Individuals who say 3D printers can’t be “plug and play” have by no means met the Creality Sermoon V1 Professional. This printer slides out of the field able to go. Actually, you unpack it and plug it in. It’s even manufacturing facility leveled.
The Sermoon is a small printer with a 175 x 175 x 165 mm construct quantity, however in contrast to the tremendous compact Ender 2 Professional, that is absolutely enclosed and sports activities a light-weight direct drive. It’s additionally a Core XY printer, that means the mattress strikes up and down, whereas the X and Y motion are belt pushed on the prime of the machine.
Retailing at $539 on Creality’s web site, this isn’t a price range printer, however it’s our choose for Greatest 3D Printer for Youngsters. It is an awesome machine for STEM labs, school rooms and houses the place younger makers may use it. It’s loaded with options nicely suited to use round curious youngsters, akin to simple filament loading, clear menus, and a pause perform that prompts when the door opens.
I had the Sermoon V1 Professional out of the field and printing in quarter-hour.
Specs: Sermoon V1 Professional
Machine Footprint | 400 x 380 x 430 mm (15.7 x 14.9 x 16.9 inches) |
Construct Quantity | 175 x 175 x 165 mm (6.8 x 6.8 x 6.5 inches) |
Materials | PLA/PETG/TPU |
Extruder Kind | Direct Drive |
Nozzle | .4mm (Interchangeable) |
Construct Platform | PC Coated Metal Flex Sheet, heated |
Filament Runout Sensor | Sure |
Mattress Leveling | Auto |
Connectivity | SD card, WiFi |
Interface | Shade Contact Display screen |
Sermoon V1 Professional: Included within the field
The Sermoon V1 Professional comes with all the things you want to get your printer arrange. You get instruments to keep up the printer, aspect cutters, a nozzle cleaner, a spare nozzle, a glue stick and leveling card. There’s additionally a full sized SD card with a USB adapter and a small spool of white PLA to print your first mannequin.
The SD card has a brief unboxing and operation video. You additionally get a duplicate of Creality Slicer, six pattern fashions, the guide and three quick movies on assembling the printer, utilizing the auto stage and the way to do a guide stage.
Design of the Sermoon V1 Professional
The Sermoon V1 Professional is a small, absolutely enclosed printer that appears a bit like a microwave. It is wrapped in white plastic with clear home windows on the highest and aspect. A transparent door on the entrance has a magnet closure and sensor, permitting the printer to know when the door is open and cease printing if it’s set to do this.
The enclosure has a case fan, lights and a digital camera you may entry with a cellphone app. The highest of the case is detachable so you may entry the extruder for altering filament, upkeep or simply to maintain it cool throughout printing.
This can be a Core XY printer, with a mattress that strikes up and down. The X and Y axis stay on the prime, sliding on rods pushed by belts and a single stepper motor. This limits movement on the mattress and retains the print extra secure for tremendous easy prints.
It’s outfitted with a light-weight weight, twin gear Creality Sprite direct drive. There’s nonetheless a Bowden tube, because the filament must journey from a spool mounted on the skin of the field, throughout the X and Y axis rods and into the extruder. Not like different Bowden tube printers, this one is pulling the filament, fairly than pushing it. It additionally doesn’t attain the heated a part of the direct drive, so there’s no want to fret about it sporting out.
The hotend reaches 250 levels, permitting it to comfortably print PLA, TPU and PETG. The mattress solely reaches 80 levels, too low for ABS. And although it’s in an enclosure, it’s not precisely the sort of vented enclosure you’d actually wish to clear away ABS fumes.
The cooling fan seems fairly small, which might be why Creality recommends printing at decrease speeds. I’ve printed stunning issues with this machine at 65mms, the traditional velocity I’d run on an Ender 3 S1 Professional, which additionally has the direct drive Sprite.
The construct plate is a coated versatile metal sheet with a magnet sticker. The PC coating is just not my favourite, and even Crealtiy is aware of it’s dangerous, as they’ve included a glue stick with make it work.
The contact display screen is constructed into the wall of the printer and is custom-made to the Sermoon V1 Professional. It’s quite simple, with out many choices. Whereas that is excellent for somebody utilizing the printer in a STEM lab, it may be irritating for seasoned professionals searching for superior choices.
The has WiFi functionality of a kind although the Creality Cloud App. I downloaded the Creality Cloud app to test it out. This app is cluttered, and it seems like Creality is attempting to create a Fb plus Thingiverse hybrid. Whereas I had it on my cellphone, Creality stored inviting me to enter contests and submit my makes.
