FLSun S1 Evaluate: Wonky Delta with Warp Pace
The S1 is the most recent superfast Delta 3D printer from FLSun, with a futuristic type that feels prefer it was beamed down from the Starship Enterprise. Boasting acceleration charges as much as 40,000mm/s², and a prime pace of 1200mm/s, it’s the quickest printer I’ve had in my workshop up to now.
FLSun packed loads of options into this 3D printer. The machine is absolutely enclosed, with a hardened metal high-flow nozzle, closed-loop stepper motors, LIDAR detection, an air filter, and sensors out the wazoo. It may well (sorta) inform you how a lot filament is left on the roll by weight, cease when it finds a clog or particles on the plate, and naturally ranges the mattress for an ideal first layer. It additionally comes with a digital camera for monitoring prints and has a built-in filament dryer. To avoid wasting vitality, the machine will be set to show itself off after a print is completed.
Sadly, the printer is missing within the accuracy division, largely resulting from a slapped-together customized slicer. Although the prints are remarkably quick with beautiful floor high quality, I wasn’t in a position to get precision components out of it till I turned the circulation method down and arrange Orca Slicer. Our Torture Toaster, Calibration Citadel, and collapsible sword all locked up tight at default settings when utilizing its personal slicer. It is like being given a sports activities automobile with bald tires — positive, it’s quick, but it surely’s no enjoyable to drive in the event you hold ending up within the ditch.
The printer was additionally blessed with an overabundance of cooling energy, offered by a CPAP turbofan with 40,000 RPM. The fan is tucked into the printer’s higher compartment and blows air down a tube to the hotend. Its ear-piercing, high-pitched whine will be heard from the opposite finish of the home. Lowering the fan to 85% supplies sufficient cooling with a tolerable, but sadly nonetheless annoying, stage of noise.
The FLSun S1 was so massive — each in dimension and weight — I couldn’t set it up in my studio. Although the footprint is slightly below two ft sq., it’s 42 inches tall and may’t clear the RepRack spool shelf I’ve mounted close to the ceiling. The printer weighs 95 kilos, so I had to purchase a brand new heavy-duty shelving unit simply to get it off the ground. The IKEA finish desk I had positioned its predecessor, the FLSun V400, wasn’t sturdy sufficient to carry it.
This machine has a lot wasted potential. FLSun actually dropped the ball with their half-hearted customized slicer. Fortunately, I discovered a profile for OrcaSlicer proper earlier than ending this evaluate that gave me hope the printer will be saved. With a price ticket of $1,499, it’s not a printer I’d advocate for inexperienced persons, however there’s no denying its pace and futuristic flare. It might not be the Greatest 3D Printer I’ve seen this 12 months, but it surely’s undoubtedly the quickest.
Specs: FLSun S1
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| Construct Quantity | ⌀320 x 430mm (⌀12.6 x16.9 inches) |
| Materials | PLA/PETG/TPU/ABS (as much as 350 levels) |
| Extruder Sort | Direct Drive |
| Nozzle | .4mm V6 Hardened Metal |
| Construct Platform | PEI Spring Metal, Heated |
| Mattress Leveling | LIDAR Auto Leveling |
| Filament Runout Sensor | Sure |
| Connectivity | USB, Wi-Fi |
| Interface | Built-in coloration contact display |
| Machine Footprint | 550 x 595 x 1030mm (21.6 x 19.8 x 19.1 inches) |
| Machine Weight | 41kg (90 kilos) |
Included within the field: FLSun S1
The FLSun S1 comes with every little thing you might want to get began: instruments to construct and keep the printer, facet cutters, a nozzle cleaner, grease, and a USB drive. You additionally get a spare hotend equipment and a 500 gram spool of filament.
There’s a paper copy of the person guide, and the USB drive has a duplicate of the FLSun Slicer. Check fashions are loaded within the printer’s reminiscence.
Assembling the FLSun S1
The FLSun S1 arrives largely assembled. You solely must plug in a couple of cords, pop the entrance panel containing the display on the underside, then connect the entrance door.
Warning: The entrance door is packed in such a method that it seems connected. It’s not. In the event you’re the sort to start out ripping off packing materials earlier than studying the meeting instructions, you’ll be in for a shock.
Leveling the FLSun S1
The FLSun S1 comes with LIDAR and a bunch of sensors for computerized mattress leveling and calibration. Simply push a button, and the machine does the remainder. I didn’t have any points with mattress leveling.
If you might want to alter the nozzle top for a pesky filament (like PETG), there’s a restricted quantity of z top accessible from the tuning display.
