical eye on the first benchy print and declared that the first layer was not smooshed enough (her technical term). We adjusted the z-axis via the touch screen and did a couple more tests before she was happier with it.
Given it was Christmas season, I jumped in and printed off a couple of baubles for fun. The kids can paint them and decorate as they wish. Got to love how funky you can get although that spiral one took a few hours to print. It’s not a fast process.
After that Liam decided to jump in with a 24 hour print job of a castle. He’s into Turnip28 game and wanted some terrains to go. It worked out really well, I was impressed at the print resolution and quality. In this one we didn’t get any filament spaghetti at all.
I also ran off a bunch of prints for my old buddy Terza. I keep hearing about him knocking over his glue bottles when he is building something so I ran off a bunch of bottle holders, as well as a chibi YF-23 and AN-225 Mriya. It was his birthday just past so perfect timing.
Software
Elegoo provides a copy of Cura as their choice of software package. Just like with the Mars and Chitubox, this is not an Elegoo specific product.
It is important to note that Cura is a software to prepare models for printing. It is not used for creating 3D models and you will need to find some other product for that. There are plenty of options such as TinkerCAD, Blender and Fusion 360.
There are a lot of plugins available for Cura to extend its functionalities and also best print profiles for materials. There is A LOT of stuff and I have only browsed through some of what is available briefly. I am not at a stage where any of it is of great use or makes sense but no doubt as get more familiar with the process, they will come in handy.
Thoughts
I am new to the world of 3D printing, at least from a practical perspective. I have of course, been following it with interest over the years and have more than a passing understanding of various issues and pitfalls. I also of course, have Jo who have been putting up with my many questions over the years over various aspects of 3D printing.
Where I commented that resin printing is more art than science, I feel that filament printing is more exacting, more science like.
Looking at the various filaments, there are so many choices (as does resin). They come with a profile recommendation for a print temperature range. Do not assume they all perform at the same nozzle temperature. Also filaments that has been opened and left in an environment may achieve different results from one straight out of the vacuum sealed packaging.
At one point I decided to fill the build plate with a few different types of print thinking I could save some time. That was a bad decision as I got some elements that got spaghetti’ed. Speaking to Jo in general it is better to not overdo it, and group similar prints together for better results.
There is also the machine travel. Afterall 3D printing, as magical as it seems, is a very mechanical process. It is driven by belts and pulleys at the heart of it, and these components do get wear and tear over time. Having a fairly full plate with disparate elements required the Neptune to work hard at traversing the build plate.
Other Features
The touch screen controller for the Neptune is magnetically attached to the holder, with a coiled cable connecting it to the main unit.
The touch screen itself is fairly responsive. I had no issues navigating the screen.
Gripes
There is not much to complain about. That said, the fans are definitely not quiet.
This is particularly noticeable because the unit is currently set up on the dining table, making the noise more apparent. Even when I turn the fans to silent mode, which really only turns off the fans on the gantry. On the screen, the fans never get set below 60%.
Sometimes the preview of what you are printing does not display on the screen. Can’t quite figure that out.
Lastly the estimated time of printing can vary wildly from the slicer. Just a note, since once you start printing you are committed.
Conclusions
3D printing is one of those things, immensely flexible and handy to have the capability, but also require a sanity check. Whilst you could print a lot of everything things, sometimes it is just unnecessary when it is cheaper to buy.
However if you are intending to create something different, unique and absolutely one-off pieces, then having a 3D printer will absolutely facilitate that dream. I created a Christmas bauble on behalf of my daughter’s class for their teacher this year, the Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus made this idea come to life.
The Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus has a RRP of A$609.99, but currently on pre-order and discounted to $457.99. It is also available on Amazon Au. I’m looking forward to hours of fun (and occasional maintenance pain).
DRN would like to thank Elegoo for providing the review unit.
Specifications
Print Volume: 320 x 320 x 385 mm³
Max Printing Speed: 500 mm/s
121 (11 x 11) Points Auto Bed Leveling
Up To 300 °C High-Temp Nozzle
Support PLA/TPU/PETG/ABS/ASA/Nylon Filaments
WIFI / WLAN / USB Transfer