On today's episode I'm gonna take a look at this $99 easythreed x1 printer. $99 is it any
good? Well we'll find out. On today's
Filament Friday Filament Friday is
brought to you by these patreon
supporters. this is the $99 x1 3d printer
from ez threed. And I got this from
banggood.com they sell it for $99 they
gave it to me to do a review and
honestly it's got some features that I
like. I don't expect to get a lot from a
$99 printer especially when it's made of
plastic and it just kind of looks cheap
but it comes mostly assembled. the top
half and the bottom half with the
electronics. so you snap this top section
in, tighten two screws and make one
electrical connection. And then snap
together their spool holder and it goes
on two screws in the back and it's
assembled. now there are full
instructions on the SD card and also
they have their own slicer called easyware.
 it's actually just based on the
cura slicing engine but I like it. It's
really easy to use. They do give you some
sample PLA although I ended up using my
own spool. they give you a screwdriver to
tighten the two screws and also to help
adjust the bed. The bed itself has a
removable magnetic plate and it
does have belts at all corners including
the z-axis which makes that first layer
kind of squish and it's harder to get a
consistent level bed. it's one drawback.
but that's what you get with a $99 printer.
They do give you a single sheet of
instructions which are very very limited
again the full instructions are on the
SD card but this thing's really good for
leveling the bed. They also give you a
power adapter this is what powers the
whole thing. it's a 12 volt
two-and-a-half amp adapter and it plugs
into the box. now there's no on/off
switch so plugging or unplugging the
power adapter is how you turn it on and
off. there is a USB connection and they
give you a USB cable for that. I was able
to connect to it through pronterface and
verified it is running Marlin although
an old version 1.1.0
So it's pretty old. I think
that goes back to 2015. There is a micro
SD card and  there is a sample print
on the SD card here.
There's no LCD or control knob on this
so it's gonna print whatever the newest
file that's on the SD card.
That's how it determines what to print
because there's only four controls.
there's a home button that only homes
the Z . there's a plus and minus for
loading and unloading of filament and
then there's a play button and it's
multifunction. you use that button to
start a print, to pause the print, to stop
a print and also you hold it for three
seconds and it'll raise the Z ten
millimeters. So everything is done just
through these buttons. So it's really
really basic. They do offer an x2 version
which has LCD and knob I think it's like
thirty dollars more than this so it's
like hundred twenty nine dollars. 
Everything is based on the date code of
your file. I did take it apart and verify
it's got the same setup as an Ender
three. It's got a 1284 for micro
controller and it's got 4988 drivers.
There is some form of thermal runaway
protection. I tested it and it will shut
off the hot end if it loses track of the
temperature so there is some protection
built into the Marlin firmware. I did
load up the sample file. it's a cat. it
printed pretty good I mean it didn't
fail or nothing but at the end of it
look at the print quality. it's pretty
bad. and it did print on a raft and I
know why because this bed it's really
difficult to keep it leveled. so next I
decided to try out their slicer easyware
and try out my CHEP Cube. so let's
take a look at that. I opened it up
from the SD card the first thing you
need to do is select English, then you
select your printer, then you select PLA
and it opens to this really cool looking
window. It's very clean. You've got an
import, a save, a delete and a slice
button. The slice button has two
modes. A button mode with fast standard
and optimized in one click, or you
go custom where you get all the Cura
settings, well not all of them, but a lot
of the most the important ones. So you
can scroll through them here. So now
let's import my CHEP cube. so I click on
the import button here, go find it, click
on it, and just select choose and it
should land on the bed.
And there it is. Now once it's on the bed
I can zoom in, zoom out.
I can scroll this thing around.
there's controls down here where I can
look at the top I can look at the side I
can look at the flank or I can reset it
back to where it was. If I click on it I
can move it around, I can rotate it and I
can actually put a degrees in there, I
can scale it and also with the uniform
scale just like Cura. But then it's got
floor here and this is where you select
a side and that side will go to the base.
That's something that was added to Cura
really late so this is a nice feature.
