About this deal
I like to use the temperature tower from the Calibration Shapes plugin in Cura. But there are also very good objects on portals like Thingiverse. Print bed: The textured glass print bed provides very good print bed adhesion for most standard filaments. I mainly printed with PLA and only had difficulties with the print bed adhesion for very filigree first layers. However, this could be corrected with some Magigoo. The only point of assembly that could be perfected would be an immobile print bed that can only be leveled automatically without turning screws. Other 3D printers already have such leveling and eliminate manual leveling completely. Quiet Stepper Motor Drivers Print bed: Unfortunately, the print bed has not changed. The temperature distribution problems still exist with the X2. The AC heater is very effective and fast, but it has holes in the four places where the rotary screws are located under the print bed. Slicer: The Sidewinder X2 is compatible with many slicers. These include Cura, Ideamaker, Simplify3D and Slic3r. Like all of my other FDM 3D printers, I have used the slicer with Cura. There is a very good profile in Cura for its predecessor, the Sidewinder X1. This profile worked flawlessly for me without much calibration effort. Slicer
Eliminating an aluminum plate between the heating element and the build surface minimizes the weight of the build platform. This is important for such large printer and contributes to better print quality (less mass/inertia). You can improve the print bed adhesion by adjusting the layer height, the line width, the printing temperature, the print speed and/or the flow rate. The first optimization should always be the print speed, as this has the least negative impact on print quality.
Filament and Spool parameters
Especially with the glass print bed of the Sidewinder X2, reducing the print speed to 5-10 mm/s is a good idea. Especially PLA benefits from this. Unfortunately, I think that Artillery is now riding the success wave of their previous machines, and they will surely disappoint some of their fans with the Sidewinder X2. The tempered glass print platform ensures excellent adhesion and smooth printing. Thanks to its excellent thermal conductivity, the AC heated bed can be heated to 110 ° C in just 2 minutes; the maximum heating bed temperature is 130 ° C.
With Bowden extruders, which are normally positioned on the X-axis, the filament sensor is usually located directly in front of the extruder. With a direct drive extruder, this would unnecessarily increase the weight of the printhead. The print head of a direct drive extruder must be as light as possible to avoid vibrations and to enable a higher print speed. Artillery managed to get a reputation in the 3D printing space because they offered a much different machine compared to their competitors. It’s one of the first companies who used larger aluminum extrusions for the printer to make it more stable. It’s also one of the first to use ribbon cables to connect the electronics in a neat way to keep the machine looking great. And finally, it’s probably the only company who uses AC heated beds on their 3D printers. But there are also many users who prefer a fast assembly. If you are one of them, you are definitely right with the Sidewinder X2. The assembly of the Artillery Sidewinder X2 takes less than 10 minutes! This is one of the easiest and fastest assemblies I have seen on a 3D printer. Adding Octoprint server. The SWX2 control compartment has plenty of space to add a Raspberry Pi. I added already octoprint on an old android phone with the Octo4a app (see the video above). If your object is only decorative, you can either print it completely hollow or with a low infill density to save filament. On the other hand, if you want to print objects that will be used a lot (such as toys), densities in the range of 15 to 50% are recommended. If you are printing objects that need to be very stable, you should use even higher densities or print them completely solid (100% infill density).
PRESS REVIEW
The Sidewinder X2 can also print with ABS. However, ABS is more demanding than PLA. In addition to the higher temperatures for the extruder and print bed, it also requires a warm and homogeneous ambient temperature. Since the X2 has an open print volume, it is best suited for small ABS parts only. If you want to print larger ABS parts, you should get a suitable enclosure. This one from Creality comes in two sizes, the larger of which should also fit the X2. While in my review I complain quite a lot about the differences between the Sidewinder X2 and the X1, I still think that the printer is great. It’s a partially upgraded Sidewinder X1 that offers great print quality out of the box for a fair price. The print bed is very large, which allows you to print large objects in one piece. The big disadvantage of the print bed, however, is that the temperature is not homogeneously distributed. The very effective AC heater unfortunately has many large holes in the places where the rotary screws are placed under the bed. At these places, the temperature on the surface is much lower than on the rest of the print bed. This greatly reduces the print bed adhesion at these points. The Sidewinder X2 has a preassembled double Z-axis with two dedicated stepper motors. They are also connected to each other at the top of the frame with a synchronizing toothed belt. This guarantees synchronous movement. The Sidewinder X1 direct drive extruder was pretty good, but it had some design issues which made it less efficient, and more prone to failures. Specifically, the plastic idler which broke all the time, and the separate heatsink which was not that effective in keeping the heat break cool.
Make sure, however, that you only remove the printed TPU object from the printing plate when it has cooled down. Otherwise, the surfaces of the print bed or the model itself may be damaged, as the print bed adhesion is still too great. So if you want to print large objects that touch these four places, you should keep this in mind. Especially then it is recommended to work with tools like a raft or adhesives like Magigoo. This problem also existed with its predecessor, the Sidewinder X1. Therefore, the most popular upgrade of the X1 3D printer was to replace the print bed with an aluminum print bed. This gave a homogeneous temperature distribution on the print bed. Double Z-Axis The 32-bit motherboard includes slots for the stepper motor drivers, making them easy to replace in the future. There is also more room for upgrades and customization of the software. The new motherboard would theoretically allow you to go wild with customizations to the Marlin software.
Customer reviews
Print bed leveling happens automatically on the Artillery Sidewinder X2. A mechanical proximity sensor is installed in its print head for this purpose. It works similarly to the popular BL Touch and CR Touch. For such a smooth and relatively large bottom layer, a brim would not have been necessary at all for the print bed. Otherwise, the print quality is very good and no printing errors occurred. To find the right printing temperature for the material used, a so-called temperature tower is useful. With such an object you can print a recurring geometry with different temperatures to test the right temperature. To such a tower always belongs the appropriate script that changes the print temperature from a certain height. The individual floors of the tower are designed to promote various printing errors. Especially under-, over-extrusion and stringing are tested. Flow Rate Calibration on the Sidewinder X2
The double Z-axis stabilizes the movements of the X-axis and thus of the printhead and helps with positioning accuracy in the Z-direction. This not only improves print quality, but also reduces printing errors caused by vibrations or an imperfectly horizontal X-axis. One of the main selling points of the Artillery Sidewinder X2 is its AC heatbed. Like every such heater, it warms up very fast. I could reach 80 C in less than two minutes! The innovation for me though is elsewhere: Artillery applied the heater directly on tempered glass. The glass is coated on top and it is also the build surface. This concept has 2 main advantages: A 3D printer profile in Cura is a set of specific settings tailored to a particular 3D printer and filament type. They control things like print speed, layer height, and fan speed. A good profile will result in high-quality prints with minimal errors.Basically, you will be able to print higher temperature filaments, experience less clogs, shorten the retraction value and print a bit faster. Artillery developed a 32-bit mainboard, which is characterised by its high stability, powerful computing power and great expandability. I tried out this feature, of course. To test the resume print feature, I spontaneously unplugged the power cord during printing. After I restored the power after a few minutes, the Sidewinder X2 started 3D printing in the same place.