Anycubic 4max Pro 2.0 3d Printer
Agata Schweiss
That brought me to the Anycubic 4MAX. I ordered this printer from AliExpress mostly based on the questionable translated product translation and a few snippets of information I could find on the Internet only a few weeks after its release in spring 2018.
All parts were organized in well labeled zip-lock bags for each assembly step. The only thing I could criticize is the packaging of the panels: there was still some debris from cutting between the sheets, so I got a bunch of scratches on the panels. Nothing I really bother, but this could be addressed for future packaging.
The assembly was straight forward, it took me around 5 hours until I started my first test print. But since this is my first 3D printer I took my time and tried to understand the purpose of each part and to double check the alignment and calibration steps.
The Trigorilla board from Anycubic is based on the RAMPS design and aside from a few different pin outs fully compatible to the RAMPS 1.4 template in the marlin firmware (based on MEGA2560). The board comes with 5 replaceable Allegro A4988 drivers. The whole systems runs on 12 V, the power supply and the controller board are enclosed at the side of the cube, but accessible and cooled from the outside.
The combined LCD and SD card reader seemed to be a common design and also Marlin compatible without any problems. The downside is a weird SD card position on the inside and a single, wobbly rotary encoder. The position on the bottom of the cube gives a weird angle on the LCD.
Most cables are braided together to 3 strands, 2 from the X carriage and one from the heated bed. They are connected via round plugs to the controller case. The remaining endstops and motors are directly connected to the board via holes in the case top. Every cable is labeled even the connectors on the inside. Anycubic provided some zip-ties for the remaining cable management. I also printed some cable clips for the 2020 extrusions and used velcro ties to put everything in place.
The direct extruder is powered by a standard NEMA17 stepper. The filament gets pushed by a grooved, spring loaded bearing against the sharp gear. The pressure on the filament is strong and the gear leaves a decent mark before entering a PTFE tube in the heatbreak. There is a notable gap between the gear and the heatbreak, so you could run into problems with flexible material. (I have not tried so far)
The PTFE tube reaches all the way into the nozzle. The mechanical weak point of the whole assembly is the heatbreak, as extruder including the motor is only hold in place with the heatbreak and its counter screw, I guess a lot of vibrations can be minimized by fixing this.
The anycubic ultrabase is a coated glass plate. It reminds me of some sort of sun shaded car window. At temperature the prints stick unbelievably well, after it cools down they release without great forces. I never had to use any tools or tape or glue or anything. But you have to wait until its cool to get your part.
After double checking endstop positons and axis alignments, I had to realize, that there was no way I could set the home position outside of the print bed. So you have to really make sure your Z endstop is in the right position and do the fine adjustments with the 4 spring loaded bed leveling screws.
Aside from that everything worked for me on the first go. I printed the provided owl pair without any problems, a decent Benchy and a few lens caps with the included black PLA with the default settings. (210 C / 60 C / 0.2 mm / 45 mm/s)
As already mentioned: the Z adjustment and leveling is a bit of a pain and leaves no room for errors. Otherwise you could easily crash your nozzle into the bed. Not really a problem as CNC machines always have the tendency to destroy themselves on user error, but you could minimize that with a little different design.
The X/Y axis tend to vibrate on certain speeds and can lead to some afterswing effects on the surface. The extruder/hotend tend to blob and zit a bit on retraction, but I think most of it can be handled by adjusting the g-code settings.
The 4Make Pro is a fully enclosed printer which is supplied well packaged, with filament and tools, plus spare parts and an easy to follow manual. The print bed is 270mm along the x axis, 205mm along the y and 205mm along the z.
I then downloaded the latest version of Cura and set up the printer details. They have a pre-set for the 4Max which is the smaller version which I selected and changed to accommodate the differences of the 4max pro. Here are some screen captures of those details with a descriotion alongside the g-code. And for some reason I had to delete a semicolon on this line to stop the printer from crashing when moving backwards at the end of a job.
Hi there everyone, I have an issue with my anycubic 4max pro, when printing the filament is perfect width and height for the skirt or brim, when it starts the part it seems to only extrude less than half the required amount, I have checked and changed many settings, checked g-code, rebuilt the hot end several times, new nozzles hot ends filament, I was running cura for slicing with the same results, I am using fusion 360 for slicing now, If the first layer prints enough for a second layer to start, then other layers will print reasonable, any help is appreciated
Creative Tools Creative Tools supplies 3D printer and 3D scanner products incl filaments, accessories and support and also 3D software for leading CAD, modeling, animation, and rendering.#3DBenchy is a 3D model designed by us at Creative Tools...
hi there Bryce, I have tried the flow up as high as 150%, does not change at all, trying to print anything at all has the same problem, I have old gcode that was printing great now it wont, i have a bed level gcode that was running perfect now wont extrude enough to adhere to the bed ( not enough to squash the filament), all steppers are great the machine will move as it should just will not extrude enough, the extruder stepper spins fast for the priming fucntion and the drim then slows down for the actual part in relation to how far it has travelled, there doesnt seem to be a different extrusion flow rate for brim and part, thanks for the welcome, i aint good with forums lol
hi James, Yeah the bed is levelled, I have adjusted the gap from less than 0.05mm to 0.2 mm to see if that changes it, less than 0.1 makes the priming bead fatter and extrudes well still but the part the extruder still slows down and wont be enough to give any squash to the bead. thank you for helping
Hi Bryce, its a direct, the teflon at the extruder is roughly 2.1mm and 1.75mm filament, i havent reflashed the machine for a while now, I can certainly try again, cant hurt, PLA from 195 to 220degc, bed from 65 to 75degc, I was using the supplied filament from anycubic and flashforge with good prints, now just flashforge, I checked those errors and they are not the issue unfortunately, thank you