I SO wish I had seen this video a month ago! Coming from Ender 3, this huge machine is completely different world. I experienced the blob of death very early on. Fortunately, the entire head assembly is surprisingly inexpensive. Still, I was having horrible issues trying to calibrate. With the new head, apparently as the original, the nozzle was loose and it took me forever to look at this thing I just "assumed" was good. "Professional mode levelling" .......I SHOULD have just chose this option off the bat! So much great information in such a relatively short video. Thank you for taking the time to supply this information!
I've switched one of my machines to micro swiss hot end. Broke one while trying to change to nozzle. Don't see difference in print quality but the quality of the hotend is much better. D
Your guide for leveling the bed helped alot, another tip is to let the bed heat up for 20-30mins before leveling and printing. I've notice how much the plate level points changes when cold vs fully heated.
I can confirm that the bed warps slightly when warm, After seeing another video on youtube I bought a dial clock (mechanical measuring tool) and used it on my Neptune 4 Max to measure it myself. (A dial clock doesn't need to be expensive: only $10 for 0.01 mm resolution)
Thank you for this. I have had mine Max for almost a year (my second printer) and have had issues printing outside of the middle section of the build plate. I finally today updated the firmware again and spent a good 1-2 hours leveling the bed, and washing the plate and finally printed out a full size test print to near perfection. Thank you.
Great to hear! I'm running two of them right now doing some cosplay client work and each has probably been through 100 kg of filamet since I got them. When they're dialed in they're beasts.
You are a blessing. I had been having may issues with my 4 max and ended up realizing it had broken x & y sensors. Got the replacement machine now and will setup to your specs. Thank you very much for sharing the information
Before anything heat that bed up to operating temperature and let it soak for 30 minutes once up to temp. All beds flex when heated but it is amplified as the bed gets bigger. Save the headache of running a bed level procedure a hundred times by letting it stabilize with a heat soak. Do this before every print, I also run an auto bed level before every print, these beds are that finicky.
This is the 2nd mention of waiting 30mins with a heated bed in 10 mins on researching. I just watched a video where the changes on the bed is pretty big. I’m like 1 week old in 3d printing and this is my 1st printer as a present from my wife. I’m wondering a couple of things here… 1: should I head up the bed and wait 30mins and then do the levelling z offset etc as suggested in this video at that point? 2: should we run a bed level check before every print once the bed is heated for 30mins? 3: if the answer to 2 is yes, how do I do this?
LEVELING: Heating the bed for a good 20-25 minutes before leveling helps a LOT. I don't remember if this was your suggestion or someone else, but they checked the distortion of these huge Neptune 4 Max beds from cold to hot, and found it takes a while for these to heat completely and the deformations to stop. Since you will be printing on a hot bed anyway, best to level them when they are completely heated.... and it takes a long time on these.
@@sunbertyv3947 it’s magnificent but finicky; like any machine. Bed level sees most important. I use auto level to see where it is off, improve it with the height wheels and then check the results with auto level. It takes a few passes to dial it it in (sometimes an hour or more). But once dialed in, it’s magnificent until I make a change (different filament, different nozzle).
I significantly improved the quality of my prints by changing out my hot end for a Flowtech, and upgrading the PEI sheet from wam bam. After all the "fixes" I went through to fix my poor bed adhesion, , I think that the Bed and hot end contributed greatly at least in my case. I am finally up and printing again. Your tips were also invaluable in dialing in the printer settings.
Honestly these steps aren't much different for any printer of this type. Beds you had to level were the predominant style up until bambu really popularized zero setup systems. The bigger size makes this stuff more important. A small variation on a smaller bed isn't such a big deal but if you're printing across a massive surface tolerances are more important. And this is a first printer for a surprising number of people. The firmware stuff though is all on elegoo. Thank you for the compliment!
@@davetriesthis I'm not referring to general setup, I'm referring to all the extra steps that were done after, the modifications and replacement of stock parts right away just seems to be like a lot when something like the Bambu Labs P1S exists. Sure the build volume is smaller but, seems like a lot less hassle is involved.
I let mine bed and nozzle heat up to temperature then leveled the bed. Now it been working great. I let it heat up too and do the auto bed leveling now before I print. Few extra minutes seems to help. Thanks.
I've got about 250 hours of print time on my N4M. I didn't have the z-height issue out of the box, so I avoided upgrading firmware due to terrible stories. Finally did it, and man getting the bed level mesh happy again was for some reason so much more difficult. Also had issues where for some reason my previous Orca printer profile (which I hadn't touched other than flow and pressure advance) would freeze clipper and cause a reboot of klipper when it sent the bed mesh load command... Removed printer profile, added again, and it's been fine since. Also FWIW, I haven't seen issues on mine with bed leveling screws moving over time, though those silicone bumpers seem like a good idea. Not sure why nobody talks about putting blue loctite on the threads though.
Your first video was very helpful. We've had the Max for over 6 months and may have gotten two or three good prints. That's it. We have a Raise3D and a Modix, which both print perfectly. The neptune 4 max is trash. Everything is wrong with it. What were they thinking - imagine what happens when you get 2kg+ of a large print on the bed, only to finally have the Y-axis motor (a cheap nema 17) skip steps and layer shift (ruining a 6 day print), because no one at elegoo considered that a bed-slinger of this size will never work, ever. You can tart this machine with new ball bearing slides on the x and y, replace every piece of crap part, adjust every adjustment, and it still is a POS because of the laws of physics. Elegoo should hire an engineer or two....
While I get your anger, I have two of them and they are now both printing great. I'm on hour 150 on one and about 300 on the other. I've printed 5 of these in my store on them so far. www.etsy.com/listing/1714050426/helldivers-2-rs-422-railgun-cosplay-prop
@davetriesthis this is my first printer ever. The hardest part was finding the right code to paste and where to paste it. After that the actual leveling process was super easy. I think a thorough video on how to do it would be awesome for those that are wondering how to do it
Useful information, thanks Dave! I think videos about printing specific items, like cosplay helmets or costume parts, would be really popular. You could include the painting, weathering too.
Also I use the E leveler from filament Friday. He added a profile for the max and it hits all six screw locations. The problem is the Z offset like you said was an issue. I had a feeling this was an issue but was not sure. I just got my printer backup and running after months of being out of service and boom the damn blob again.
This is the 8th 3D printer I’ve bought in last 10 years. I’ve never had this much trouble. From the ‘cheap’ Anet to the Anycubic Chiron. It’s been 3 days and I’ve tried everything. Your findings make a lot of sense. But still having same issue. Part starts to print in one part of bed but screws up a bit farther into the print. Can’t seem to get consistent initial layer.
It's great to see all of these problems addressed, but, to be honest, there are WAY too many hoops to jump through just to get this brand new printer to work. It should just work out of the box. This printer has been out for over a year now, so there's really no excuse for Elegoo not doing anything to fix all of these problems. Continuing to sell this printer, with all of the known problems, just isn't good enough. Can you imagine if this thing was as good as the Bambu A1 right out of the box? It would be god-tier in the FDM sphere. Everyone would want one. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to buy one. As it is? No way.
Man this is nothing for a printer in this price range. I clicked this video expecting creality levels of fixes needed. This amounts to "make sure youre on the latest firmware, buy washers for the bed leveling wheels and properly level your bed". which are all things you should be doing on any new printer anyway. Every printer i've ever bought i've used these silicon leveling washers on.
