The Technology Man

Technology Reviews

  • Home
  • Product Reviews
  • How-to Guides
  • Tips & Tricks
  • YouTube
  • About Me

Anycubic Vyper review | Perfect beginner 3D printer? | Unboxing, setup, auto-levelling, test prints

29th September 2021 By Gidon 2 Comments

The Vyper is a new 3D printer from Anycubic that promises to be the perfect beginner printer. It requires very basic assembly and has true automatic bed levelling to ensure prints stick to the bed. This is often the biggest cause of frustration for beginners. And it comes with a few other features that make it easier to use, including a removable magnetic build plate – my favourite platform and a 4.3” touch screen. 

It has a large print volume and its twin screw system for the height axis should provide more accurate prints. And it promises to be quiet with its supposedly silent motors. 

I’ll find out how easy it is to set up and get your first print completed and I’ll put all their claims to the test, printing a range of models with a variety of filaments, to try and help you decide if this printer is right for you.

If you’re new to 3D printing I’d highly recommend reading my review of the Creality Ender 3 that also introduces 3D printing.

Let’s take a closer look.

Setup

Included in the box

The printer comes well packaged and requires only minimal assembly. They include a written assembly guide, but there’s a more detailed user manual on the included SD card and a useful video guide on their website that is probably the best overview of the setup.

It is by far the easiest printer I’ve put together so far – it should take 15 to 30 minutes before you’re ready for your first print depending on your experience.

Included tools

A drawer slides out from the base with all the tools you need to assemble the printer, including the smallest flush cutters I’ve come across. I’d still recommend using your own tools if you have them. You also get some two spare nozzles, sample filament, a plastic scraper, a USB cable and the full size SD card with a USB adapter. My printer didn’t come with the correct mains kettle lead for the UK, but luckily I had a spare one.

Basic assembly required

The frame aligns with two grooves in the base and is secured in place with the longer bolts. You must be careful not to pinch any of the cables.

Bolt the frame to the base

I found I could carefully lean the printer on either side to attach the bolts. Or you could hang it over the edge of a table or rest it on a pile of books.

And attach the screen

The 4.3” touch screen then attaches to the front right of the printer with the 3 shorter bolts.

Attaching print head

You then just need to attach the cables to the print head, extruder, Z axis left and right motors and limit switches and the screen.

Cables are all clearly labelled

All the cable connectors are labelled and keyed and already routed to where they need to go so it’s pretty straightforward. Finally you need to cut the shipping cable ties: under the printer bed, on the right and left Z axis, and the print head.

Feeding the PTFE tubing into the extruder

Then push the teflon tubing into the extruder and use the included cable ties to hold the teflon tubing and print head cable together and secure the print head cable to the print head. This is not ideal but I’ll come back to cable management shortly. 

Finally attach the filament holder which doesn’t quite snap onto the bottom rail, but is secure enough.

Checking belt tension

You’re almost ready to print but Anycubic recommends checking there’s no wobble in the heated bed and print head and both the X and Y belts are tight. My belts were correctly tensioned, but if yours aren’t then it’s straightforward to tighten the set screws with an allen key. This is a far simpler system than on many printers I’ve set up. Both the print head and bed have eccentric nuts that you can adjust for any play with the included spanner.

Tightening eccentric knob slightly if there’s any play in bed or print head

My bed had a small amount of play which I removed with a fraction of a turn of each nut.

Before you power on the printer, check the voltage switch is correct for your region. Mine was already set to 230V for the UK.

With a nice clean nozzle with no filament yet loaded you can level the bed. This is fully automatic and probes the heated bed with the nozzle itself which is attached to a strain gauge.

Strain gauge used for bed levelling

It’s recommended to check this strain gauge is working properly before you choose levelling in the printer menu. You don’t want the print head scratching the build plate.

Check strain gauge red LED lights up when you lightly press on nozzle. Can be hard to see in bright conditions

They suggest pressing the nozzle with a spanner to check the red LED comes on, which you can just see through the print head cover. You may need to dim the lights to see this.

Also check the teflon tube going into the print head is not restricted in any way. This can cause the strain gauge LED to come on without touching the nozzle and the levelling process will fail.

The nozzle does heat up when you start the bed levelling process, so if you have filament loaded I’d recommend cleaning the nozzle with a brass brush once it’s up to temperature – you want the tip of the nozzle itself to touch the bed. Even if the nozzle then dribbles a little bit of filament it should still be accurate since the melted filament is soft. You could always unload the filament before levelling to be sure.

