FLASHFORGEAdventurer 5M 3D Printer,600mm/s Max High-Speed FDM 3D Printers with Fully Auto Leveling, 280°C Direct Extruder with Quick Detachable Nozzle, Effective Cooling, Core XY Structure

Executive summary: This is a great printer and the seller (Tang) provides great support! I knew nothing about 3D printing when I bought it and found it very easy to set up and use. I was printing well under an hour after I opened the box. The seller included a sticker right on the front of the machine with his name and email, and he is extremely responsive. He answers questions clearly, promptly in excellent english. By the way, no one paid or even asked me to write this review. I was impressed with the support I received and decided to do it. I have been using this machine a lot for nearly two weeks now and I'm very happy with it.Details:I needed a 3D printer not as a hobby, but because I need to prototype enclosures for electronic devices. As such, I wanted something reliable, that would work right out of the box with minimal fussing. I also wanted to be able to print using ABS and be able to print supports with soluble material. Of course I didn't want to spend thousands. This printer is fully enclosed (helpful for ABS) and dual extruder for well under $1,000. It arrived very well packaged with an excellent getting started guide (I recommend you read it and follow the directions - the english is excellent, no decryption required). It's sturdy and solid. The machine needed some assembly, including one screw that was a bit tricky to get in, but if you follow the guide assembly is straightforward. All tools needed were supplied. I was super careful and had it assembled in about 40 minutes. One thing that's easy to miss is the correct way to feed the filament from the spools. I posted a pic, notice how the filament crosses and feeds into the tube furthest away from it. This is counter-intuitive and important.Before you can print, you have to manually level the bed. There are three knobs below the bed, and the machine came with a cardboard card that's used to level. You just stick the card between the left nozzle and the bed and adjust the knobs until there is a little friction when you slide the card. What's nice is the card has a diagram to tell you which way to turn the knobs to raise or lower. It's the little things like this that make a difference. Again, follow the instructions and it's easy.It also came with an SD card that has several test prints on it; two cylinders and a traffic cone. In the attached pic, each cylinder was printed with a different nozzle and the traffic cone was, of course, printed with both. It printed these nicely on the very first try, so the first 3D prints I ever made came out near perfectly. I say "near" because each of them has a very slight vertical line. I was initially concerned, but other prints do not have that, including the "benchy" boat test print. The benchy boat in the pics was printed on the highest quality settings, and it's noticeably smoother than the "standard" settings in the slicer program. The standard looks good as well, but the "hyper" profile looks great. The bottom half of the enclosure pictures was printed using the lowest quality profile, because I wanted it fast, not pretty, but it still looks great. That was printed directly on the bed that came with the printer, no tape, no hairspray or glue or anything like that that I have read people do (have I mentioned that I don't want to tinker with this?).Of course, these profiles are in the "FlashPrint" slicer program, which is supplied by FlashForge. The "slicer" converts your STL file to gcode that the printer then reads to make your print. FlashPrint is very easy to use and seemd to do a fine job. In "expert" mode there are about a bazillion settings, most of which I have no idea about and just don't change. There are, however, many slicer programs available, most free.All that said, the printer is not completely perfect. One of the concerns I had about this printer before I ordered it is that it's an older model, with an 8 bit control board. The printer does lack WiFi connectivity and a 32bit control board. Turns out, I don't have a problem with this. My laptop makes all the gcode, which I just put onto an SD card. I insert the SD card into the machine and use the display and buttons to tell it to print my file. One very minor annoyance is that the machine will initially say "can't read SD card" or something like that, but each time it works fine on the second try. Also, this machine has a great support community on Facebook, very helpful people there. Also, I don't have other machines to compare to but it does make a bit of fan noise, and also when printing sounds a bit like R2D2. I can't hear it in the next room, so not a problem for me. The last inconvenience I noticed is that the print bed is not removable, so you have to remove your print from the bed while it's still in the machine. Except for the fan noise, these can all be fixed with addons and such, but again, this is not my hobby.Also, the printer will work with lower temp filaments like PLA and ABS and such, but the nozzles can't get hot enough to print Nylon and other more interesting materials. It can however, be upgraded with an "all metal hot end" so that it can do that. The heater in the extruder can get hot enough, but there are some plastic tubes in there that can not. For hotter filaments you need to replace these parts, and for abrasive filaments like carbon fiber and wood you need a hardened nozzle. These are available for this machine, and not very expensive, so I'll probably make that change. This is not my hobby, but I do want to make my enclosures from carbon fiber reinforced nylon.Finally, and perhaps most important for someone who is not interested in endless tinkering, is the excellent support from this seller. The machine arrived with a sticker affixed, that listed the name of the seller (Tang) and his email address and a note that says to contact him with any issues or questions. I had a small issue where a larger enclosure printed a bit lopsided. I emailed Tang and within an hour he replied with what he thought was the issue, and two videos demonstrating how to correct it. He then quickly replied to follow up questions. Overall he made it a super easy fix and I'm glad I don't have to return the machine.So I'm pretty happy with this printer. It's been easy and fun to use, and I can even deduct it from my taxes!

