Anycubic Chiron 3D printer
Some of my ongoing projects required a larger 3D printer and I saw a good deal on a printer that had good reviews (except for its weird bed leveling system) so I bought one off Anycubic's Aliexpress shop shipped from Germany. I got in in less than a week and putting it together took me a bit more than one hour.
It is basically two parts, shipped flat, that you place at a square angle to make a Prusa i3 like configuration.
The printer comes with all the tools you need, including the wire cutter to use to remove the zip ties that keep the bed from moving while in transit.
The 400x400 mm bed features glass on top with a special texture that does what it promises: good adhesion while hot and easy release of parts when cold.
These two brackets will reinforce the vertical axis beams fixed to the horizontal extrusions.
Once built, the manual called for a manual or automatic bed leveling. That I did not like as it seems the user has to decide which one is best. Something most may not be ready to answer if they have no previous experience. And to make it worse, I did not find the instructions entirely straightforward. Anyway, I went with the manual bed leveling, using the classic sheet of paper as a gauge and the adjustment wheels in the four corners of the bed. After that, I printed a decent first layer of the bed-adjustment model.
The first thing I noticed on powering up the printer was how loud the fans sounded (iMac and MK3 have spoiled me on that front). And the sound is just regular fan noise without any sign of fan damage during shipping, so my guess is that they are just loud. The second thing I noticed when moving the axis is that motors are a bit noisy too (to be expected when using regular stepper drivers instead of silent modes of TMC drivers). For some reason, motor X won't move till I homed the axis (for a moment I thought something was wrong with it).
The frame feels strong and I detected no play on any of the axis. I found a couple of M3 screws within the packing foam and after a while, I found they belonged to one of the nuts of Z-axis threaded rods.
One annoying design flaw is the bottom of the X-axis belt path, where it connects to the X-carriage. Contrary to what it should, the path is not parallel to the beam but at an angle, a common problem shared with the Ender 3, CR-10 and other similar printers. And while it might not introduce a significant geometric error while printing, it creates unnecessary stress on the belt.
On the software side of things, I have not found a Slic3r profile of the printer so I created one myself using the data shown in the Cura profile.
The accelerations for X and Y axes are very low in the current firmware (350 mm/s^2). That might be ok for the huge bed but it seems very low for X-axis, so I guess I would be playing with that a bit to get some speed-up. Some user recommended M201 X3000 Y2000 on Thingiverse's forum.
The printer does include a spare hotend with its own thermistor and heater, something I have not seen before. I have yet to venture to use the accessory for the automatic bed leveling, a part that you manually place below the hotend tip to sense the bed height at 25 different locations.
The touch-sensitive graphics display looks smart and works well so far. A word of warning: the printer cannot go through the doors once assembled, so I neede to remove the spool holder in order to relocate it to another room. right now it is printing a sample vase using the 05Kg PLA spool that came with the printer.
It is basically two parts, shipped flat, that you place at a square angle to make a Prusa i3 like configuration.
The printer comes with all the tools you need, including the wire cutter to use to remove the zip ties that keep the bed from moving while in transit.
The 400x400 mm bed features glass on top with a special texture that does what it promises: good adhesion while hot and easy release of parts when cold.
These two brackets will reinforce the vertical axis beams fixed to the horizontal extrusions.
Once built, the manual called for a manual or automatic bed leveling. That I did not like as it seems the user has to decide which one is best. Something most may not be ready to answer if they have no previous experience. And to make it worse, I did not find the instructions entirely straightforward. Anyway, I went with the manual bed leveling, using the classic sheet of paper as a gauge and the adjustment wheels in the four corners of the bed. After that, I printed a decent first layer of the bed-adjustment model.
The first thing I noticed on powering up the printer was how loud the fans sounded (iMac and MK3 have spoiled me on that front). And the sound is just regular fan noise without any sign of fan damage during shipping, so my guess is that they are just loud. The second thing I noticed when moving the axis is that motors are a bit noisy too (to be expected when using regular stepper drivers instead of silent modes of TMC drivers). For some reason, motor X won't move till I homed the axis (for a moment I thought something was wrong with it).
The frame feels strong and I detected no play on any of the axis. I found a couple of M3 screws within the packing foam and after a while, I found they belonged to one of the nuts of Z-axis threaded rods.
One annoying design flaw is the bottom of the X-axis belt path, where it connects to the X-carriage. Contrary to what it should, the path is not parallel to the beam but at an angle, a common problem shared with the Ender 3, CR-10 and other similar printers. And while it might not introduce a significant geometric error while printing, it creates unnecessary stress on the belt.
On the software side of things, I have not found a Slic3r profile of the printer so I created one myself using the data shown in the Cura profile.
The accelerations for X and Y axes are very low in the current firmware (350 mm/s^2). That might be ok for the huge bed but it seems very low for X-axis, so I guess I would be playing with that a bit to get some speed-up. Some user recommended M201 X3000 Y2000 on Thingiverse's forum.
The printer does include a spare hotend with its own thermistor and heater, something I have not seen before. I have yet to venture to use the accessory for the automatic bed leveling, a part that you manually place below the hotend tip to sense the bed height at 25 different locations.
The touch-sensitive graphics display looks smart and works well so far. A word of warning: the printer cannot go through the doors once assembled, so I neede to remove the spool holder in order to relocate it to another room. right now it is printing a sample vase using the 05Kg PLA spool that came with the printer.
With a larger nozzle size (0.6 to 1.2 mm) this printer can speed up large prints to get acceptable print times for huge objects (400x400x450 mm). With the stock (0.4mm) nozzle size and the huge bed that calls for lower accelerations than a smaller printer, printing large parts can take several days. Many projects that require a larger volume can accept a reduced resolution and, if that is the case, that can be done faster.
All in all, a very positive experience with this printer so far.
Comments
There are a few mods that adds some bearings there to keep the Z rods from moving.