Starting bed levelling

Then tap Prepare | Levelling | Auto-levelling. The printer then slowly probes the bed at 16 locations. It takes around 4 minutes, a lot longer than on my Prusa Mini+ and Prusa MK3S+.

Bed levelling probes bed in 16 positions

I’d recommend keeping a close eye on this to check it’s working as it should, but I’ve not had any issues so far. 

The advantage of using the nozzle itself to level the bed, is that you shouldn’t have to mess too much with the Z-offset, which fine tunes how close the nozzle is to the bed for decent adhesion of the filament to the bed, and a precise first layer. This could make this printer ideal for anyone new to 3D printing. The popular Prusa range of printers also have automatic bed levelling, but you must adjust the Z offset with a calibration print when you change filament, the build plate or the nozzle. And it can be a little tricky to get just right – at least initially.

Unlike Prusa printers, this bed levelling is not automatically completed before every print and Anycubic don’t consider it necessary to level before each print.

I’ll discuss the levelling further, and how it performs shortly.

Loading filament

To load filament, tap on Prepare | Filament | Filament In. You’ll be prompted to allow the printer to heat the nozzle up to temperature.

Feeding filament through runout sensor

While it’s heating up, cut the filament off at an angle and feed it in through the filament sensor and through the PTFE tubing until it touches the extruder gears. I like the transparent extruder which makes it easy to see what’s going on, and if there are any issues.

Dual gear extruder

The extruder has two gears which should make feeding flexible filaments more reliable.

Melted filament

Tap on Filament In again and push the filament into the rotating cogs of the extruder which will feed the filament through the teflon tube and out the hot nozzle.

Need to manually tap Stop

You have to tap on Stop otherwise you’ll waste a lot of filament. I’m not quite sure why the printer can’t just push a fixed amount of filament through and then stop, like on other printers. But it works pretty well once you know you have to tap stop.

Checking tension knob – should be around an 18mm gap

The manual recommends you tighten or loosen the knob on the side of the extruder to adjust the tension of the cogs if the filament is too thin or thick. But that’s hard to gauge without any experience. I’d just check the gap between the knob and extruder is 18mm as recommended. I’ve not had to adjust this knob in all my testing so far, printing a range of filaments.

Performance

Volcano-style hotend with 0.4mm nozzle

The Vyper is a Fused Deposition Modeling or FDM printer with a well sized 245mm x 245mm x 260mm build volume and a Volcano-style hotend fitted with a 0.4mm nozzle. The hotend can reach 260°C and the heated bed 110°C, both very respectable and more than enough for PLA, PETG, TPU and ABS, but not more exotic materials like most Nylons and Polycarbonates.

Requires a fair bit of room

The printer weighs around 10kg and you can see its overall footprint and the amount of space required in use with the travel of the bed and the attached spool holder. You’ll need a fair amount of desk space for it.

For my first print, I used the included sample of white PLA to print the owl model included on the SD card. Unfortunately the gcode file is not in the root folder of the SD card and the printer doesn’t support folders. So you’ll need to copy the owl.gcode file to the root of the SD card on your PC or Mac. 

Printing owl.gcode – first model

Then you can tap on the Print icon, tap on the file and tap Print. The bed and nozzle will heat up to the correct temperatures and the print should start.

Watch first layer go down …

It’s worth keeping an eye on the first layer going down. You shouldn’t need to make any adjustments, but you can adjust the Z offset after tapping the Settings icon, if the nozzle is too close or far from the bed. In this menu you can also adjust the nozzle and bed temperature, print and fan speed and you can toggle the print head LED on and off, all mid print.

And adjust z-offset if necessary. Other settings can also be adjusted here

The Z Offset and Speed settings will persist even after the current print. The manual states if you tap the Back icon rather than OK, the settings will only be applied during the current print, but that wasn’t the case in my testing.

First print came out ok

The owl print came out pretty well considering this is an out of the box print, with almost no user interaction and using the included PLA which isn’t the best quality. 

Setting up Cura for the Vyper

I used the remainder of the sample filament and some white 3DQF PLA to print an organiser for the built-in storage tray to replace the foam. I used Cura to slice the model with the supplied profile from Anycubic. You can download and install the latest version of Cura, and then follow the instructions in the Anycubic manual to add the Vyper, based on the older Anycubic Mega, and import the configuration files. It’s straightforward but hopefully soon this printer will be already included with Cura and other slicers.

Did have to raise the bed slightly for this print – first layer was a little too squashed

The first layer was a little too low so I did adjust the Z offset to 0.05. As the sample spool was running out, this gave me a chance to try out the filament runout sensor. The printer did pause printing and the nozzle lifted up but it didn’t move away from the print, and the only option was to resume the print. There’s no option to unload or load filament, and you can’t access any of the move controls, which is not ideal. 