I have been looking at 3d printers for a while but have always talked myself out of taking the leap and spending the money. But, I've been working with my daughter on our "Halloween project" which is us playing around with lights and sounds and making our own Halloween decorations. Part of this project involves making enclosures for things. With that in mind, I cleared it with the financial department that I could go out and spend a $1000 on a new toy (after a month of spending on electronics equipment) There are a ton of options out there for printers, so what made me pick this printer?I looked at a few factors;- Out of the box / assembly required- Cost- Reviews involving customer support- Bed sizeI had recently seen a lower cost printer that required a lot of assembly. I assisted with the build and let me tell you, it was satisfying. But, it took 6 hours and at the end there were a few problems that had to be ironed out. I never saw a print. If I had the patience and the will power to want to understand every single detail right off, this would have been a route I considered (still might be when I get better at this whole thing). But, the fact that the Flashforge comes pretty much assembled helped me a lot. You do have to assemble the "roof" (the hardest part is peeling the paper off the plastic sheets), attach the extruder assembly and put the door on, that's it. 40 minutes if you're taking your time and being thorough.Cost. I managed to snag this printer when it was on sale for $959 last week. What a bargain! But, having used the printer. The $1200 it's normally at would be well worth the cost.I always start with looking at the negative reviews first, and when buying something that I know I might require support on I read all those reviews very carefully (paying attention to the dates of the review, customer service can improve as easily as it can degrade). The reviews were generally complementary. The printer comes with a badge attached to it with the name an email of the person you contact, Tang.The bed size is not the biggest in class, there are bigger. But at 9"x6"x6" (roughly) the bed size is pretty decent for most of the prints I'm going to want to do. There are printers that cost a lot more and have a smaller bed, there are printers that cost a little less but have a tiny bed in comparison so I wanted to give myself enough space.On the support front, I did need to contact Tang as I didn't have a few of the parts. He was very polite and responded extremely quickly (over the weekend). We went back and forth to be sure I was following the correct guides and looking in the correct places, I can totally understand not wanting to ship me new parts if I've been an idiot and misplaced them or thrown them out. I was missing the screws that hold the extruder down (there were extras of a slightly larger size that I used and are holding just fine for now, prints are working)I've had the printer for 3 days now, and I just love sitting watching the thing make things. I have designed a few of my cases for the project so far and printed a few designs off for my wife (had to prove the printer was worth the money) and my daughter. I can honestly say I do not regret this purchase in any single way. The printer is built extremely well, everything fits fine and everything is printing just great. Now I just have to get a little more imaginative. After looking at other printers like the Printrbot, Makerbot and the whole raft of DIY printers, no other option would give me a heated bed with a reasonable build platform and dual extruders for the money. Going down the line, I know there will be maintenance costs, I know I'll have to replace parts or I'll screw something up and spend time learning how to fix it. But, quite simply, the out of the box experience for me could not have been better.Things I would recommend to new owners;- Buy the 3d print removal tool, it's basically a thin piece of metal but will make your life much easier for $5!- Makerbot's software works just fine, sometimes I have to restart the service on my mac for it to recognize the FlashForge but it works and is the quickest and simplest to print from so far although Simplify3d is definitely worth the money. Nothing in the Makerbot tool asks me about what type of plastic I'm using, so be careful as the default temperatures would be kind of high for PLA- If you buy Hatchbox spools, they will not fit on the spool holder on the back of this printer. There is however a great design on thingiverse that you can have printed in 3 hours that gives you a spool holder that will hold them so you don't have to worry about that.- Register on 3d forums and read up on some of the tips and tricks people have.In summary, this is without a doubt the best gadgety thing I have ever owned, it's sturdy and I love how easy it is to get things printing. Now my imagination is running on what I can print next and my credit card loves me because I'm treating filament like it's a collectable!