Yeah I'm of mixed minds here. A lot of the issues people are having are newcomers buying this because it's the holy grail for cosplay printing. So that's causing issues. On the other hand I think Elegoo could have gotten working firmware at shipping time. I think this suffers from what I will call Bambu poisoning. Bambu put everyone on an accelerated timeline and a lot of QA probably got lost along the way. Meanwhile the Creality ender, which are usually awful now in the v3 is out-of-the-box good. It's going to be a weird few years in 3D printing.
@@davetriesthis - I completely take your point about "Bambu poisoning." I'm a 3D printing noob and literally just pulled the trigger on my first printer yesterday, after doing months of research. I get that there are people out there who have been building these things, tinkering with them, tuning them, refining them for years. I didn't want to do that. I just wanted to print stuff. In all my research, all roads pointed to Bambu for those who wanted that kind of user experience. Having said that, I'm hoping the "Bambu poisoning" will really push these other companies to meet or exceed that bar. The irony is, now that a company like Creality has made a good Ender, the thing has been nightmare fuel for so long no one will trust it. So, I guess they've got some marketing to do as well. Personally, I'm excited to see what happens in the next couple years. The K2 and Qidi Plus4 seem to be going after the X1C pretty hard, but with a bigger/better build volume. Have to see if Bambu will step up to that challenge.
Hello Dave. Thank you for your videos. My problems have been a little different. My 3D prints have lines as if the extruder is too far. The normal thought is to lower the extruder. After several tries it doesn’t seem to help. I have pictures to show examples and definitely need help.
Great video. Just got the printer in and plan to setup tomorrow. I understand you did the silicon bumpers but are there any other upgrades you have done. Ive seen people talk about the linear rail upgrade and am curious if thats even needed since you are saying you havent had any issues lately. Thank you.
Amazing video. It’s too bad that I saw it after the blob of death!😂 well hopefully Elegoo will quickly reply and send me some new parts! Do you think i should get some extra in stock?
I've been eyeing the 4 Max lately because the price point is pretty spectacular for such a large format but I'm a bit balked by a lot of what I'm seeing about reliability and quality. You've addressed some of the points in this video but I'm wondering if you're still using it and if so, have you stumbled across any other issues? A lot of the negative stuff I'm seeing is 9+ months ago so I'm hoping maybe they've ironed out some of the bugs since then. My current printer is ancient and slow but bulletproof (Wanhao i3 Plus) and much as I'm keen to finally upgrade to a newer platform, I'm going to be heartbroken if I end up with something that doesn't print as well as my old beast. Thanks for the informative video.
I have two of the units as a result of elegoo sending a second one while I was working with them on issues and solutions. I have done zero firmware updates or tweaks since this video. Both run so well I recently did an order from cosplayers for seven of the helldivers railguns. The prints are massive and there's a lot of pieces. Both printers ran night and day for days and not a problem with any print. I've also done about five full size helmets on them since then. The negative comments were warranted 9 months ago but no longer accurate.
That’s for this video. I’ve been printing for a few years but the Neptune is pushing me to pull out what little hair I have. I’m struggling with the leveling
Maaaan I wish I had seen your video when I first got my neptune 4 last christmas! After about 3 prints I got the blob of death. The nozzle was loose and forced the pla through the threads and seized up. I got pissed and set it aside until this week, and fortunately there were firmware updates available to fix the z axis issue. Also having tons of bed leveling issues; already ordered the silicone stopper replacements for the crappy springs. This has been so incredibly frustrating! I also found out the hard way that the grid infill was messing up my prints. I knew that this wasn't gonna be as simple as operating a microwave, but this is absurd. Definitely won't be buying another elegoo product after this nightmare
I have 2 4 maxes. The problem is the bed warps. It's large and doesn't heat evenly. Mine is just slightly over 1.25mm lower in the center than on the edges. Both of mine worked well for about 3 weeks and then the issues started showing up and that's when I noticed the bed mesh profile. Waiting to hear back from Elegoo support.
Interesting mine have stayed relatively consistent, especially with bumpers not springs. I re auto calibrate every few prints and the measurements rarely drift by more than .1 or .2 though I haven't written them down to see if maybe they're going from negative to positive. I definitely have an area in the front most position and the rear most position where the middle points don't seem that connected to the edges which is probably a mild version of what you're seeing. So left might be .03 and right +.02 and the middle is like +.3 which would be consistent with that. However my original max had the bed replaced. And the newer one has very few leveling issues. I wonder if they did a running line change. I wish one could select just the middle to heat for a smaller print.
@@davetriesthis I really hope they will just send me a new bed. If that works, I'll get them to send me a new one for my other printer. I do have a 4 plus coming and it will be interesting to see if the smaller bed has similar issues. I never checked the mesh profile on them when I got them. I was new to Klipper and honestly didn't know I could. They worked flawless for about 2 weeks. Then I started seeing some variations in my first layer across the print. part would be good and some was either too close or too far. And then adhesion issues. Nothing would stick except at the front of the plate. I kept thinking "what did I change". And then i looked at the bed mesh.
That seems consistent with the problems I had too. Their support has been great with me. (And they don't know I'm a UA-camr working with their PR. I purposefully don't tell them.)
After a few tests and spending like 3 hours leveling, it seems to be going well! I am still not ing some stringing, though. More thend id like. What is the process for fixing that? Should i decrease the temp and increase fan speed? My first benchy, with the exception of 2 drag marks, turned out nearly perfect besides the stringing. Which a lighter took care of.
Thanks for the great video. So after tuned and working what do you think of the printer. Should I continue looking at this printer or another model you recommend over this one.
I've run probably 200 hours of prints across two of the Max and they are nearly flawless. One print had a weird y axis alignment issue but I am pretty sure it was the slicer. The only weird thing is that the filament runout sensor doesn't always work. So usually it pauses when out. Sometimes or it doesn't.stop when the filament is out. I think it's based on what screen the printer is on in the controller when I print. But now I just swap filament out before I go to bed. They really are great machines now.
Just found your videos. My 4 max isn't pushing filament. The wheel is spinning but nothing is coming out. at first I thought there was a clog but if I push on the filament it comes out and prints just fine as long as I'm putting pressure. I found this out after I bought a replacement nozzle kit. Is there a tensioner or something on the direct drive feeder or is the feeder stripped out?
There's a small hole on the right side when facing the printer (this is from memory so it could be the other side). Needs one of the small Allen wrenches that came with the printer. You can turn that to increase the extruder tension. It turns *counter clockwise* to tighten for some reason.
is there any value in going through the OpenNept4une upgrade on a Neptune 4 max. The version of Klipper that ships from Elegoo only seems to work for certain features. Bed_mesh and screws tilt adjust has been great but the probe calibrate will. not save the z offset at all for me, I have to go through their LCD interface and even that seems as if its hit or miss.
Personally I wouldn't muck with the installed klipper. That could break and leave you stranded. The axis offset issue was solved for me with the first firmware update. Which firmware are you on?
i just got the neptune 4 max and when i start the level process the nozzel pushes against my plate and makes a bunch of noise. its like the motor is trying to push down. it doesnt stop, and i have to shut the printer off to make it stop.