You can set which side you want on
the bed.
so now let's slice this and take a look
at it. so I'll click on custom and I'm
gonna use just their standard settings
right here. But I did notice it defaults
to 180 degrees C. That's something you're
gonna want to change because most
filaments need higher temperature. So I
sliced it with their default settings
here and it automatically goes to a preview
mode and you can scroll through the
layers. This is something you have to
click separately in Cura. And it really
does a good job of showing, I mean it's
not perfect,  but it does a good job of
showing the different layers and how it
looks. Once you got it sliced you're ready
to save it to the SD card you have two
options you can just click on save SD
card or you can save data which means
you can put it anywhere in your hard
drive or you can go find your SD card
and save it to there. So two different
ways very similar to what Cura has. so
now we got this, I actually resliced it
with a skirt no raft and tried to print
it directly on the bed. Let's look at
that. Here's a time-lapse of it printing
and if you watch closely you can see it
warped. It lifted right off the bed and
warped. it's not a heated bed so this
thing worked terrible. it's really a
worst print than the cat. and if you
notice the CHEP is backwards. it's a
mirror image. it's because the y-axis
motor is reversed. it's actually moving
in the wrong direction.
so then I was ready to just shove this
aside and say it's a piece of crap. I
don't recommend it. But then I realized
it's direct drive and when I saw the
internal workings it actually traps the
filament similar to way the EZR
extruder does a my Ender three. So I
wondered, could it  print that really
flexible stuff?  like ninjaflex?
so I tried it. so I took the same CHEP
cube file, printed it without a raft, and
it stuck to the bed really well because
that's what this filament does. and it
actually came out a little bit smoother
because this filament doesn't give you
those crisp edges. And look at it, its
flexible. I can squeeze it. Next I tried
printing the rubber foot for my Ender
three. I put this on all my Enders makes
it a little quieter this thing is
squishy it printed really well. The base
of it we're a touches the bed is a little
bit rough but the rest of it looks
really good. I'm really impressed with
how well this thing prints ninjaflex.
This is very handy and there's no
stringing in between these feet. On my
Ender three with the EZR I get a
little bit string in between the feet.
There's no stringing here. None at all.
So I've printed a few more flexible
prints and they're all coming out good.
I've never had a single one fail. And
this thing just, I don't know, it just
prints flexible so well, and PLA so
average. That to me, it's a great flexible
printer. That's what it's good for. And if
you want to use this with kids it makes
more sense to have them print flexible
materials because if they printed blocks
and then they start throwing blocks at
each other, the PLA is gonna hurt. If you
hit yourself with one of these soft ones
it's gonna hurt a lot less. And there's
so many other things you could do with
this. Now when I was a kid there were
machines to make what they called creepy
crawlies. They're creepy crawly machines
are really just a molding machine where
you could print flexible little snakes
and lizards. This is like a modern-day
creepy crawly machine. You put some
flexible filament in it and you can
print pretty much any flexible you want.
And as far as the bed level who cares.
This stuff sticks so well if your beds
off a little bit so what. So I decided to
make a creepy crawly. I found this lizard
on Thingiverse I printed it out and look
at this. It printed it beautifully.
And this thing's totally flexible.
So from that point of view I think this
is a fantastic 99 dollar investment. Just
print a ninja flex with it and then a
kid could have a ton of fun with this.
And as far as settings, I didn't do any
different settings than the PLA. The same
settings to print the PLA as the ninja
flex and it worked beautifully. So I
don't have to do anything special. To
hold the larger spool, I did make a new
bracket design. Designed this in Tinkercad, printed it on my CR 10, it's too big for
this machine, but it just slides right on
locks in place and holds the larger
spool. So I'm sure they'll be better
designs in the future as people get
these machines but this is really
incredible what this thing can do with
flexibles. So this to me is a modern-day
creepy-crawly machine. It's perfect for
kids to make rubberized or flexible toys.
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stay safe through this tough time we are
going through and I'll see you next time
right here at Filament Friday
