Here we go I'm back to movies again baby merciless. As always today, we're checking out the monoprice, Delta, Pro which is the, newest addition to their lineup of 3d printers monoprice. Are known for selling consumer, electronics, at lower prices, than many of the big brands but still keeping the core features, and functionality, fully. In place they've. Got a line of 3d printers and filaments, already so let's check out how the delta, pro fits, in. So. First impression, here this looks, and feels nice. Everything, is sturdy like nothing, rattles there are no sharp edges and it's, just this really slick, and streamlined. Machine you get the Delta pro fully assembled, and the frame is made from these custom, aluminum, extrusions, they've been sandblasted to feel nice and soft, the, printbed, is this large, borderless. Black, slab, and all. The electronics, and ugly bits are hidden away in the bottom, compartment underneath, so. I think as far as first impressions, go we're off to a good start let's. Check out the spec sheet and what features we should expect so, nominal, size is a 270. Millimeter diameter build area and a 300, millimeter usable. Height though. If your part happens to fit in be pretty unique Delta. Build, volume, that, printers, like this can reach it's, actually going to be a few centimeters taller, than. That this. Pot fills out the volume quite, well but I think I could have quite easily gone about five or 10 centimetres taller this features. Include automatic. Bed leveling with this manually, attachable, sensor, Wi-Fi. Built in based around a 32 bit control board a heated. Bed between, a half inch touchscreen a filament run out sensor and apparently. Quiet, operation quoted. At 50, decibels while, printing which is exactly. As loud as I measured the old to maker 3 and we're going to measure that for this machine as well it's. Also qualified, for C II and FC C now those, features read really. Nicely right the, problem is that each of them has the second part to them where it's like yeah. This is nice but. We'll. Go through those in a second I mean, reading, through the product page I could already start laughing about so many things that were. Clearly written by the marketing department like do, you really need to point out that he can get repeatable. Prints with the Delta pro I mean I would, expect that from any printer, and especially from, the Delta Pro considering, that this is currently priced at $12.99. US Dollars and as. Usual, with us pricing that is plus tax shipping. Inside the US is free it's, also available in the UK for $14.99. British. Pounds, so. Why. Would you go for a delta in the first place well, it is print quality, mostly. Because, of the motion system you, never have the direction the tool head is traveling lined, up with what, the motors and linear guides do so you get a ton of microscopic, noise, or differing. In your, print and that, very effectively, reduces, how much of an effect artifacts, or things like stepper. Drivers and so on have on the, consistency of a print Delta's are also typically built with a lightweight Bowden, setup with the extruder up here and only the hot end moving, around so, we have less, inertia from that and can, move the hotend and tool head around faster. Deltas, are naturally. Quite simple machines but. Also I mean they, just look super cool they are also well suited for those taller prints because of their shape and because, the print itself never moves around and shakes around, but. Let's, take a step back I mean I can literally take a step back here you. May have noticed that the Delta Pro looks kind of similar to the atom 2.0, which I've reviewed last, year here in the gym there. Are pretty similar in size and construction they use the same sort of magnetic joint for their tool head and if, I can get it off there we go for, the Delta arms and well. I mean it even says on the effector right here that this is Adam Mac swap compatible. So I guess, I could even just directly drop in the tool head from the Adam 2.0, and yes the, Delta Pro is made by the same company layer, one from Taiwan this, isn't, the next iteration of what they are working on this is kind, of a different version and a less expensive, one I guess. To. Start off the most important bit for every 3d printer is how, well it prints. After all usually, you, buy these for, the prints you get with them and the, prints actually, really, well parts, are crisp, and clean just as we like them it does have that Delta specific, tree ringing pattern, but it's quite subtle you won't notice it on real prints unless you're specific, you're looking for it the slicer that is provided with the machinist kiss slicer you may have never heard of it but it's been around for a while and it's a shareware program. That you, know slices, it does, a ton of things differently than what you might be used to from other, slicers, but overall, it, produces, good prints I had to convince the guys from layer one that maybe, the default profile should have gap-fill enabled so, you don't, get artifacts.