Did you try to adjust the z axis before the calibration process? Because it might be set too low and be pushing the head down. Try to do the z axis setting first and if it's still hitting the plate during homing take the plate off. You'll get an extra few mm before the head hits something so that might be enough to get it to auto home and then you can do z axis
I just got their Mars 5 Ultra resin printer and I love it. I am new to this, so I joined and 3D Page on FB. All I see are problems left right and center with any of the FDM printers. It seems that there 38 thousand different reasons any problem could happen and you have to go through all of them and sacrifice 10 virgins while doing a specific dance to fix the issues. I was hoping this printer wasnt quite so bad as I am NOT going to spend a grand on one of these things and end up with these issues anyway. Plus, virgins are in short supply in my area. Sooooo, should I invest in this one? And a white van to get virgins???
Well what's your budget and what type of work are you planning to do with it? .Keep in mind most FDM printers think that resin people are nuts for using those machines. I use both, so both sides think I'm nuts.
@davetriesthis not looking to go beyond 6-700. I like the Saturn ultra, but I'm thinking that's still not going to give me the volume freedom I want. Plus I think the resin would get rather expensive with larger items. Not to mention heavy. Once I take a CAD class I plan on doing upgrade parts for model kits among other things. Which would be resin. But I want the ability to go big if need be.
Question on the bed levelling. What column of numbers am I supposed to look at and when? There are 6 columns and some are in dark colours and others are in lighter colours. I haven’t found anything on what that means so I’m flying blind.
Because they end up being different sizes even from order to order of the same ones I get a variety pack. You want them to make the bed a bit taller on the edges than the center when all the way at the full size. This is what I buy and usually the second smallest size works. amzn.to/3B8u0Vu
First i want to say thank you for the video. I do still have a couple questions. Even though i went through the leveling process it still ask for me to set the Z offset before saving, you mentioned this in the video but did not show this or explain what i am looking for. Do you set the z offset before the leveling and then again after the leveling? do you do it before only or after only? During the leveling process what are you doing to adjust the leveling process...i mean i understand the turning of the wheels but what am i adjusting? Am i suppose to use a piece of paper between the nozzle and the bed? If so what am i looking for, how tight should this be? Is there a certain sequence to leveling the bed, I mean do you just do 1-6 in that order over an over? do you go 1 to 4, then 2 to 5 and then 3 to 6? am i over thinking all of this? It just that you were very specific explaining certain parts of the video so i dont know how crucial my questions are. Thank you.
Thank you for the complement. The comment was to say that after leveling or adjusting the z axis you have to save (floppy drive icon top right corner) or the leveling or z axis wont save. You do the z axis with the sheet of paper first. Then save. Then do the leveling. Then save. No specific order to adjusting the dials. I tend to do it in the order of biggest value away from zero to smallest. (And then save the z axis and level again. Repeat till the values are all close to zero.)
I have a 4 pro that cant seem to get past the 1 or 2nd layer. The printer pulls the raft off the build plate and everything sticks to the hot end. I've gone back to the cura 5.6 from elegoo's site for slicing, cleaned the build plate with water, releveled the bed 4 or 5 times and swapped the tip. The only improvements i saw was the relevel which only lasts till the 2nd layer. Any ideas what else I should try to get back on track?
@@davetriesthis Just water, I ended up re-leveling after pre-heating the bed for 10 minutes and got a successful print. Thank you for responding. Watching the video now :P. I also turned off the secondary cooling fan now that I think about it.
Just got my 4 max and it’s been frustrating to get going, I was able to print one good size Budda and that’s it , everything else is starting ok then next thing you know is it’s either knocked out the way and blobbing up? 🤯🤯🤯 not sure about firmware update and I’m not online with the printer.
That's a great question. It was in the description but I changed some descriptions recently when some URLs changed. I must have forgotten to add it back. Thank you. They're here: amzn.to/3Z1Rcyg
Hi thank you for the video, it really helped a lot. Done every thing as suggested for my 4 MAX and print for a month with no problems...yesterday when trying to print I get the message "Printer starting please wait" and no print.. tried to re-installing the same firmware (the last one available) and nothing ..Opened a ticket with Elegoo support ..any idea?
Amazing video! I have one question. The MIDDLE front of our printer bed (on the 4 plus) is registering -0.13 | -0.15 with the sides measuring around +0.05. Everywhere else on bed is basically perfect. Is that a reason for concern and is there a way to fix it?
Good eye. The middle is a bit raised compared to the bumpers. I could have used taller bumpers and it would have evened that out better. But no, have no problems with that one spot. Seems to be mapping it well. Thanks for the compliments!
Does the Neptune 4 Plus have the same issue? I just got a Blob of death on my Neptune 4 Plus, which I've only owned for a couple months, my first printer, and I found these videos. I really wish I had found them earlier!
Man, id love to get help getting mine swtup and tuned to be this great, being new this hobby is frustrating, if you ever have time to help me out that would be great!
Hello, I seem to be having a problem with my z axis on the gantry, one side the right looking at the machine is tight however the left will not tighten down no matter what I try! I'm at a loss I got this printer a few weeks ago and yet to get a print out of it due to leveling/tramming issues. I feel that my Enders are way better... please help.
I have a question I am having an issue with balancing the bed I can get the right side of the printer close too zero but the left side seems to be stuck at an uneven level or something as it is way too high for a balanced beding for example the middle left is almost 1.0 and I can’t get it any lower
I've got about 300 kg of filament through each of my two printers, and have only gotten some wheel wear. Most was the first week, I think the wheels were too close and so some came off. But they've got hundreds of hours and are good so far.
What do i do if i was able to install the updates on the printer via the usb drive but now I'm trying to install the update with the micro sd card and it is just giving me the elegoo logo and the two spinning wheels.
I got the neptune 4 pro and i can't keep it level. The four corner screws keep coming loose on me. I just bought this printer a week ago. I did the frimware update and change it from standard to professional bed leveling. I sat there for two hours leveling the bed and the print i did came out great and i when to print again and it started to hit the print and rip it off the bed and the corner justments was off again. I did buy some silicone to replace the springs to see if that helps. Thanks for making good videos.
I have a neptune 4 max and was having the same problem. So I went out and got some 4mm×0.7 nylon insert lock nuts to use instead of the leveling wheels. It took some time, and a few choice swear words, but now I've got it tuned in and I haven't had to re-level my bed at all. Well worth the time. As a side note, bc the bed on mine is so big I had to let it heat up to 60°C and leave it for a half hour to get rid of bed warp that occurs as it heats up. So it was quite hot when I was leveling it with the locknuts. You shouldn't have to do that though, if you persue this course of action
My 4 Pro did the same thing. Print head and bed were moving so fast it actually shook the wheels until they fell off. I know you’d probably say print slower, but I didn’t buy a 300mm/sec printer just to have to print at Ender 3 speeds 😊
Just recently started having really annoying under extrusion and smearing issues on my original Neptune 4 (brand new filament). Firmware confusingly says "V1.53", and I have yet to run a fix on it or the screen but do you think firmware is the cause of these issues? I've run bed leveling so many times I'm blue in the face.
@@davetriesthis Yep 2 dried out spools and today I used a brand new spool out of the bag. It’s like the Z axis is just all over the place. I manually level until I feel the paper drag and then do the auto level but the first layer corners of a square print are all out of whack. Either smearing, misaligning, gapped or under extruding.
