The Anycubic Kobra Max is freaking enormous. No actually. It’s that large. With a 400x400x450mm construct quantity, that is the right machine for 3D printing props and costume helmets in a single piece. However first, you’ll wish to measure your workspace – this monster wants THREE SQUARE FEET of working house! I needed to flip the printer sideways to suit on my IKEA counter – and the spool holder nonetheless hung off into house.
When you discover a spot to place it, the Anycubic Kobra Max is a superb machine that’s simple to make use of. Accessible beginning at $569 (although a bit extra on Amazon), the Kobra Max is a Bowden kind printer with a Volcano-style hotend and a coated glass mattress. It has an auto leveling system that bodily faucets the glass floor, giving very correct outcomes that may hold with any of the greatest 3D printers.
If the considered prying large prints off a glass mattress sounds terrifying, fear not. Anycubic’s carborundum glass formulation is ideal – simply let the glass settle down and it’ll launch by itself. I’ve solely needed to nudge just a few small items out of bed with a spatula. Massive prints have all the time slid off with out a struggle.
Specs: Anycubic Kobra Max
| Machine Footprint | 715 x 665 x 720 mm (28 x 26 x 28 inches) |
| Construct Quantity | 400 x 400 x 450 mm (17.7 x 15.7 x 15.7 inches) |
| Materials | PLA/PETG/ABS/TPU |
| Extruder Sort | Bowden |
| Nozzle | .4mm (Interchangeable) |
| Filament Runout Sensor | Sure |
| Mattress Leveling | Automated |
| Connectivity | Micro SD, Micro USB |
| Interface | Colour Contact Display screen |
Included within the field: Anycubic Kobra Max
The Anycubic Kobra Max comes with every thing that you must get began: instruments to construct and keep the printer, facet cutters, a plastic scraper, nozzle cleaner, grease and a microSD card with a USB adapter. You additionally get a spare nozzle and small pattern of PLA.
There’s a paper copy of the fast begin information that can assist you construct the printer. The microSD card comes with pattern fashions, a PDF copy of the handbook, a duplicate of Cura 4.2.1 and profiles for PLA and TPU to get you began.
Regardless of the scale, the Kobra Max is sort of as simple to assemble as its little brother, the Anycubic Kobra. It ships largely assembled in two giant sections and solely wants a handful of screws and bolts to assemble. 4 bolts maintain the gantry in place, then a brace is hooked up from the highest of the machine to the again. A couple of extra screws connect the contact display, whereas the spool holder snaps onto the bottom.
Subsequent, clip off the zip ties that held the printer collectively for delivery and plug within the wiring. Every thing is clearly labeled. The ultimate step is to safe the Bowden tube to the print head cable with the supplied cable clips and zip tie the cable to the help rod if you want.
After the printer is assembled, it is best to test for unfastened or over tight components – make sure that all of the wheels are cosy however roll easily, the print carriage doesn’t have any wiggle and the belts are tight. The Kobra Max has eccentric nuts you possibly can tighten with the supplied wrench, plus easy-to-use belt stress knobs for the X and Y axis.
Please be aware, the Kobra Max has two Y axis belts. You’ll wish to make sure that every belt has about the identical quantity of stress for easy printing. It takes about half-hour to fastidiously assemble.
The Anycubic Kobra comes with an in home designed automated mattress leveling sensor. It bodily faucets the mattress at 25 factors round a grid.
There aren’t any knobs for handbook tramming, leaving every thing to the automated sensor. To stage the mattress, choose Put together → Leveling → Auto-leveling. A popup will ask you to the touch a software to the nozzle to calibrate the sensor. The machine will house itself, preheat after which double faucet 25 spots in a grid throughout the mattress floor.
For those who’re not proud of the Z top, you possibly can modify it on the fly whereas printing or from the leveling menu. The Kobra Max I examined was only a tiny bit shut, so I added a .15mm child step. What’s additional good is that the machine will keep in mind this setting routinely, and apply it to the subsequent print.
To load filament, press Put together on the primary menu. Choose Filament. Now choose Filament In or Filament Take away. The machine will now warmth as much as 230 C, taking about 60 seconds. Put your spool on the spool holder, and place the top of the filament into the runout sensor. Press Filament In and look ahead to the filament to be pulled to the extruder, or pinch the strain launch on the entrance of the extruder and push it via by hand. Press Cease when the filament is coiling under the hotend.
Eradicating the filament works the identical, simply in reverse. Let the hotend preheat, choose Filament Take away and let the gears again the filament out. Be at liberty to manually pull the filament out of the Bowden tube as quickly because it’s left the hotend.
The Anycubic Kobra Max appears like an enormous hybrid of the Anycubic Kobra and the older Anycubic Vyper. It has the Vyper’s angular print head cowl and the Kobra’s smaller stress knobs, which mixed with the sleek metallic body provides it a elegant look. It makes use of an open body design on the base to keep away from additional weight, which is nice as a result of it already weighs 35 kilos. The facility provide and processor tuck below the construct floor and the machine will be picked up in a single piece.
I ought to be aware that the spool holder snaps on to the facet, which makes the complete printer about 3 ft huge. I had bother becoming it via doorways, so it is best to construct it within the room the place you propose to make use of it.
The printer could also be a “mattress slinger” nevertheless it’s constructed for stability. It has twin Z rods synced up with a belt, two broadly spaced Y axis and braces that maintain the gantry regular.
It has silent stepper motors, however you’ll hear the followers. Nonetheless, Anycubic says the working noise is below 60dB, so it’s quiet in comparison with many machines.