Filament sensor does detect filament running out – but manual procedure to add new filament

Still I fed in the new filament and resumed the print. The transparent extruder helps here – you can butt the new filament against the filament that’s run out until it gets pulled through the extruder.

Finished drawer oragniser

The print completed, and apart from the slightly squashed first layer it looked ok.

I’ve included links for any of the prints I show or mention at the bottom of this article.

Testing Power Resume feature after a power cut

The printer also has a power resume feature which I tested next. So if there’s a power cut, the printer will prompt you to continue the print when the power comes back on. Printing a small calibration cube, I pulled the plug after a few layers. After restoring power, I was prompted to resume the print, and after warming the bed and nozzle up again, the printer returned to its home position and then resumed the print from where it left off. It might make more sense for the head to return to its home position before heating up, to avoid the blob of dribbled plastic, although that might pull the print off the bed. But the print did finish, with only a minor defect where the power had been lost.

While I was printing this test cube I also tested the filament sensor again, but this time unloaded the filament manually by pulling it out from the hotend after removing the teflon tube from the extruder and then manually pushing fresh filament through until some of it oozes through the hotend. You can remove any excess filament with some needle nose pliers or tweezers and continue the print. My first method of dealing with filament running out worked out a little better but this method would be useful if you wanted to manually change the colour of the filament mid-print.

Currently the printer does not support a colour change automatically

I did try a colour change print using PrusaSlicer but although the printer paused and started partially unloading the filament, after I had manually loaded a new colour I wasn’t able to resume the print. It looks like this is a bug which will hopefully be fixed in a future firmware release.

I tried various prints in PLA from 3DQF, Prusament, Fillamentum and eSun and I generally got good results. The biggest variation in quality was dependent on the slicer and profile I used which is one of the big selling points of a Prusa printer, with software they develop themselves and their well tuned profiles.

Setting up PrusaSlicer with the Vyper

The printer comes with CURA profiles on the SD card for PLA, ABS and TPU but no PETG. The PLA profile worked ok but I got better results using PrusaSlicer. As in Cura, I added the Anycubic Mega and then changed the bed size to that of the Vyper and renamed it. I did add a skirt to this profile – which is also useful for checking the Z height is correct. In fact it’s useful to add 2 or 3 skirts and space them further away from the model – especially with smaller models where the skirt would finish printing too quickly.

Adding a skirt to double check bed adhesion

This gives you a little time to check the Z offset is ok – if you’re careful you can pick at the skirt to check it’s well stuck to the bed.

I got slightly better results with Prusaslicer

You can see the difference between these two profiles with the classic Benchy. The results are very comparable to my Prusa Mini+, and more expensive Prusa MK3S+ for that matter.

Hard to tell in black, but vey good first layer with no tweaking

There’s a small amount of stringing but otherwise it’s a very clean print with few defects, and even the text on the bottom is quite readable which is a real test of the built in levelling.

Prints are accurate too

I also found prints off the Vyper were quite accurate, especially considering its larger size. A 20mm square calibration cube measured within 0.1mm for the X, Y and Z axis. I also printed Maker’s Muse’s clearance and tolerance test which is a very challenging print.

And tolerance pretty good for a fairly large printer (Maker’s Muse clearance and tolerance test)

The print looked very good in PLA and I could release the 0.5, 0.4 and 0.3mm arms fairly easily but more impressively I could complete the challenge and open the puzzle, releasing the 0.2 and 0.15mm arms with the help of a screwdriver, and without the arms breaking off as defined by the rules of the challenge! 

First layer with some Fillamentum PLA

This cable organiser came out nicely in Fillamentum PLA and you can see just how good the first layer is with the levelled bed.

Removable bed allows even stubborn prints to easily release

And also how easy it is to get prints off the textured spring steel magnetic PEI sheet. If you let the print cool down for a minute or so you can just peel it off if it’s not already released. For more stubborn prints or if you’re impatient, you can remove the sheet and give it a slight flex to pop the print off. Theoretically you could print on the smooth side, but Anycubic don’t recommend it and I didn’t really have any reason to use it since everything stuck so well to the textured side – even smaller PLA prints where a smooth PEI sheet is often recommended.

Printing on smooth side of PEI sheet (not recommended by Anycubic)

But for the purposes of this review I did try a few prints on the smooth side and it worked very well too. And sometimes you might prefer the smooth bottom surface of a model this side of the sheet gives you. Remember to run the bed levelling when you flip the sheet – since the nozzle height will be different. I’d only use this side with PLA, other materials may be harder to remove without using some glue stick to help with their release. I give either side of the build plate a clean with IPA alcohol before most prints. If you get any problems with prints sticking, you can give the build plate a scrub in the sink with washing up liquid.