Seems to always be an issue with 90° corners. I’m just using their standard Fine/Normal/Extra Fast slicer profiles with no mods (just to ensure that none of my tweaking was causing the issues).
Grid *works*. But for tall items on bed slingers since the head goes back and forth over the same spot it's more likely to make a clump and get hit by the printhead. Other fill can work more randomly so that the filament can cool before going over the same layer.
Elegoo sent me a new print head because of the blob of death but now the new nozzle tends to smoke and spray out filament. Meaning I’m not getting a good even flow it’s just spraying it like cotton candy. Thoughts?
I suffered from a blob of death on my max, and I replaced the hot-end, and it works fine when I boot it up, but now whenever I level the printer I cannot hit confirm on the values at the end. Turning the printer off and back on will sometimes fix this, but no matter what the screen freezes following the leveling process. Do you know how to fix this?
First printer for me and honestly the worst experience ever, blob of death, followed by a broken thermistor, bought a full new hotend and constantly getting errors that extruder not heating at expected rate. I've seen nothing but complaints about the Neptune 4. When it was printing it was very good but I've spent more time opening it up and replacing parts than printing.
bom dia! o nivelamento automático não funciona ate o final, ela cobre 90% da área, mas na parte de traz ela simplesmente para e chega ate a dobrar a mesa no canto superior a direita, em seguida aparece o aviso: no trigger on probe after ful I moviment = nenhum gatilho na sonda após movimento completo. como resolver isso.
My Neptune 4 Max has been acting like the bed is too high on one side and too low on the other no matter what the mesh looks like. This causes the nozzle to be too close to the bed on the left side and too high on the right side. it's really weird. I updated the firmware just like in this video and I tried many different slicers. I tried for 3 months to fix it at my college's maker space with the 3d print people there. I just sent Ellegoo an email with all of the relevant data they asked for. Hopefully I can get mine printing larger prints. It can only do smaller prints right now because of this issue. If you have any advice I would appreciate it.
Love the video but I want a printer that prints not something I need to work on looks like I'm going to have to pay a little bit more just so I can not do the extra stuff just to make it do its job
The 4 Max is 20%+ off right now through various big sellers including Amazon!! We wanted a large print bed for our first 3D Printer and despite the software issues at launch (which is normal in the electronics world, everything we can find says the latest firmware updates released this year fixed all that.) HELP!!! So, is it just we are new? ... or is there something special about the Neptune? For the life of us, we are attempting to needle filament into the Nozzle but it won't stick. (We tested moving the Nozzle around after we noticed how difficult it was to feed to the Breakage Detector but the filament just slips out the second the Nozzle moves around.)
It's certainly more like old school 3D printing. Luckily printers lines those from Bambu and others are pushing printers in a more automated direction. Still, printers this big will always be more difficult to use because problems are magnified by the size of the print bed
I have gone thru 4 print heads losing them all to the blob of death. I have tried so many different things from making sure my bed is level to running test prints after every print and updated the firmware over and over multiple times but I still get the blob of death after about 20 minutes of run time. Please help me. I have contacted elegoo and they never contact me back. I am getting to the point of sending back and taking a lose on the printer because it won't work for me. I have a neptune 4 plus but it has the same print head as the max
My elegoo Neptune 4 Max will heat up the bed for a print and then it will slowly lose tempiture after the print is about a couple minutes in and it will come up with the klipper error screen saying something that doesn't make sense.
Argh. That sounds like motherboard. Definitely email their support. Send them a video and the serial number. They'll need that before they do anything.
Can't a cover be added to the board/wires on the extruder to protect it from the filament blob? Seems like a poor design to leave those wires exposed like that.
Many companies put a silicone sock over the wires. The wires do need to connect to the print head, one of them is the heating element wire and one is the thermistor that measures temp. But yes they can be put in an enclosure. It won't eliminate blobs but it will eliminate the wires getting damaged. Bambu is one of the companies that has a covered filament heater and related wires.
I've had mine for over a month and it still won't print. The unit defaults to 140 C nozzle temp every time. They are not worth your wasted time. Elegoo support is a 3 day email turnaround that I found generally useless. Mine delivered with firmware 3 updates behind the latest and it's a month old! Don't waste your money. Go buy a Bambu. They work!
Hey Dave, I just bought the Elegoo Neptune 4 max, and I'm having some issues, I'm thinking that I may be having this trouble because I did not install a new version of cura. Is that required to install the cura software that comes wth the printer, if you already have it? The printer I had before was the Elegoo Neptue 4 Pro. I 'm just trying to figure this out, I'm kinda new to 3d printing. The issue I'm having with the 4max is adhesion and level problems. I think I'm just going to go over your video again to be sure I have done everything as you say. Thanks for these great videos, I hope this does the trick!
Elegoo finally updated their Elegoo-specific Cura from 4.8 to 5.6. It's on their website. Use that. You could also use Orca but I have found in my initial tests that cura with its native support is better
@@davetriesthis Hello Again, Dave. I have an issue with the print bed. While leveling, it will auto-level the first 3 levels and then make a grinding noise on the left side. Do you have any suggestions on how to fix this? I am still unable to print anything, and I have done all firmware updates. I am at a loss as to how to fix this.
@@kristeenbeck2609reading thru the comments setting up my max I'm amazed this guy can respond to all the inquiries. Free tech support warrants a tip or gratitude. No problems yet. Haven't sent a print. Ill probably join the hey Dave club soon...
So, if I'm looking for something this size, and I don't want a loosely put together science project with some sub-par parts and no QC (but great customer service) , do you have an idea for one that works well out of the box? I'd like to spend more time in Fusion and less time fiddling.
Nope. There's nothing else out there. The alternative is the 3 Max but it's about 4x slower. I've been running my two 4 Max non stop since this video. I've done serval multi-day helmets. They're good after these updates.
I was so enthusiastic to buy this printer model. After a month of use all hell begun... After a blob of death everything went pear shaped. I've got the replacement print head no doubt, but the next one couple of days later... I was so angry, I've just throw it to the bin... No replacement from this company. Since the installation and re-levelling of the latest pre-assembled extruder kit I was not able to print a single usable piece. As the latest repeated fails, I've checked the bed temp and found that: it is all over the place and some parts even 10C degree lower than the set level. I wasted countless hours and countless filament reels with this junk of a printer. Not happy at all! Wouldn't ever buy another elegoo in any shape or form.
I just got a N4Max for work, I would've never expected a RETAILED product to require going to such extremes of out-of-factory tweaks to get decent results, yet alone the ones advertised by the company . My prints are literal morse code, the extruder can't do a full line without leaving gaps **everywhere** I am seriously considering a refund, with a ticket to consumer protection office if I have to sink more manhour$ than the cost of the actual hardware to get results.
@@davetriesthis if it's sold in your country there's a regulatory agency somewhere you can contact to make it stop if it's being done with deceptive marketing tactics
@@Scott4271 don't get me wrong, I picked up the makerbot cupcake back in the days so I'm used to all that nonsense. then i got the ender 6 with the inevitable direct drive sidegrade. I just wish companies would put some sort of warning label that a degree of troubleshooting will be required on the early batches, like the afforementioned did.
THANK YOU David!! Just bought one of these Neptune 4 Max printers for my son, and your advice will save us both a lot of frustration and heartache!!!