The construct plate is a carborundum coated glass, held on with six clips. Most prints merely launch when the mattress cools down. The mattress can attain temperatures of 90 C.
The hotend is a Volcano type that may attain 260 C, scorching sufficient for many client grade supplies. Regardless of being a Bowden machine, I had wonderful outcomes with TPU.
The contact display is similar 4.3-inch show as on the Anycubic Kobra. The menu is simple to navigate for novices, with choices in logical areas. The house display has 4 choices: Print, Put together, Instruments and System.
- Print exhibits you a listing of recordsdata on the microSD card you possibly can select.
- Put together has menus for Leveling, Preheat and Filament loading.
- Instruments has Transfer Axis, Temperature, Pace and Motor. Motor is the place you disable the steppers should you want too.
- System enables you to decide the language (English or Chinese language), Voice (flip off the beeps) and About.
Making ready Information / Software program
The Anycubic Kobra Max comes with Cura 4.2.1 and a profile for PLA and TPU. These profiles don’t work with newer variations of Cura, so it’s value downloading model 4.2.1 simply to take a look at the profile settings.
Instructions are included within the handbook for making a customized printer to match the Kobra Max settings. The “PLA profile” has essential tweaks to decelerate the default Ultimaker acceleration and jerk settings, that are an excessive amount of for an enormous machine just like the Max. Acceleration is slowed to 1000 mms and Jerk is lowered to eight mms.
To load the profile, click on Preferences → Configure Cura → Profiles then choose Import from the tabs.
For those who’re wanting to make use of a more recent model of Cura you possibly can load a printer profile for a Creality Cr10, then modify the construct quantity to 402 x 402 x 452. This setup already has the acceleration and jerk slowed and is what I used throughout testing.
For those who’re trying to save time, print at .28mm layer top, and enhance your line width to .64mm. This is similar impact as swapping to a .6mm nozzle with out the work. It is going to enhance the quantity of filament used, however make a drastic affect on time with out hurting high quality. This Flexi Rex takes 50 hours printed at .28mm layer top at a default .4 line width. I saved 13 hours by growing the road width to .64mm.
Once I first heard concerning the Kobra Max, I assumed it might be just a bit greater than my Creality CR10s. I used to be mistaken – it’s lots greater. I snapped a photograph of the Kobra Max holding construct plates from the Ender sized Mingda Magician and the CR10s for comparability.
One other factor to contemplate: the Kobra Max gobbles filament if you reap the benefits of its huge construct measurement. Most of the additional giant prints I made consumed total spools.
After all, you don’t should print giant gadgets with the Kobra Max. It’s nonetheless a daily 3D printer. The primary print I made was Anycubic’s pre-sliced take a look at Owl, measuring 3.5 inches tall and utilizing about half of the pattern sprig of filament. It appeared first rate, with slightly stringing that may be snipped off. The coil of filament on the owl is the leftover pattern materials.
After all, I instantly needed to print one thing ridiculously enormous. This 600% Benchy was printed with a .28mm layer top and took 693 grams of Printerior Pink PLA and 42 hours to print. Sitting on high of it’s a normal-sized Benchy.
I additionally needed to see how the Kobra Max behaved once I lined the construct plate with tons (and much) of little issues. Right here’s 200 tiny Thingiverse turtles printed in draft mode in 24 hours. I needed to scrape just a few of them off the construct plate – smaller objects typically cling higher. The filament is Creality’s Inexperienced PLA (opens in new tab).
This 450% Flexi Rex by DrLex0 took over half a spool of Matterhackers Construct Collection Forest Inexperienced PLA and 24 hours to print at a .28mm layer top with a chonky .64mm line width. Subsequent to it’s the identical print (and materials) at 100%. Whenever you scale up a mannequin, keep in mind that you’re additionally scaling up the tolerances – the large Flexi Rex is tremendous unfastened, but additionally tremendous robust.
I printed my first ever Star Wars Clone Trooper helmet, from Galactic Armory. It took three days and just below an entire spool of Inland White Silk PLA with a layer top of .28mm.
I examined PETG with an impressive vase mode print. That is “Curvy Vase” from Monomethylhydrazine at Printables.com. Enlarged to 200%, I printed it in spiral mode however with an additional thick .64mm line width for power. It took 4 hours and 38 minutes, printed in Keene Village Edge Glow Pink PETG.
I truthfully wasn’t anticipating a lot from TPU, because the Kobra Max has loads of Bowden tube to push via, however this TPU Benchy turned out fairly darn good. I printed it tremendous sluggish, with a 20mms velocity for each the partitions and the infill, and a typical .20 layer top. The Matterhackers Construct Translucent Purple TPU is slightly lumpy, however has hardly any strings.
Backside Line
The Anycubic Kobra Max is a monster of a machine and nonetheless fairly priced at $569. It’s good for prop makers and cosplayers who might match complete helmets and armor items contained in the beneficiant 400x400x450 mm construct quantity. It is also helpful for makers who wish to load many small objects that may print on the identical time.
The Kobra Max solves loads of ache factors with its quick meeting, auto mattress leveling system and easy-release coated glass mattress. Although the printer is aimed toward skilled makers craving for higher construct house, there’s no motive a novice wouldn’t excel with this machine.
Consumers must be conscious that the Kobra Max is an even bigger 3D printer, not a sooner 3D printer. Massive prints will take extra time – days even – and speeding this printer might damage high quality.
For those who’re desirous about a primary printer, take a look at the Anycubic Kobra from the identical line. Priced at $319, it’s an Editor’s Alternative and our decide for Finest Printer for Inexperienced persons.