Loading Filament within the FLSun S1
Loading filament within the FLSun S1 is slightly tough because of the completely spool-shaped gap within the built-in filament drying on the highest of the machine.
I discovered it obligatory to carry the spool in my left hand and feed the strand into the Bowden tube with my proper. When you attain the software head (a number of ft of Bowden tube later), you should utilize the fast launch on the tubing and shove the previous few inches dwelling.
Although I used to be in a position to feed TPU the conventional method, it’s far simpler to make use of a desk mounted spool and use the secondary filament path. You’ll have to show off the filament runout sensor, which you are able to do from the management panel.
There’s a critical flaw within the Klipper config file that controls unloading filament. The printer doesn’t know to push the filament ahead a bit to melt and launch it from the nozzle. Nevertheless, that is straightforward to repair — in the event you don’t thoughts stepping into the code.
Right here’s what the altered macro seems to be like:
[gcode_macro UNLOAD_FILAMENT] #unload filament
gcode:
M117 unload_filament heating accomplished!
G91 ; Change to relative positioning
G1 E10 F300 ; Advance the filament by 10mm
G1 E-60 F300 ; Retract the filament by 60mm (10mm greater than the unique retraction to make sure it clears the hotend)
G90 ; Change again to absolute positioning
SET_STEPPER_ENABLE STEPPER=extruder ENABLE=0
M117 unload_filament finished!
Design of the FLSun S1
The FLSun S1 is a delta printer with three slender carbon fiber arms that slide up and down on belt-driven rails. It’s a really tall, very broad machine wrapped in a metal enclosure and weighs about 95 kilos. Put together accordingly.
It has a modern, futuristic look with one of the best management display I’ve ever seen on a 3D printer. The glass panel blends seamlessly into the machine’s entrance and presents massive, clear textual content and graphics, together with a speedometer to indicate off how briskly the print head is whirling.
The spool holder is about inside a built-in filament drier. It may well function whereas the printer is operating or idle, permitting you to prep filament earlier than use or hold it dry throughout printing. There are not any temperature settings for the dryer – simply an on/off swap and a timer. A humidity gauge suggests how moist the chamber is however appears to be wildly inaccurate. At one level it stated the humidity was 2%, whereas a separate hygrometer says it was 45%. The temperature can also be off by a drastic quantity, with the display saying 54.8C, but it surely was 80.7F (26.6C) on my thermometer. For the report, we wish the dry field to be between 40 and 50C for PLA and as much as 65C for PETG.
The spindle is mounted on a load sensor to estimate how a lot of the spool has been used. Nevertheless, it assumes you’re utilizing an “common” 1kg spool with none method to alter for the beginning weight of the spool or half-sized spools. I feel the function continues to be helpful to offer you a basic concept of how a lot materials is perhaps left.
The FLSun runs Klipper with a vanilla Mainsail interface. It comes with a digital camera mounted inside, so there’s no fuss getting monitoring arrange. The digital camera can even take timelapse movies, but it surely solely saves separately. It has a fish eye lens to suit its huge construct quantity contained in the body.
The machine has two USB ports on the entrance, and likewise connects through Wi-Fi.
The FLSun S1 boasts speeds as much as 1200mm/s, which it makes use of for journey strikes. Its print pace tops out at 800mm/s and is used for infill. The partitions are tried at 500 mm/s. And I say try as a result of operating the printer at full pace typically ends in poor high quality or prints knocked away from bed. The picture under exhibits a sword pommel that was spoiled as a result of the machine vibrated a lot the half was continually wiggling.
The S1 makes use of a CPAP blower to supply the large quantity of cooling wanted for a printer operating at these speeds. It’s violently noisy, with a high-pitched whine that makes pondering troublesome. Fortunately, you possibly can flip the fan all the way down to 85% to get some noise aid whereas nonetheless cooling your components sufficiently.
Mattress adhesion at full pace is troublesome for this printer, regardless of the good PEI coating on its versatile plate. The guide advises utilizing glue stick for all prints, however there isn’t a reminder such as you would see on the cool engineering plates of different manufacturers. It is a laborious lesson to study, and forgetting is painful. I bought a print wrapped across the nozzle so unhealthy it traveled upward into the fan. This required changing a lot of the software head, and FLSun was type sufficient to swap out your entire printer and let me attempt once more.
That stated, the FLSun S1’s hotend is wonderful. The throat of the hotend is drilled out like a CHT nozzle to supply excessive circulation, whereas the nozzle itself is an ordinary detachable V6.
Getting ready Information / Software program
FLSun determined to make its personal slicer, piggybacking off PrusaSlicer from the seems to be of it. The slicer itself is okay, however the presets are missing. I needed to do some critical tuning to get the printer to cease over-extruding and making my ears bleed with fan noise.