I SO wish I had seen this video a month ago!
Coming from Ender 3, this huge machine is completely different world.
I experienced the blob of death very early on.
Fortunately, the entire head assembly is surprisingly inexpensive.
Still, I was having horrible issues trying to calibrate.
With the new head, apparently as the original, the nozzle was loose and it took me forever to look at this thing I just "assumed" was good.
"Professional mode levelling" .......I SHOULD have just chose this option off the bat!
So much great information in such a relatively short video.
Thank you for taking the time to supply this information!
I've switched one of my machines to micro swiss hot end. Broke one while trying to change to nozzle. Don't see difference in print quality but the quality of the hotend is much better. D
@3dutch after having 2 "blobs of death" no obvious reasons, I've not had any issues, since!
Your guide for leveling the bed helped alot, another tip is to let the bed heat up for 20-30mins before leveling and printing. I've notice how much the plate level points changes when cold vs fully heated.
Yeah I wish I had mentioned that. It's one of the reasons why I run the leveling over and over since the bed stays warms between each leveling.
@@davetriesthis Add it in the video! It's such a huge thing it's worthy of the effort to edit the video!
I came to write the same thing in the comments :)
I can confirm that the bed warps slightly when warm, After seeing another video on youtube I bought a dial clock (mechanical measuring tool) and used it on my Neptune 4 Max to measure it myself. (A dial clock doesn't need to be expensive: only $10 for 0.01 mm resolution)
Thank you for this. I have had mine Max for almost a year (my second printer) and have had issues printing outside of the middle section of the build plate. I finally today updated the firmware again and spent a good 1-2 hours leveling the bed, and washing the plate and finally printed out a full size test print to near perfection. Thank you.
Great to hear! I'm running two of them right now doing some cosplay client work and each has probably been through 100 kg of filamet since I got them. When they're dialed in they're beasts.
You are a blessing. I had been having may issues with my 4 max and ended up realizing it had broken x & y sensors. Got the replacement machine now and will setup to your specs. Thank you very much for sharing the information
how did it go?
Before anything heat that bed up to operating temperature and let it soak for 30 minutes once up to temp. All beds flex when heated but it is amplified as the bed gets bigger. Save the headache of running a bed level procedure a hundred times by letting it stabilize with a heat soak. Do this before every print, I also run an auto bed level before every print, these beds are that finicky.
Yeah I pulled out a section on bed temps as it was going long. But good points.
This is the 2nd mention of waiting 30mins with a heated bed in 10 mins on researching. I just watched a video where the changes on the bed is pretty big. I’m like 1 week old in 3d printing and this is my 1st printer as a present from my wife.
I’m wondering a couple of things here…
1: should I head up the bed and wait 30mins and then do the levelling z offset etc as suggested in this video at that point?
2: should we run a bed level check before every print once the bed is heated for 30mins?
3: if the answer to 2 is yes, how do I do this?
LEVELING: Heating the bed for a good 20-25 minutes before leveling helps a LOT. I don't remember if this was your suggestion or someone else, but they checked the distortion of these huge Neptune 4 Max beds from cold to hot, and found it takes a while for these to heat completely and the deformations to stop. Since you will be printing on a hot bed anyway, best to level them when they are completely heated.... and it takes a long time on these.
@@bluebeast440 I'm sure you saw the same video I did from functional print friday.
Just got a 4 Plus, this is fantastic information. Replacing an Ender 3 Max that's just gotten too troublesome.
Thanks for the video. I just unboxed my new 4 max today and your tips really helped. Just finished printing a test benchy, it came out very nice
I'm so glad to hear that. Thanks for letting me know!
Scot how Is going? I have bought It one today and it's good, you?
@@sunbertyv3947 it’s magnificent but finicky; like any machine. Bed level sees most important. I use auto level to see where it is off, improve it with the height wheels and then check the results with auto level. It takes a few passes to dial it it in (sometimes an hour or more). But once dialed in, it’s magnificent until I make a change (different filament, different nozzle).
I significantly improved the quality of my prints by changing out my hot end for a Flowtech, and upgrading the PEI sheet from wam bam. After all the "fixes" I went through to fix my poor bed adhesion, , I think that the Bed and hot end contributed greatly at least in my case. I am finally up and printing again. Your tips were also invaluable in dialing in the printer settings.
Thanks for the good words. I'll check the pei plate. One of mine needs to have glue 100% or thr time and one doesn't. An upgrade would be helpful.
@@davetriesthis Excellent, glad to hear it. the PEI bed that shipped with mine has always felt inadequate as far as grip was concerned
This is a great video, it just seems like a lot for something you should just be able to buy, dial in, and then print on.
Honestly these steps aren't much different for any printer of this type. Beds you had to level were the predominant style up until bambu really popularized zero setup systems.
The bigger size makes this stuff more important. A small variation on a smaller bed isn't such a big deal but if you're printing across a massive surface tolerances are more important. And this is a first printer for a surprising number of people.
The firmware stuff though is all on elegoo.
Thank you for the compliment!
@@davetriesthis I'm not referring to general setup, I'm referring to all the extra steps that were done after, the modifications and replacement of stock parts right away just seems to be like a lot when something like the Bambu Labs P1S exists. Sure the build volume is smaller but, seems like a lot less hassle is involved.
I let mine bed and nozzle heat up to temperature then leveled the bed. Now it been working great. I let it heat up too and do the auto bed leveling now before I print. Few extra minutes seems to help. Thanks.
Glad it helped!!!
I've got about 250 hours of print time on my N4M. I didn't have the z-height issue out of the box, so I avoided upgrading firmware due to terrible stories. Finally did it, and man getting the bed level mesh happy again was for some reason so much more difficult. Also had issues where for some reason my previous Orca printer profile (which I hadn't touched other than flow and pressure advance) would freeze clipper and cause a reboot of klipper when it sent the bed mesh load command... Removed printer profile, added again, and it's been fine since.
Also FWIW, I haven't seen issues on mine with bed leveling screws moving over time, though those silicone bumpers seem like a good idea. Not sure why nobody talks about putting blue loctite on the threads though.
Your first video was very helpful. We've had the Max for over 6 months and may have gotten two or three good prints. That's it. We have a Raise3D and a Modix, which both print perfectly. The neptune 4 max is trash. Everything is wrong with it. What were they thinking - imagine what happens when you get 2kg+ of a large print on the bed, only to finally have the Y-axis motor (a cheap nema 17) skip steps and layer shift (ruining a 6 day print), because no one at elegoo considered that a bed-slinger of this size will never work, ever. You can tart this machine with new ball bearing slides on the x and y, replace every piece of crap part, adjust every adjustment, and it still is a POS because of the laws of physics. Elegoo should hire an engineer or two....
While I get your anger, I have two of them and they are now both printing great. I'm on hour 150 on one and about 300 on the other.
I've printed 5 of these in my store on them so far. www.etsy.com/listing/1714050426/helldivers-2-rs-422-railgun-cosplay-prop
Those r cool af
Hmm. Can you explain then why the laws of physics are allowing my 4 max to print perfectly? 🤔
Screws tilt calculate is a game changer for bed leveling.
Yup. Though I don't think most new users would find it as easy as the auto leveling process.