Like This and kiss. Slicer also has this weird, double ghost thing going on in this front area and I've seen it on a lot of other prints as well that. I don't see with any other slicer, the slicing itself in kiss slicer is quite. Slow but again overall it's alright and it's a good start but of course if you want you can use any other slicer as well this, machine is not locked down to, just. Their own slicer this was sliced with slic3r, the. One in pretty much only way to get files to the printer is with, a USB Drive if you have this port on the side here and even though this is a 32-bit board it doesn't run an operating system like on a Raspberry, Pi so, it doesn't do slicing, in the machine you have to do that on a full computer beforehand, but wait there's. Also Wi-Fi built-in right well. Sure, it does have Wi-Fi but you can apparently only use that with the app that comes with the large member that is being used here it's, like an apk, I would have to sideload off my phone to use it but sorry that's just not gonna happen I mean it's, from some random Chinese, developer. Around, the file through virustotal, which, found some suspicious Packers. I mean that doesn't have to mean anything but, then again what. Would you even get out of an app like this anyways you're definitely not going to upload a new G code print files from your phone I mean you're not gonna be slicing on this let alone you, know messing, with STL, files there's also no, camera in the printer so you can, check, on your print basically, all. You get is a progress, bar and for. The other features like moving. The printer setting temperatures, and starting print files that are already on, the machine you. Know if you think about each of those there's, no reason, why I'd want to do that remotely, while you're away from the machine and not, just use the touchscreen as, on there already the, electronics, in the Delta Pro are based around the large board, which is its own closed, source ecosystem. Of hardware, firmware, and apps, as a user you can configure pretty much anything about the machine through the screen or through a config tool but, until, one of the open source firmware starts, supporting this exact processor, and set up you're. At the mercy of large, monoprice. And layer 1 when it comes to updates, and bug fixes for the system ie right. Now you cannot, simply flash a community version of Marlyn for new features, you. Do get thermal runaway protection, on the hot end you also get a filament run-out sensor which, you know just me being me high end up bypassing, with, an allen key because, I was switching filmin so often and didn't want to deal with feeding it through the sensor every single time but it does work pretty well the sensor seems to be another off-the-shelf, part from lurch, one. Feature though that is notably. Absent in, this entire system is power loss detection, which I personally. Don't mind at all I don't remember the last time we've had a power outage here but, then again we do have one of Europe's largest nuclear power plants basically right down the road so having, some sort of power loss detection, surely would be nice for some other places around. The world the actual hardware here looks nice the wiring is clean of, course I don't have any long-term experience, with the mainboard, but for example the heated bed is handled, by an external drivers so that's the, biggest potential issue taken care of for power supply we have this nice big Meanwell, 24. Volt unit, and if. It looks familiar, well, it's exact same unit that all to make it use so that's a very solid, choice speaking about the hardware firmware. The, touch screen and the interface on it it's, basically. The stock interface, that the large firmware comes with it's, kind of tedious first of all the machine comes with what looks like a Nintendo DS stylus who wants a stylus.
You. Have to get them and put them away and you lose them yuck, nobody. Wants a stylus and the interface, is just kind, of inconsistent. And weird, like some of these lists are clickable, some, you have to use the buttons on the side to select something there's, an option for turning on lights which, the printer doesn't have and just overall navigation, is somewhat confusing you, get a bunch of buttons and it's not really clear what they all do it also, doesn't help that the documentation. And manually, get with, the Delta pro are quite sparse beyond the basics, I mean, you'd get used to that right but some, bits just don't work I've, had issues with filming loading where it would sometimes go way, too slow, not, feed all the way in or reverse out, way, too far again after we're done feeding and and it would also suggest not, using the pause function because, well. It does lift the tool head up when you first hit pause I've. Had, it forget to move back down when. I wanted it to resume so the printer tried to continue printing right up here and kept slamming into the in stops so. Yeah. Overall. The. Touchscreen looks good on the machine, as long as it's turned off like like, it is now this looks really pretty but. I'm not sure if I actually prefer, this implementation, of a touch interface over an efficient simple text-based, LCD in the scroll wheel I know I'm sounding like a grandpa now back, in my day things were so much better but, you, know