It additionally doesn’t ship information on to your printer, however as a substitute uploads them to their cloud server and beams it again all the way down to your printer. Information will be sliced in your cellphone within the app, or on Cura with the assistance of a plugin and web entry. Although I’m disillusioned I couldn’t entry the digital camera, I don’t suppose I want one other file sharing service. Putting the information on an SD card and strolling them to the printer is secure, safe – and it really works.
Assembling the Creality Sermoon V1 Professional
Sermoon V1 Professional is absolutely assembled out of the field. You will want to take away some packing materials, clip just a few cable ties, and take away protecting stickers from the clear plastic elements. The spool holder is on a hinge on the precise aspect and simply must be opened.
When you’ve checked that voltage is switched to the proper setting (115 for US households) you’re carried out.
The machine is factory-leveled, one thing I didn’t imagine till I noticed it myself. Now I’d wish to know why extra 3D printers don’t arrive like this.
Leveling the Creality Sermoon V1 Professional
Leveling the Sermoon is one thing of a thriller – it arrives stage from the manufacturing facility. The heated mattress is mounted to a tray connected to the Z axis with thumb screws beneath. They appear to be fairly tight, so I don’t understand how a lot printing you’d have to do to vibrate the machine out of stage.
There’s a leveling routine within the setup menu, in case the machine ever wants recalibration. Truthfully, you higher hope that it by no means does – there’s no probe for auto leveling and this is among the weirdest semi-manual leveling routines I’ve seen.
On the principle menu, press Print Setup → Auto leveling. The machine will confirm that you simply wish to stage it and it’ll delete the earlier settings. Subsequent, it can house, deliver the mattress to the highest of the machine. Slide the leveling card (the short setup sheet) onto the mattress.
The Sermoon will place the mattress just a few millimeters from the nozzle. Faucet the up and down arrows till the paper is evenly gripped between the mattress and the nozzle. Click on Save. It can now transfer to every nook and allow you to set the peak.
Right here’s the kicker: it solely goes across the mattress as soon as, and when you don’t suppose you set it correctly, you need to begin over from scratch. After I manually stage a print mattress, I am going round 3 or 4 occasions, not simply because the mattress wants a lot consideration however as a result of I’m ensuring every nozzle is good.
Loading Filament on the Creality Sermoon V1 Professional
The Sermoon needs to make issues simple for you, so filament loading & unloading is just dealt with by means of one menu setting.
You dangle filament on a folding spool rack connected to the aspect of the printer. There’s a small gap close to the highest to feed the filament, which needs to be pushed by means of a size of Bowden tube.
To load filament, faucet Print Mode on the principle menu, then Feed/Retreat. Click on the icon for “feed” for loading, or “retreat” for unloading. The printer will heat up and show an illustration to indicate the place the filament must go. Press the discharge lever on prime of the direct drive and pull out or put in filament.
Press the OK button and the Sermoon will pull the filament by means of. Keep close by, since you’ll want to inform it to cease loading, too.
One necessary truth about altering filament: you want entry to the highest of the machine to get to the extruder. If the machine goes to be operated by shorter individuals, confirm that they’ll attain the extruder. As a brief grownup, I had a tough time seeing inside the highest of the machine when it was positioned on a tall shelf.
The highest lid will be troublesome to take away and requires two palms. This works as a gentle deterrent when you’re attempting to maintain youngsters OUT of the machine, however might trigger havoc if a baby is decided to entry the highest panel with out permission.
Getting ready Information / Software program for Creality Sermoon V1 Professional
The Sermoon V1 Professional comes with a duplicate of Creality Slicer 4.8, which has a pre-loaded profile for this printer. Creality Slicer is only a rebranded copy of Cura, which is on the market without cost obtain. It’s also possible to use PrusaSlicer, which is one other well-liked and straightforward to make use of free slicer. Nevertheless, neither Cura nor PrusaSlicer have built-in profiles, so you’ll need to set one up your self. The best means to do that can be to choose an Ender 3 Professional and scale back the construct quantity to 175 x 175 x 165 mm.
Creality set its native slicer profile to a snail-like wall velocity of 20mms. This provides a bit additional print time, however is it wanted? Because it seems, not a lot. Right here’s two Benchy’s, each printed with a .2mm layer top. The Printerior Purple Benchy is utilizing Creality Slicer’s default 50mms profile with the 20mms wall velocity, and the Matterhackers Construct Collection Crimson (opens in new tab) is utilizing Cura 5.0 and a modified Ender profile with a brisk 75mms velocity and 37mms wall velocity. You’ll be able to see that the pink boat is a bit tough across the doorways and home windows, however simply as easy on the layer strains and hull. The purple boat took 2 hours and 4 minutes to print, whereas the pink took 1 hour and 32 minutes.