A profile for OrcaSlicer has been launched to the FLSun Wiki, which helps, however you continue to must tone down the fan and filament circulation. I set the half cooling fan to 85% and materials circulation to 0.9, making it extra manageable.
Printing on the FLSun S1
Floor high quality on the FLSun S1 may be very clean, however the included customized slicer does it no justice. My prints utilizing FLSun’s slicer had been terribly inaccurate, horribly over extruded and liable to fails. Switching to OrcaSlicer improved the standard, however I nonetheless needed to tone down the circulation to 0.9 within the filament profile.
The pace boat for this Delta printer is the quickest I’ve printed on any machine. The five hundred-gram pattern spool was extra beneficiant than most, however you’ll nonetheless wish to purchase a full-sized spool instantly. Try our record of the finest filaments for 3D printing right here.
A Pace Benchy must comply with sure guidelines: two partitions, three prime and backside layers, 10 % grid infill, a 0.25 layer top, and a 0.5 layer width. Like a number of the newer quick printers, this machine is quicker than my default settings of 300mm/s. The S1 ripped by means of the earlier report with a blazing 12-minute and 48-second boat, topping our record of the quickest 3D printers.
This boat is slightly squashy on the roof, and the porthole is a bit oval. Nevertheless it’s nonetheless loads higher than many pace boats I’ve run prior to now 12 months or two.
Bear in mind: When racing a 3D Printer, it is extra about printing a “Benchy Formed Object” than actual high quality.
This was printed in extraordinary grey Inland PLA, so not one of the defects are hidden.
I printed a couple of assessments with the pattern spool of white PLA supplied with the printer. You’ll undoubtedly want to buy some extra. To see my favourite supplies to make use of, try our information to the Greatest Filaments for 3D Printing.
I printed loads of PLA whereas testing this printer, however essentially the most irritating was this collapsible sword with an admittedly troublesome hilt. You want a really dependable printer to get these sabers to end up, however no quantity of tuning with the customized slicer was in a position to make this work, with bits of spaghetti showing on the prime and the blades oozing collectively on the backside.
Switching to Orca Slicer lastly gave me a print that labored. Utilizing Creality Hyper PLA, the ultimate sword was printed with a 0.2 layer top at 500mm/s and took two hours and 28 minutes to print. The print was clean, with no seen layer traces, aside from the underside of the guard, the place it bought slightly sloppy. This print would have taken an extraordinary mattress slinger, just like the Prusa MK4, slightly over seven hours to print.
The drier got here in useful for this PETG print. You possibly can see the development in high quality, with the undried filament on the left trying a bit tough and the smoother dried print on the best. This print makes use of Greengate Translucent Purple Petg with a medallion and lid of Polymaker Gold PLA and Proto Pasta Empire Strikes Black. It was printed utilizing FLSun’s slicer turned all the way down to 60mm/s and a pause at top command to swap the filament colours. The jar took one hour and 58 minutes to print, plus one other 22 minutes for the lid, and about 6 minutes for the medallion. That is rather less than two and a half hours of complete print time.
It did surprisingly nicely on TPU as soon as I slowed it down a bit. Operating the filament by means of the secondary entry level is extremely advisable, as that bypasses a number of ft of Bowden tube. I made this bone formed canine toy in TinkerCad that turned out with good clean layers and a superb prime end. I used the Inland Rainbow TPU and it printed in 52 minutes at 0.2 layer top and 60mm/s pace.
I examined ABS (utilizing Polymaker Galaxy Orange ABS) for this RC automobile half with the customized slicer, and it was completely too quick – inflicting poor layer adhesion. It additionally knocked over the tree helps every of the thrice I attempted this print. With a little bit of tuning, I may make this work. I gave up and printed this half on the QIDI Tech Q1 since I wanted it for MRRF and couldn’t waste extra of my orange ABS.
Backside Line
The FLSun S1 is a irritating hunk of equipment that’s so near great and but so removed from it. Nobody ought to pay $1,500 for a machine that wants this a lot tuning to carry out nicely. The plus facet is it runs vanilla Klipper firmware and will be switched to OrcaSlicer for many who don’t thoughts an costly tinkering mission.
For everybody else, I counsel they wait and see if enhancements are made to the firmware to filter the odd little bugs.
In the event you’re nonetheless interested by an amazing Delta printer, the FLSun V400 has seen nice enhancements in its firmware since we reviewed it, and it’s on sale for $549. Or in the event you want a superb enclosed printer with a big construct quantity, I’d advocate the Creality K1 Max, at present going for $759.
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