other companies, do manage to produce way. Less clumsy interfaces, on a touchscreen like this I'm, told, this, is being worked on so there might be improvements. In the future but as always I can, only review, what, I have and not something that may come at some point. Right. Now there already is real-time, nozzle, height adjustment. You can do through the touchscreen but, because, it's a resistive, touch layer that, you have to really press hard to get it to register and there's no feedback at all whether you've done anything, it's it's rather hard to use that feature to dial in the, first layer was printing, and the, increments, you can set our 15, micron, each which i think is a bit, too coarse to really dial in that first layer, height perfectly, now. Of, course for nozzle. Height adjustment to make sense at all you need to make sure the bed is actually parallel, to, the plane the hot end moves, along so you don't sort up with a crooked bit now being, glass it should be very flat, to start with and the. Printer does come with auto bed leveling, which is not, done before every print but it's something you do by manually, attaching. This, force-sensitive, resistor to, the nozzle, connecting. It right up here and then running, that cycle, through the, touchscreen this. Is another part that you can get from urghhh you're probably only going to use this probe once and then never, need it again, this, machine is quite robust, and even after having a chip to me with minimal. Packaging from the UK this was you know shown in a trade show and repackage there this, thing just started straight up with no calibration, or recalibration. Required so, in normal, use I don't think you'll ever need to recalibrate it, the leveling results I got were good but they seemed to vary quite a bit between, prints, maybe it was just one of the end stops not. Triggering, accurately, overall, it's usable, but, ultimately though I switched, to slick through RP entirely, which lets you print with a fatter and taller. First layer which will always just, stick and that's, not something you can do with the pre-configured kiss slicer. What. Am I think about the bit it's glass so you can either use it bare with PLA but I prefer smearing, some glue stick or other adhesive, on it depending, on what material I print it's also heated which i think is pretty mandatory, for a good printing experience today and heater. Itself is an, aluminum PCB, that's bonded to the bottom of the glass and insulated. On the other side so as long, as you didn't break the glass that's, a really nice solution you, do lose a bit of heat around the edge where, the actual, aluminum, bed ends so if you're printing heightened materials you, might want to stay a centimeter away from the edge of that, heated area but, that's not uncommon, on other 3d printers as well the. Bed takes a while to heat, up but you can reasonably, use it at up to I'd say a hundred degrees Celsius, but that's already quite the wait to, get it heated up now when it comes to materials like, abs or anything else that needs higher temperatures, to print and to stick the.
Hotend Or hot, side to be exact that comes install the machine is a Teflon, line one which works for your normal materials, like PLA. And ptg, the, Teflon lining is simply the Bowden tube going, all the way down to the nozzle similar to, other line Cotton's but this one doesn't seal perfectly maybe, because the bone to boy isn't cut straight on the end so, swapping. In a different, hot side is a bit harder, than it originally. Looks aside, from the two connectors for the heater, cartridge and the thermistor, and the, two grub screws that physically, hole the whole set in you also have to heat the hot set up to, even get the boat and cube out at all I've. Already. Had to swap out this boat into you because the original one got damaged when I tried to remove it and reinstall. Hardens, and there's only so much tube that he can cut off the ends before it's too short now. Why, would you want to swap Holland's at all well, there are two other hot, ends are hot sides, included. One. Extra, line one that's this, one and an. All metal type that should be safe for temperatures over, 245. Or 250, degrees, Celsius, which you may want to use for abs some coal polyesters, or polycarbonate, a, well-made. All-metal, hotend, can print all the things a Teflon line one does just fine, but it needs to be well made to, work well with the most common material peeling. This, one doesn't. Work well with PLA it jams super, easily as the PLA sticks to the bare metal throat and I've, had a few prints just you. Know stop printing and fail in the middle and the, bottom can't Jam so, I don't know if it's just not getting cooled enough through the heatsink or if the surface finish on the inside right here is not. Good enough but, I do know that the extruder, sure isn't helping either because it just so easily starts, skipping steps instead of forcing the film into, considering. This is a completely. Open machine, so no enclosure, the, sloppy, air routing, from the hot end that, always slightly blows over your prints and these. Somewhat weak heated bed you're, probably not going to do much high temperature printing on this machine anyways, so, I feel like the Teflon, lined hardened is all this printer, really.
