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Neptune 4 Plus Review
I bought a printer, and have absolutely zero regrets. This thing is seriously well engineered, and has taken most of what I've thrown at it like an absolute champ. Rubberised filaments are absolutely fine due to the gear in the print head. It's an impressive size frankly, great value for money. With the stock 0.4mm nozzle included, you can easily get some amazing quality prints, tolerances of (in my experience) down to 0.15mm fresh off the bed (accounting for properly designed relief corners to accommodate for corner bulging). Here are my only issues I've encountered, and they're mostly to do with design: 1) Build quality. The plastic shroud on the nozzle assembly wasn't accurate, had to be torqued to make the screw-holes line up with the metal assembly. I was a tad worried of snapping it. I actually over-tensioned the X axis belt and managed to pop it out of it's crimped brass cuff. Took a good 20 minutes or so to un-bend the cuff, stuff the rubber back in, re-crimp it and reinstall the belt, but it's totally possible to do faster with proper equipment. I found that where the threads had been cut out for the bracing rod screw-points, at some point they'd been painted over. This made assembly of those rather more difficult than it aught to be. The metal extrusion parts though, totally fine. 2) In calibration, noted a large dip in the front-middle of the build plate where there's obviously no support, that I couldn't correct for using the thumb screws. Mind you, the difference is in tenths of millimeters so it's basically not a problem, but it is strange. Frankly if you're measuring stuff in microns or going under 0.2mm for anything using a 3D printer the size of a small fridge, you're bought the wrong printer my friend. 3) It was a pain to assemble mind you, especially trying to assemble the gantry with less than three hands and no table, but frankly, skill issue. The issue is keeping it all balanced while building it. It's a bit finicky, and some of these parts weigh an absolute tonne. 4) Cable Clamp Confusion; the video isn't very clear, and installing this wrong will almost certainly cause damage to either the cable or the worm shaft over time. This is probably my biggest concern, and is reflected in the presence of aftermarket cable clamps designed by users to avoid this issue. I'd suggest a simple tunnel design, no cable folding, with an extra fixture point to prevent any slippage or confusion of this in future. 5) Documentation issue; the booklet calls to use the included 'gold build-plate'. I was a tad confused by this, there didn't seem to be one included, so I took to the support team to ask about this. The support team are absolutely amazing for this, and got back to me to explain that they'd simply changed the design and use an improved black plate. It also states to use the booklet sheet itself as a guide for calibration (the paper test). I found this to be unreliable, so ended up doing it by eye with a flash-light instead. Overall, for a keen beginner with plenty of time to research things in advance, this is a miraculous machine, and a brilliant place to buy it from. Support team are brilliant. If you're ordering this as a gift for somebody, perhaps consider constructing it yourself.