@davetriesthis this is my first printer ever. The hardest part was finding the right code to paste and where to paste it. After that the actual leveling process was super easy. I think a thorough video on how to do it would be awesome for those that are wondering how to do it
Could you please provide some source about this leveling technique? Thank you!
@@John-of3ur also have bed leveler 5000 for Neptune printers
Learned some now things thanks, i had 3 n4max. Just bought 5 more + 1 neptune plus.
Wow. That's going to be a great setup. Print farm?
@@davetriesthis I hope one day, for now i will call it my mini print farm :p
Just got my Neptune 4 max! Great video.
Awesome! Thank you!
Useful information, thanks Dave! I think videos about printing specific items, like cosplay helmets or costume parts, would be really popular. You could include the painting, weathering too.
Thanks Gordon!
I have had the blob I think three times now. This is my third and I have have replace so many parts. Man we should have talked months ago lol.
Thank you so much for your video, it totally helps with N4M
Glad it helped!
Also I use the E leveler from filament Friday. He added a profile for the max and it hits all six screw locations. The problem is the Z offset like you said was an issue. I had a feeling this was an issue but was not sure. I just got my printer backup and running after months of being out of service and boom the damn blob again.
mines been great right out of the box ive never had any problems
Awesome. That's what I like to hear.
This is the 8th 3D printer I’ve bought in last 10 years. I’ve never had this much trouble. From the ‘cheap’ Anet to the Anycubic Chiron. It’s been 3 days and I’ve tried everything. Your findings make a lot of sense. But still having same issue. Part starts to print in one part of bed but screws up a bit farther into the print. Can’t seem to get consistent initial layer.
1. Install OpenNept4une, forget elegoo firmware
2. Do assisted tramming
3. Do adaptive mesh each print
4. Serious upgrade: eddy current probe.
Assisted tramming is the best.
Great video, almost got a 4 Max. Ended up buying a Sovol SV08, it's likely to have its own set of problems.
Circle back and let me know how you like it. And thanks for the compliment
It's great to see all of these problems addressed, but, to be honest, there are WAY too many hoops to jump through just to get this brand new printer to work. It should just work out of the box. This printer has been out for over a year now, so there's really no excuse for Elegoo not doing anything to fix all of these problems. Continuing to sell this printer, with all of the known problems, just isn't good enough. Can you imagine if this thing was as good as the Bambu A1 right out of the box? It would be god-tier in the FDM sphere. Everyone would want one. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to buy one. As it is? No way.
Man this is nothing for a printer in this price range. I clicked this video expecting creality levels of fixes needed. This amounts to "make sure youre on the latest firmware, buy washers for the bed leveling wheels and properly level your bed". which are all things you should be doing on any new printer anyway. Every printer i've ever bought i've used these silicon leveling washers on.
Yeah I'm of mixed minds here. A lot of the issues people are having are newcomers buying this because it's the holy grail for cosplay printing. So that's causing issues.
On the other hand I think Elegoo could have gotten working firmware at shipping time.
I think this suffers from what I will call Bambu poisoning. Bambu put everyone on an accelerated timeline and a lot of QA probably got lost along the way.
Meanwhile the Creality ender, which are usually awful now in the v3 is out-of-the-box good.
It's going to be a weird few years in 3D printing.
@@davetriesthis - I completely take your point about "Bambu poisoning." I'm a 3D printing noob and literally just pulled the trigger on my first printer yesterday, after doing months of research.
I get that there are people out there who have been building these things, tinkering with them, tuning them, refining them for years. I didn't want to do that. I just wanted to print stuff. In all my research, all roads pointed to Bambu for those who wanted that kind of user experience.
Having said that, I'm hoping the "Bambu poisoning" will really push these other companies to meet or exceed that bar. The irony is, now that a company like Creality has made a good Ender, the thing has been nightmare fuel for so long no one will trust it. So, I guess they've got some marketing to do as well.
Personally, I'm excited to see what happens in the next couple years. The K2 and Qidi Plus4 seem to be going after the X1C pretty hard, but with a bigger/better build volume. Have to see if Bambu will step up to that challenge.
Thanks Dave!
Thank you, anonymous
Which slicers can I use? Is it a possibility to use bambulab studio because the 3 max is already supported
You can use orca, which is essentially Bambu studio under the hood. There's support there.
Hello Dave. Thank you for your videos. My problems have been a little different. My 3D prints have lines as if the extruder is too far. The normal thought is to lower the extruder. After several tries it doesn’t seem to help. I have pictures to show examples and definitely need help.
Great video. Just got the printer in and plan to setup tomorrow. I understand you did the silicon bumpers but are there any other upgrades you have done. Ive seen people talk about the linear rail upgrade and am curious if thats even needed since you are saying you havent had any issues lately. Thank you.
Amazing video. It’s too bad that I saw it after the blob of death!😂 well hopefully Elegoo will quickly reply and send me some new parts! Do you think i should get some extra in stock?
Now that they're available from Amazon and places I've purchased a few. Better safe than sorry
I've been eyeing the 4 Max lately because the price point is pretty spectacular for such a large format but I'm a bit balked by a lot of what I'm seeing about reliability and quality. You've addressed some of the points in this video but I'm wondering if you're still using it and if so, have you stumbled across any other issues? A lot of the negative stuff I'm seeing is 9+ months ago so I'm hoping maybe they've ironed out some of the bugs since then. My current printer is ancient and slow but bulletproof (Wanhao i3 Plus) and much as I'm keen to finally upgrade to a newer platform, I'm going to be heartbroken if I end up with something that doesn't print as well as my old beast. Thanks for the informative video.
I have two of the units as a result of elegoo sending a second one while I was working with them on issues and solutions.
I have done zero firmware updates or tweaks since this video.
Both run so well I recently did an order from cosplayers for seven of the helldivers railguns. The prints are massive and there's a lot of pieces.
Both printers ran night and day for days and not a problem with any print.
I've also done about five full size helmets on them since then.
The negative comments were warranted 9 months ago but no longer accurate.
@@davetriesthis Thank you for this it really helps!
I have this printer. It taught me a valuable lesson. Ill never buy anything Elegoo ever again. NOTHING but problem after problem.
That’s for this video. I’ve been printing for a few years but the Neptune is pushing me to pull out what little hair I have. I’m struggling with the leveling
Keeping people from losing hair was one of the key goals of this channel!
Thank you for this video. I'm ready to toss out the Nepture 4
Maaaan I wish I had seen your video when I first got my neptune 4 last christmas! After about 3 prints I got the blob of death. The nozzle was loose and forced the pla through the threads and seized up. I got pissed and set it aside until this week, and fortunately there were firmware updates available to fix the z axis issue. Also having tons of bed leveling issues; already ordered the silicone stopper replacements for the crappy springs. This has been so incredibly frustrating! I also found out the hard way that the grid infill was messing up my prints. I knew that this wasn't gonna be as simple as operating a microwave, but this is absurd. Definitely won't be buying another elegoo product after this nightmare
I have 2 4 maxes. The problem is the bed warps. It's large and doesn't heat evenly. Mine is just slightly over 1.25mm lower in the center than on the edges. Both of mine worked well for about 3 weeks and then the issues started showing up and that's when I noticed the bed mesh profile. Waiting to hear back from Elegoo support.
