Pulse XE appreciation???
-
Re: New XE inbound
I'm about to buy an pulse XE (for almost exclusively printing NylonX) what is your take
on print quality???Thanks
-
Print quality is excellent - especially with NylonX and NylonG. The surface finish with those materials in particular is great because the fibers make the layer lines very difficult to see - even at layer heights of 0.25mm and larger.
-
Have you ordered this printer already?
-
@rimouskite just incase anyone comes across this, trying to find information that will sway their purchase decision (correctly)-
I (and i suspect many others) would strongly recommend biting the bullet and hop in line for a prusa. I know when i was trying to make a decision in this regard that i kick myself anytime im reminded of my lack of patience ( i think the prusa's had over a 10 week lead time at that point ) and thought there couldnt be that much difference overall , right? Im here to tell you that yes there is a huge difference.
I like my pulse overall but still cannot get over the realization that one can build 2, perhaps 2 and a half pulae printers for the 1500 - 1700 they charge ( for the xe ). Besides being reamed on price, ultimately, there is no comparison whatsoever between a prusa and a pulse. Sure they may be similar in most aspects of physical design but one is SMART and the other is the pulse. Yeah you can achieve good prints on both, but i can also print nlyonx or some carbon fiber polycarbonate on an ender 3 and get some prints that are just as good, albeit slower.
Thats not even mentioning the dependency with matter control which offers nothing close to Cura, which my ender is much more capable in this regard.
Certain things like having an auto sync of the z axis' and others that come standard with a prusa make all the difference especially when spending such a large sum of money. No need to thank meAlso, in case this happens to reach mr rimouskite : if your of the mind to print exclusively in nylonx, you would be MUCH better off doing so in something like priline carbon fiber polycarbonate, or even their version of "nylonx" which would be carbon fiber nylon. Or many other brands which perform as well as print as good or better than nylonx. Also in most cases cheaper , while coming in a full kg. There are so many cons that are offered with nylonx (matterhackers in general) that its almost disrespectful.
-
I both agree and disagree. I would never buy a Prusa over a Pulse. Mechanically, the Prusa is inferior. Prusa components are held on with zipties.
However I am not fond of MatterHacker's choice in electronic control boards. If I were to purchase another Pulse printer, it would be the bare bones version. I would strip it's control board and add a Duet 3 Mini control board. E3D hotend works great with copper block, titanium heat break and Slice Engineering 400C thermistor.
With the Duet, there is no dependency of MatterControl, however, MatterControl is still outstanding for slicing and modification of printed files. MatterControl and Cura are built on the same slicing engine, its just settings that makes the two different.
I would modify the Zaxis lift system to use my mono-motor setup. Automatic gantry leveling software is just a bandaid solution to better hardware.
-
@tinken I bought a pulse and I was sorry I did. I had more success with an anycubic Chiron or predator both from meantime to failure to printing capabilities. I call it some nice ideas executed poorly and sold at a vastly exaggerated price but then they probably have to to do all the service and after care and tech support the pulse saddles them with. Its such a shame and my hope is that the ones they are selling now are better than the ones they did when I bought mine.
As for calling MC a superior slicer - I find that ridiculous is slicers like prusaslicer or superslicer are around with features and capabilities way beyond MC especially if you are printing parts you want to actually use in a mechanical setting.
-
@mpirringer Im not a hobby printer, I am a manufacture. I have Cura, Prusa and Simplify. For my small mechanical parts, MatterControl works better. My larger parts I typically use Simplify or Prusa, especially if I have to make pauses in the middle of the print. I didn't say it was superior, I said it was outstanding, which in my opinion, it is.
-
@tinken We print robots of the FRC variety and parts for that. Now I have ditched MC a while ago and things might be different now. But what I miss(ed) on it are things like adaptive layer heights and the ability to set perimeter width so for example if I print with a .8 and I want to do a 5mm wall I can set the perimeters to 4 and set the outside perimeter to .89 and the inside perimeters to 1.37 and go for strength while still having a nice accurate outside and while we are on ,8 nozzles and lets say I use a Volcano with ABS I can set the Max Vol. E to lets say 22 at the particular optimum temp and dont have to worry about the speed as a good slicer like prusa slicer for example will properly adjust the max speed for me. etc etc. Now MC 1.75 allowed you to shell out to lets say Slic3r which is now prusa slicer. But that feature went away. IMO the step to version 2 was a downgrade when it came to slicing ability. But if it does what you want - use it. For us prusa slicer or superslicer is doing a better job. Especially printing with bigger nozzles when you start bumping up against the max rate a hotend can melt plastic at. So for example that was printed using prusa slicer its atm about 4kg of HIPS a 128:1 compound planetary all nice and accurate and all solid plastic as close as you can get with FDM to injection molding. Accurate enough to have that compound planetary run smothly and not bind up and nice and solid and as strong as HIPS can be (eventually when everything has been properly debugged and adjusted it might get printed in Nylon or redesigned etc whatever makes sense )
-
Thanks @tinken, I also think MatterControl and MatterSlice are outstanding and I personally work hard to make sure they remain that way. I know everyone has their own wants and needs and @mpirringer in particular has expressed that he would like features that are not available. But we print everything with MatterControl (and we do a lot of printing) and consistently get great results.
-
Default settings, standard quality, this took 1:20 to print, like this. The back has more. Its the 2nd print we did (and because of video driver incompatibility, the 2nd print after 2 days of trying to get the machine to output anything). This is not their PLA, its Raise premium, since we used to have one of those.
My take so far... this has been what i really never liked about 3d printers. Spend a large sum of money, and then upgrade and tweak. Or spend a large sum of money and have to build it yourself. Or spend several large sums of money, and get really nice results at a snails pace. Worse, its almost impossible to find any 3d printing equipment or components that are not made in china.