Needs These, are a 3d inspired. Hardens but, the, heat break and the cold side is different, and they're, incompatible, to the original looks like, again lurch are offering it very similarly, looking hardens. To what the Delta pro is using that being said III will apparently also be working on getting there hardens, on to the Delta pro in fact, I'll chip this very machine to, them after this review if, easily do work on machine I sure hope they slap a Titan on it because this extruder, is not. The best one it, does come with adjustable. Tension but, it doesn't use a very grippy drive care in it's, just a spur gear it has, a super, weird lip in the filament path that made it impossible to, get filaments, in it on a few, occasions and it's also not providing a ton of driving, force despite, the massive stepper, motor on the back so unless you drop the layer height like, I did here, the extruder is going to be a limiting factor for printing fast just. Having. A large motor doesn't mean you automatically, get more torque you also need to drive it harder, the biggest size just gives you the option to do that without, overheating, it, the, extruder also has this massive gap. After, the drive gear giving flexible, filaments, and maybe even softer, nylons a very, easy option, to escape and. Talk. About driving motors let's check that noise level. Well. It's, alright it's, not loud, there is no motor, whine and, there are no excessive, vibrations, it's just. That it's not quite either at least I wouldn't advertise it as such the. Fans are very audible, and even just at idle right after. The turning the printer on the cooling fan in the electronics, compartment is already. Louder, than what a machine using, may be traumatic drivers and naktu fans can achieve auto printing you. Guys know which one I'm talking about the. Delta pro uses, on semi, lv, 8 7 to 9 V stepper, drivers I know those drivers exist but I've not seen them on any other machine, I think but, both, from reading through the datasheet and looking, at real-life, performance, in this one these, are extremely, similar to the common Allegro, drivers like the a4, 9 8 8 I've had one axis, skip a step on the second layer quite a few times not. Sure why it's, led, to prints like this that, just didn't stick and a bunch of strings. But. Yeah overall. I mean the drivers do their job but. They're, nothing to write home about and. That. Is the overall vibe that I'm getting from the Delta pro like don't, get me wrong if, this was the only option in the market I'd be totally happy using it all day every day the thing is just we. Can do better than this now I mean from mechanical, imprinting performance standpoint the Delta pro's really solid. So excellent like look at this this is this is super, nice but. In late, 2018, simply. Printing, well, isn't. Enough. Anymore it should be a given for any machine and let's be honest the $1500. Price point is a tough. Spot to be in the delta pro was fourteen nine nine would have filmed this review but it's about $12.99, which is a bit more reasonable machines, like. The pusher mark thing exists today i hate's always use that as a benchmark but, that's that's what it is right it's, a third cheaper and other, than those ten centimeters, of printable, height and, arguably, looks. The. Mark three handily. Beats out the delta pro on so, many, fronts and my opinion, also. Provides a better user, experience, well at least a more well-rounded one. But. If, you want spit the delta pro against, a comparable. Size machine. Although. The thing is while. Your printers are kind of rare, I guess the CR 10 line, of printers kind of fits in here as a budget option but. At least the base year 10 is a very solid, step down from the. Delta Pro in many ways but, it's also just a third of a cost so yeah, that's a tough one I guess what's confusing, me, about the Delta pro is trying to figure out where it fits in is it. A hobby machine, well, that it's it's way to close down but also a bit too expensive, is it, a professional. Workhorse for that I think the experience needs to be more robust, especially when it comes to the, extruder or hot end touchscreen. Interface and the firmware it's. Like it's stuck between worlds, where it does, a few things really well but, then on others I feel like it doesn't set itself apart from even low end machines enough to compete it's. Both super. Elegant and kind, of grotesque at the same time I don't, know if my expectations, are just off but I feel, like this machine would both be a better package, if it was an even more cheaply built machine and focused only, on his strengths or if.
It Was a more premium machine and ironed out all the kinks itself has as, it, stands it's a solid machine but it's not getting me particularly, excited, stell, if you want to pick one up there links in the video description below, those, are affiliate, links so I get a small kickback if you buy anything through those thank. You tomorrow price if you're loaning me the Delta Pro and thank you everyone who supports the channel saw it I can keep making independent. Content for you all to watch your support is what allows me to do in-depth, reviews, like this one without. Having to worry about whether or not you. Will then go out and buy one through, my feelings or whether. I might be pissing off the manufacturer, but not just showing you what, their products can do but also what they cannot do if, you want to support the channel you can do so over on patreon, or by joining here on YouTube or, you, know simply, hitting the subscribe button that's, super, helpful for the channel as well so, thank you for that hope. You enjoyed and I will see you all the next one bye.
2018-12-23