Interesting mine have stayed relatively consistent, especially with bumpers not springs. I re auto calibrate every few prints and the measurements rarely drift by more than .1 or .2 though I haven't written them down to see if maybe they're going from negative to positive.
I definitely have an area in the front most position and the rear most position where the middle points don't seem that connected to the edges which is probably a mild version of what you're seeing.
So left might be .03 and right +.02 and the middle is like +.3 which would be consistent with that.
However my original max had the bed replaced. And the newer one has very few leveling issues. I wonder if they did a running line change.
I wish one could select just the middle to heat for a smaller print.
@@davetriesthis I really hope they will just send me a new bed. If that works, I'll get them to send me a new one for my other printer. I do have a 4 plus coming and it will be interesting to see if the smaller bed has similar issues. I never checked the mesh profile on them when I got them. I was new to Klipper and honestly didn't know I could. They worked flawless for about 2 weeks. Then I started seeing some variations in my first layer across the print. part would be good and some was either too close or too far. And then adhesion issues. Nothing would stick except at the front of the plate. I kept thinking "what did I change". And then i looked at the bed mesh.
That seems consistent with the problems I had too. Their support has been great with me. (And they don't know I'm a UA-camr working with their PR. I purposefully don't tell them.)
Excellent video sir!
Thank you!
Hey I have a MAX 3 ….does most of the max 4 stuff apply to that aswell ?
After a few tests and spending like 3 hours leveling, it seems to be going well! I am still not ing some stringing, though. More thend id like. What is the process for fixing that? Should i decrease the temp and increase fan speed? My first benchy, with the exception of 2 drag marks, turned out nearly perfect besides the stringing. Which a lighter took care of.
Hey and now?
Thanks for the great video. So after tuned and working what do you think of the printer. Should I continue looking at this printer or another model you recommend over this one.
I've run probably 200 hours of prints across two of the Max and they are nearly flawless. One print had a weird y axis alignment issue but I am pretty sure it was the slicer.
The only weird thing is that the filament runout sensor doesn't always work. So usually it pauses when out. Sometimes or it doesn't.stop when the filament is out. I think it's based on what screen the printer is on in the controller when I print. But now I just swap filament out before I go to bed.
They really are great machines now.
Just found your videos. My 4 max isn't pushing filament. The wheel is spinning but nothing is coming out. at first I thought there was a clog but if I push on the filament it comes out and prints just fine as long as I'm putting pressure. I found this out after I bought a replacement nozzle kit. Is there a tensioner or something on the direct drive feeder or is the feeder stripped out?
There's a small hole on the right side when facing the printer (this is from memory so it could be the other side).
Needs one of the small Allen wrenches that came with the printer. You can turn that to increase the extruder tension. It turns *counter clockwise* to tighten for some reason.
Any case/enclosure/cover recommendation for Neptune 4 Max?
Is there an option I can print it myself in pieces and assemble?
I know a bunch of people have used PVC pipe and plastic sheeting. It goes over the printer like a hat.
Hey, what about the middle mounting bolts on the bed plate? Are those even to be used?
That's to mount the bed in place. They do not adjust. The adjustments vary the positions from the center.
is there any value in going through the OpenNept4une upgrade on a Neptune 4 max. The version of Klipper that ships from Elegoo only seems to work for certain features. Bed_mesh and screws tilt adjust has been great but the probe calibrate will. not save the z offset at all for me, I have to go through their LCD interface and even that seems as if its hit or miss.
Personally I wouldn't muck with the installed klipper. That could break and leave you stranded.
The axis offset issue was solved for me with the first firmware update. Which firmware are you on?
@@davetriesthis also on the latest version that is available. Updated the LCD and the Main system firmware
i just got the neptune 4 max and when i start the level process the nozzel pushes against my plate and makes a bunch of noise. its like the motor is trying to push down. it doesnt stop, and i have to shut the printer off to make it stop.
Did you try to adjust the z axis before the calibration process? Because it might be set too low and be pushing the head down.
Try to do the z axis setting first and if it's still hitting the plate during homing take the plate off. You'll get an extra few mm before the head hits something so that might be enough to get it to auto home and then you can do z axis
I just got their Mars 5 Ultra resin printer and I love it. I am new to this, so I joined and 3D Page on FB. All I see are problems left right and center with any of the FDM printers. It seems that there 38 thousand different reasons any problem could happen and you have to go through all of them and sacrifice 10 virgins while doing a specific dance to fix the issues. I was hoping this printer wasnt quite so bad as I am NOT going to spend a grand on one of these things and end up with these issues anyway. Plus, virgins are in short supply in my area. Sooooo, should I invest in this one? And a white van to get virgins???
Well what's your budget and what type of work are you planning to do with it? .Keep in mind most FDM printers think that resin people are nuts for using those machines. I use both, so both sides think I'm nuts.
@davetriesthis not looking to go beyond 6-700. I like the Saturn ultra, but I'm thinking that's still not going to give me the volume freedom I want. Plus I think the resin would get rather expensive with larger items. Not to mention heavy. Once I take a CAD class I plan on doing upgrade parts for model kits among other things. Which would be resin. But I want the ability to go big if need be.
Question on the bed levelling. What column of numbers am I supposed to look at and when?
There are 6 columns and some are in dark colours and others are in lighter colours. I haven’t found anything on what that means so I’m flying blind.
Just got my blob of death today!
Welcome to the club'
@@davetriesthis and they wont replace it (elegoo) as its past its 6 months warranty now, which I thought was a year.
I see nothing on what silicon bed spacers are needed, how long are these?
Because they end up being different sizes even from order to order of the same ones I get a variety pack. You want them to make the bed a bit taller on the edges than the center when all the way at the full size.
This is what I buy and usually the second smallest size works.
amzn.to/3B8u0Vu
First i want to say thank you for the video. I do still have a couple questions. Even though i went through the leveling process it still ask for me to set the Z offset before saving, you mentioned this in the video but did not show this or explain what i am looking for. Do you set the z offset before the leveling and then again after the leveling? do you do it before only or after only? During the leveling process what are you doing to adjust the leveling process...i mean i understand the turning of the wheels but what am i adjusting? Am i suppose to use a piece of paper between the nozzle and the bed? If so what am i looking for, how tight should this be? Is there a certain sequence to leveling the bed, I mean do you just do 1-6 in that order over an over? do you go 1 to 4, then 2 to 5 and then 3 to 6? am i over thinking all of this? It just that you were very specific explaining certain parts of the video so i dont know how crucial my questions are. Thank you.
Thank you for the complement. The comment was to say that after leveling or adjusting the z axis you have to save (floppy drive icon top right corner) or the leveling or z axis wont save.
You do the z axis with the sheet of paper first. Then save. Then do the leveling. Then save.
No specific order to adjusting the dials. I tend to do it in the order of biggest value away from zero to smallest.
(And then save the z axis and level again. Repeat till the values are all close to zero.)
Are there still problems with the software, or have they fixed it since then?
have they
Puchased mine OCT2024 and it came with the most up-to-date software
Buying mine now
Let me know how it goes
Great video. This helped me dial in this printer and put it to work.
I'm really glad that it helped!
I have a 4 pro that cant seem to get past the 1 or 2nd layer. The printer pulls the raft off the build plate and everything sticks to the hot end. I've gone back to the cura 5.6 from elegoo's site for slicing, cleaned the build plate with water, releveled the bed 4 or 5 times and swapped the tip. The only improvements i saw was the relevel which only lasts till the 2nd layer. Any ideas what else I should try to get back on track?
