Full description not available
S**.
Superb value for money with clever features
Having previously had some rather gnarly experiences with SLA printers, the Nova Elfin turned out to be a breath of fresh air. They have sorted out quite a few of the issues faced by older SLA printers, added quality and generally made life easier.First to the basics. It's resolution is 1410 x 2531 pixels and can print up to 150mm. It comes with basic tools, but you are going to need additional kit such as food boxes for washing prints with IPA or the poison of your choice.Nova have made life a lot easier by including a touch screen that has various features, such as WiFi configuration, basic file management, platform control, job control (including a pause facility). The screen is a good size, slightly angled to make it easy to read when standing up and the interface is pretty to look at as well. All in all, the screen is well thought out, the functions are clear and the UI is well laid out.Setup is particularly easy because the machine comes pre-levelled from the factory. In addition, instead of levelling the bed the entire platform is levelled. They still use the traditional Chinese four-screw levelling method which is, quite frankly, an awful idea but it does work at the end of the day and levelling should not have to be done often. WiFi took a minute to setup. I don't want to use the USB or Ethernet option, but they are there if you prefer that.The vat connects to the case with sliding knobs and lugs; far better than using thumbscrews. Vat removal is literally a matter of seconds. It would have been useful if they had included some kind of grip or handle on either side. Handling the resin-covered vat with plastic gloves is a trick and a half. Having said that, so far I have not dropped the vat during handling.Replacing stuff is going to be important, because the FEP wears out as does the LCD screen. Both of those have been made quite simple to swap out, which is a major bonus.The quality is something worth pointing out. Instead of cheaping out they have used a heavy linear rail. Plastic parts are quality injection mouldings, which provides additional confidence in their product since they have heavily invested in tooling.The build plate slides on and off without any adjustment knobs anywhere near it, as a result of the entire platform providing the levelling. This means that you don't have to worry about accidentally messing up your levelling. This is a great feature. The plate itself has some kind of coating which means the prints stick like crazy. To remove the octopus in the photos I had to carefully lever off each link - that part was easy - but the body would not budge. In the end I tapped it gently with a nylon mallet and that worked a charm. My guess is that due to the coating, initial layers (I use three) can be exposed for perhaps 20 seconds or less to get good adhesion. I only use a plastic scraper to remove prints because I do not want to damage the coating.Print results are superb, see the photos. I generally use this printer for printing very small but high-detailed, high-accuracy parts and am very pleased with the results. The resins I have used thus far are clear and white, and both have proven to be excellent, providing crisp results. Using the clear resin you can print with a 5 second exposure per layer. I get the feeling that this can be reduced, as can the peel off height, but have yet to fiddle with that. The UV coverage from the LEDs seems to be pretty even; I have printed all over the bed and gotten identical results, so well done there. The pointy thing in clear resin was coated with a few layers of acrylic varnish which made completely transparent. The square thing has tiny prisms in the front and they came out pretty well as well.Despite my best efforts the lid has become covered in resin stains. Every now and then I do a thorough wipe down with IPA and that seems to work, but I think at some point I'm going to give up. It looks great, is a nice quality moulding, but it attracts resin like flies to fly paper. Handles on either side would help with that.The only real downside is the software, Novamaker. It does the job, but compared to the (free) Chitubox is mediocre at best. I did use Novamker and got successful prints, but the interface is clunky, features are few and far between and it only does orthogonal projection - frequently perspective projection is more useful, so that's why I switched to Chitubox.It could also do with a basic web interface which is hardly going to be difficult to implement, and that way one can drop the Novamaker software altogether if you want to use WiFi or Ethernet.Finally tech support. So far I have not needed any support. SLA printing is not for the faint of heart and you do need to know what you are doing before you do it, so that's hardly surprising. I did have a chat with one of their sales staff over Skype (in fact she contacted me because I had not taken up their free offer - that's a first!), and she was very helpful and informative so here's to hoping they can keep up the great customer support I experienced.All in all, this is a quality printer that has been well thought out. For the money I don't think there is another machine out there that can beat this printer and I highly recommend it.
K**A
A great little printer, beautifully executed.
This printer is capable of turning out some outstanding prints (as the pictures clearly show) in relatively short times.The scary thing is that parts pictured were printed in 'standard' resolution and could be tuned to a higher resolution if need be, but seeing these results I do not think I will be required to do so very often.The machine is well built and features lovely injection moudled parts unlike a lot of the competitors in the field.The ethernet connectivity and built-in WIFI makes connecting to the device very simple no matter your requirements and gives it a clear edge over the competition.It isn't all perfect, Nova have their own software which works well for basic slicing and was suprisingly fast compared to other software I have used, but was somewhat limited in features. This will hopefully get a little more attention over the coming months, but is more than acceptable for most basic uses.One good feature of the software is that it allows you to monitor currents prints on multiple machines. This is a nice touch, but I would have preferred to see a browser interface allowing me to upload files directly from Chitubox or any other slicer of my choice, but it wouldn't put me off buying another one.So far the after sales service I have received has been outstanding as such this product earns a top rating.- Good Design- Quality Build- Well Implemented Concept- Good Customer Service
C**Y
Astounding Quality For The Price
I have been a long time FDM printer and when 3D printing was starting to get affordable I bought a cheap Chinese machine to have a go and it was a terrible experience.The Nova3D was a totally different story, it's well built and fairly quiet when printing, User Interface on the machine it's self is basic in design but functional, I have not been able to get it to connect to the wifi yet which is not too much of a problem and I probably could fix it with the troubleshooting section in the manual but I prefer to use a USB stick anyway. Another slight annoyance is the USB port is on the back of the machine, not the end of the world really.I have to admit I have not used the software so I can't really comment on it personally but I have heard that it is clunky. I used CHITUBOX the industry goto open-source software for resin printers on recommendation from another user. You have to install a plugin for the printers settings but this can be downloaded and is easy to install.The print quality, Astounding especially for the price point, I have had sample parts from FormLabs and I don't think they are as good of print quality as the Nova3d Elfin. I did have some issues to start with the prints were not sticking to the bed but Nova3D have a video on their youtube on how to level and calibrate the machine so this was easy enough to fix though it is supposed to be leveled at the factory, I guess they made mine on a Friday.Overall would I recommend someone to get this printer if they were starting out in resin printing, oh yes very much so it helps to have a knowledge of 3D printing to some degree but I would say a novice could handle this machine fine.
Trustpilot
1 month ago
1 week ago