Checking temperature variation of heated bed

I also checked the temperature variation of the heated bed at this point with a Flir thermal imaging camera. It was very even, within 1 or 2 degrees across the bed – which is what you want for larger prints. Although it didn’t seem to quite reach the set temperatures.

Printing PETG

Moving on to PETG, I used the PETG profile in PrusaSlicer and printed the support arm for a Dremel cut off saw in Prusament Galaxy black, which looked good apart from some light stringing, most likely from this filament needing a little time in the dryer.

Good results – I should have added supports around the larger hole

The area around the hole is my fault – I should have enabled supports.

But works fine!

But the cut off saw still works quite nicely, as long as what you’re cutting doesn’t get too hot!

Very flexible Ninjaflex prints ok – with custom profile in PrusaSlicer

I then tried flexible filament which is notoriously difficult to print with bowden extruders like on this printer, particularly the super flexible Ninjaflex which I tried first. The supplied Cura TPU profile was set to print way too quickly and just produced a mess. Since I’m happier tweaking settings in PrusaSlicer, I used that and created a profile based off a flexible filament on the Prusa Mini. The cable strap did print successfully, albeit with a fair bit of stringing.

Slightly less flexible Eryone TPU prints pretty well too

I got slightly cleaner results with some Eryone TPU which isn’t quite as flexible. But both prints were perfectly usable which is normally my goal with flex prints.

Disabling beeping

The 4.3” blue on a white background touch screen is pretty responsive and I’m glad that you can turn off the beeps under System | Voice. It’s a fairly basic interface which does make it easy to use but given the size of the screen, it would have been nice to see thumbnails of prints, like on the smaller Prusa Mini’s screen. And I also like to see layer height while printing which is missing. And there’s no print time remaining either. 

Connecting Octoprint for remote control of the printer

I was able to connect up Octoprint via the USB port and a Raspberry Pi, which enabled full remote control and monitoring of the printer and is handy for calibration via the terminal interface. I did adjust the e-steps via this interface, but I can’t say I noticed much difference in print quality – it was already pretty good.

Check bed level in Octoprint

I also used the Bed Visualizer plugin to see how flat the bed is on my printer. You can see there’s around 1 mm of variation – which is quite evident even checking with a straight edge.

My bed is not flat – over 1mm variation. But bed levelling seems to cope ok with this

It’s more than I’d like to see, but the printer’s bed levelling seems to cope with this amount of variation quite happily.

Printed marketed as silent – but fans still very noisy

The Vyper has a 32-bit mainboard with silent stepper drivers and the printer bed and print head movements are quiet. But unfortunately the noise from the hotend, cooling and mainboard fans are very noisy. Luckily although that makes it noisy and quite distracting if it’s beside you, you don’t tend to hear it in the next room like you can with some printers – even the Prusa MK3S+ with various noise dampening measures. And the fans only come on when you’re using the printer, unlike the Ender 3 which is noisy even when idle. You can hear how the printer sounds in the accompanying video.

Cable management not ideal out of the box. This printable clip from Thingiverse solves the issue

I didn’t find cable management very satisfactory out of the box. Even after following instructions from Anycubic, the print head cable drapes over the build plate and more worryingly the heatbed cable can snag on the y-axis motor which could cause real damage. I found a simple print on Thingiverse that attaches to the bolt that holds the filament sensor in place and does a fantastic job of solving this issue. But Anycubic really needs to address this problem.

The extruder gear became loose on my printer after around 20 hours of use. Fairly easily tightened with a 1.5mm hex bit

Another issue I had was with the extruder which began rattling after maybe 20 hours of use. The extruder gear had become loose. I removed the tensioning knob and used a 1.5mm hex bit to tighten the grub screw which fixed the issue. You could also use the supplied 1.5mm Allen key.

Conclusions

In my testing I’ve been quite impressed with the Anycubic Vyper. The easy assembly, automatic bed levelling and removable magnetic sheet should make it a good option for beginners. If you’re printing PLA, the custom profile for Cura works ok, but there was no included profile for PETG and their Flex profile printed way too quickly. Hopefully they’ll add a PETG profile and tweak the Flex profile for better results.