The Sermoon has WiFi capabilities, which suggests it may well use Creality new cell app and slicer, Creality Cloud. The cell slicer isn’t that good, a minimum of not when paired up with the Sermoon. This app-sliced Benchy seems fairly horrible with underneath extrusion gaps, stringing, a visual hull line plus a smoke stack that fell proper off.
Fortuitously, you may slice and ship information with Cura 4.13 with the assistance of a plugin known as Creality Cloud Integration. You’ll have to check in to your Creality Cloud account, then add sliced information to the Creality servers. As soon as that’s carried out, you may ship the file to your 3D printer utilizing the cellphone app. It’s a little bit of a trouble, and can be extra user-friendly if information might transfer by means of your native community from PC to printer.
As soon as information are loaded into the printer, by means of both the app or an SD card, you should use your cellphone to look at the Sermoon’s built-in digital camera.
I can’t say I’m an enormous fan of the Creality Cloud app, which is attempting to be an all-in-one social community, print library, slicer and print monitor. The app is cluttered with sport like missions to earn free “Cuvacoins”. These cash will be redeemed for fashions, Amazon reward playing cards, Creality printers and equipment. Sadly, the reward system has inspired customers to abuse the system by importing stolen fashions.
Printing on the Creality Sermoon V1 Professional
Creality provides you six pattern prints, each sliced and unsliced, on the SD Card. I ran this presliced Spaceman mannequin for the Sermoon’s first print. I’ve points with this as a take a look at print – it’s sliced at a .16mm layer top, taking nicely over 18 hours. Although it seems spectacular, the helps had been welded onto the print.
The Sermoon tackled a Maker’s Muse Calibration Citadel with ease, and all of the print in place elements labored as they need to. Printed at .16 layer top in Printerior Purple PLA, this took about 7 hours and 17 minutes.
The mannequin proven beneath is a Wekster Alpaca, obtainable without cost on Printables.com. This can be a stellar, tremendous easy print with no seen layer strains. It’s printed in Protopasta Gold Mud Translucent HTPLA, with a .16mm layer top at 65mms. It took 8 hours and 56 minutes to print.
I printed tons of Maker Cash for my journey to the Midwest RepRap Competition. That is one thing I designed in Tinkercad with numerous layers and textual content. It turned out very easy regardless that it was printed flat. The silver Arch was printed individually. Every coin took 57 minutes to print at .2mm and 65mms.
PETG was a bit stringy, however nonetheless good. I ran this can strainer, a sensible print from LEMicher. It was printed in Matterhackers Clear Blue at a .2mm layer top at 50mms and took 1 hour and 43 minutes.
TPU ran high-quality with the Sermoon’s Sprite direct drive. There are some tiny wisps, however these are much less noticeable in particular person. The print I selected – one other sensible one – was zzzy’s TPU Pockets printed in Matterhackers Construct Collection Translucent Purple TPU. (opens in new tab) It ran in 1 hours and 32 minutes with a .2mm layer top and 40 mms velocity.
Backside Line
The Sermoon V1 Professional is nearly pretty much as good because it will get, particularly when you’ve got a younger maker studying the way to run a 3D printer. It’s not just for kids – it’s nice for anybody who needs a nicely working, fuss free printer that takes up little area.
3D printers aimed toward youngsters are sometimes no higher than toys – so anxious about security that they lose performance. This can be a actual printer, with a wonderful direct drive and a heated mattress. The door sensor can pause the printer when it’s open to maintain little fingers out of the shifting elements, which is a good bonus when working round youngsters. The magnetic mattress permits you to pull items out of the machine for removing with out being close to a sizzling nozzle.
Retailing at $539, the Sermoon V1 Professional is just not the most cost effective printer on the block. Nevertheless it’s a top quality machine that requires no mechanical abilities to arrange. If you happen to’re searching for a small, transportable printer at a lesser worth level, try the $169 Ender 2 Professional, our choose for Greatest Compact Printer. In order for you an awesome newbie’s printer with extra construct area for much less cash, try the Anycubic Kobra. Priced at $319, it’s an Editor’s Alternative and our choose for Greatest Printer for Learners.