Even though I haven’t had any major issues in my testing, I do have concerns around reliability. There are quite a few reports on the forums about faulty strain gauges amongst other things. This may be a very small number and Anycubic do appear to be sending out replacements without any quibble. But I would pay extra attention to the bed levelling the first few times you run it. I did contact support and got a reply within a day which is ok considering the time differences, but 24 hour chat support would be much better, especially with a printer marketed at beginners.

Cable management is also an issue out of the box. I’d highly recommend making your first print the simple clip I showed earlier or something similar. 

And whilst the printer has very quiet stepper motors, I’m not sure Anycubic can really market “silent printing” as a feature. The multiple fans are very noisy. But at least the printer is silent while it’s idle.

The Prusa Mini+ is another option but is a little more expensive and has less print capacity

The price will probably come down, but right now it’s around £330 or $360. I’d consider the Vyper’s main competitors the Creality CR-6 SE which is around the same price, and the Prusa Mini+ which is a little more expensive. I’ve not tested the CR-6 SE, but it also has automatic bed levelling and a touchscreen, but comes with a slightly smaller build volume and a glass bed. The Prusa Mini+ has a much smaller print volume, and comes with a removable magnetic build plate and automatic bed levelling like the Vyper. But you do have to adjust the Z-height manually. The main advantage of the Prusa is their 24/7 helpful chat support and PrusaSlicer software with finely tuned profiles for a wide variety of filaments. Please let me know in the comments if you’d like to see a review of the Prusa Mini+.

If you don’t mind levelling the bed manually, the Ender 3 I reviewed a while back is less than half the price and the only upgrade I’ve made to it is a removable magnetic build plate. There isn’t a huge difference in print quality compared to the Vyper, but it is much noisier. There is also the more refined Ender 3 V2 which is only a little bit more expensive than the Ender 3, but quieter and comes with a colour screen like the Vyper, although without touch and it still doesn’t have automatic bed levelling.

I’m still not sure I’ve found the perfect 3D printer for beginners, but there is a lot to like about the Vyper. 

Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!


Anycubic Vyper 3D printer: https://amzn.to/3CT4kYP
Creality CR-6 SE: https://amzn.to/3zPtYvp
Creality Ender 3 V2: https://amzn.to/3iixKrf
Creality Ender 3: https://amzn.to/2ZGQISa

Models referenced in video:

Hotend cable clip: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4939641
Dremel cut off saw (for Flex Shaft: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3458147/files
Charger cable organiser: https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/51301-charger-cable-organizer-the-cable-winder
Vyper tray organiser: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4909034

Related

Filed Under: Product Reviews Tagged With: anycubic vyper 3d printer, anycubic vyper 3d printer review, anycubic vyper assembly, anycubic vyper auto leveling, anycubic vyper auto leveling problem, anycubic vyper auto-leveling strain gauge sensor, anycubic vyper cura settings, anycubic vyper octoprint, anycubic vyper review, anycubic vyper unboxing, anycubic vyper vs cr6 se, anycubic vyper vs ender 3, anycubic vyper vs ender 3 v2, anycubic vyper vs prusa, beginner 3d printer, best beginner 3d, best beginner 3d printer

You must log in to post a comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Follow me on social media

  • E-mail
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Local Amazon store
As an Amazon affiliate, I get a small fee from any purchases made using the above ad. You can also visit my Amazon store with all the recent tech I've reviewed in one place: UK, US.

About the site

Gidon’s obsession with technology began at an early age with a BBC B Micro computer. After working for 12 years at British Telecom travelling around the world as a technology researcher he opened a technology retail store in Tavistock in Devon, selling the latest tech and offering IT services to residential and business customers. Read More…

Popular articles

  • Mingda Magician X review | The perfect beginner 3D printer?
  • Jackery Explorer 500, Bluetti AC50S review | Best 500Wh power station? | SolarSaga 100, Bluetti SP120 solar panels
  • Bluetti AC200P review | 2000W portable power station, 2000Wh LiFePO4 battery | 700W solar charging
  • Can the new breed of office inkjet printers replace a laser printer? Canon MAXIFY MB2350 versus HP LaserJet Pro M451DN
  • iPhone 6 Plus versus Canon’s G7X. Is the iPhone’s camera all you need?
  • Anker Soundcore Liberty Air review | Best true wireless earbuds under $100 in 2019?
  • Asus VivoBook Pro N552VX Laptop Review
  • GoPro Hero 5 Black Review – the Goldilocks of the GoPro action camera range?
  • Amazfit Bip smart watch review. What do you get for £50 or $70? Quite a lot in fact …
  • LG TONE Free FN7 Noise Cancelling Earbuds Review | vs Apple AirPods Pro. Sound, ANC and call quality mic tests
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.