I should watch the video before I post. Just frustrated the printer worked so well out of the box.
Did you wash with boat soap and water? And not bar soap. Dish soap like dawn. Removes the oils.
But you probably figured this out from the video?
@@davetriesthis Just water, I ended up re-leveling after pre-heating the bed for 10 minutes and got a successful print. Thank you for responding. Watching the video now :P. I also turned off the secondary cooling fan now that I think about it.
Do you have the link for the silicone bumpers?
Should be in the description but here you go.
amzn.to/4frIfUD
@@davetriesthis thank you!
Are you running any aftermarket upgrades? Or is this a stock Elegoo; other than the bumpers
Just the bumpers. I am just replacing the print surface on one now as sone areas the filament sort of fused with the texture.
Just got my 4 max and it’s been frustrating to get going, I was able to print one good size Budda and that’s it , everything else is starting ok then next thing you know is it’s either knocked out the way and blobbing up? 🤯🤯🤯 not sure about firmware update and I’m not online with the printer.
Where's the link for the silicone bumpers?
That's a great question. It was in the description but I changed some descriptions recently when some URLs changed. I must have forgotten to add it back. Thank you.
They're here: amzn.to/3Z1Rcyg
Hi thank you for the video, it really helped a lot. Done every thing as suggested for my 4 MAX and print for a month with no problems...yesterday when trying to print I get the message "Printer starting please wait" and no print.. tried to re-installing the same firmware (the last one available) and nothing ..Opened a ticket with Elegoo support ..any idea?
Possibly an issue with that control pad. If it has issues booting it can kind of brick it. They'll likely send you a new one of those controllers.
Amazing video! I have one question. The MIDDLE front of our printer bed (on the 4 plus) is registering -0.13 | -0.15 with the sides measuring around +0.05. Everywhere else on bed is basically perfect. Is that a reason for concern and is there a way to fix it?
Good eye. The middle is a bit raised compared to the bumpers. I could have used taller bumpers and it would have evened that out better. But no, have no problems with that one spot. Seems to be mapping it well.
Thanks for the compliments!
Does the Neptune 4 Plus have the same issue? I just got a Blob of death on my Neptune 4 Plus, which I've only owned for a couple months, my first printer, and I found these videos. I really wish I had found them earlier!
It has the same issues as the Max. Fewer people bought it though and the larger size of the max exaggerates the issues.
Man, id love to get help getting mine swtup and tuned to be this great, being new this hobby is frustrating, if you ever have time to help me out that would be great!
Not sure I have much more to offer than what's in the video. Anything specific causing issues
Hi, i tried setting up my 4 max. When i did the leveling on point 3 amd 4 the nozzle is outside the bed, how to fix this problem?😊
So I do not see the link for these spacer you talked about.
Hello, I seem to be having a problem with my z axis on the gantry, one side the right looking at the machine is tight however the left will not tighten down no matter what I try! I'm at a loss I got this printer a few weeks ago and yet to get a print out of it due to leveling/tramming issues. I feel that my Enders are way better... please help.
I have a question I am having an issue with balancing the bed I can get the right side of the printer close too zero but the left side seems to be stuck at an uneven level or something as it is way too high for a balanced beding for example the middle left is almost 1.0 and I can’t get it any lower
What about the issue of wheel wear, linear rail upgrade?
I've got about 300 kg of filament through each of my two printers, and have only gotten some wheel wear. Most was the first week, I think the wheels were too close and so some came off. But they've got hundreds of hours and are good so far.
Love the video
Oh, thanks!
What do i do if i was able to install the updates on the printer via the usb drive but now I'm trying to install the update with the micro sd card and it is just giving me the elegoo logo and the two spinning wheels.
Try the microsd card install again. Sometimes it takes more than one pass.
I got the neptune 4 pro and i can't keep it level. The four corner screws keep coming loose on me. I just bought this printer a week ago. I did the frimware update and change it from standard to professional bed leveling. I sat there for two hours leveling the bed and the print i did came out great and i when to print again and it started to hit the print and rip it off the bed and the corner justments was off again. I did buy some silicone to replace the springs to see if that helps. Thanks for making good videos.
I have a neptune 4 max and was having the same problem. So I went out and got some 4mm×0.7 nylon insert lock nuts to use instead of the leveling wheels. It took some time, and a few choice swear words, but now I've got it tuned in and I haven't had to re-level my bed at all. Well worth the time.
As a side note, bc the bed on mine is so big I had to let it heat up to 60°C and leave it for a half hour to get rid of bed warp that occurs as it heats up. So it was quite hot when I was leveling it with the locknuts. You shouldn't have to do that though, if you persue this course of action
Thanks for the comment. When you say the screws come out, do you mean the knobs under the bed?
My 4 Pro did the same thing. Print head and bed were moving so fast it actually shook the wheels until they fell off. I know you’d probably say print slower, but I didn’t buy a 300mm/sec printer just to have to print at Ender 3 speeds 😊
Just recently started having really annoying under extrusion and smearing issues on my original Neptune 4 (brand new filament). Firmware confusingly says "V1.53", and I have yet to run a fix on it or the screen but do you think firmware is the cause of these issues? I've run bed leveling so many times I'm blue in the face.
I don't think it's firmware that should be the right one. Did you dry the filament or test a different spool?
@@davetriesthis Yep 2 dried out spools and today I used a brand new spool out of the bag. It’s like the Z axis is just all over the place. I manually level until I feel the paper drag and then do the auto level but the first layer corners of a square print are all out of whack. Either smearing, misaligning, gapped or under extruding.
Seems to always be an issue with 90° corners. I’m just using their standard Fine/Normal/Extra Fast slicer profiles with no mods (just to ensure that none of my tweaking was causing the issues).
Wait so grid support doesn’t work 😢 I love grid it comes out so easy on my bambulab
Grid *works*. But for tall items on bed slingers since the head goes back and forth over the same spot it's more likely to make a clump and get hit by the printhead. Other fill can work more randomly so that the filament can cool before going over the same layer.
Elegoo sent me a new print head because of the blob of death but now the new nozzle tends to smoke and spray out filament. Meaning I’m not getting a good even flow it’s just spraying it like cotton candy. Thoughts?
Well neither of those things should happen. What temp is this happening at?
On the screen software update do you put the folder on card or just the file?
You put just the file on the card. The tft file
@@davetriesthis thanks finally someone answers a question lol
I have had a full bed print. But it wasnt stick on bed at the border area. How can i fix that?
I suffered from a blob of death on my max, and I replaced the hot-end, and it works fine when I boot it up, but now whenever I level the printer I cannot hit confirm on the values at the end. Turning the printer off and back on will sometimes fix this, but no matter what the screen freezes following the leveling process. Do you know how to fix this?
First printer for me and honestly the worst experience ever, blob of death, followed by a broken thermistor, bought a full new hotend and constantly getting errors that extruder not heating at expected rate. I've seen nothing but complaints about the Neptune 4. When it was printing it was very good but I've spent more time opening it up and replacing parts than printing.
Are there any 4 max prusa profiles out there. Orca is not doing it for me.
Elegoo released Elegoo cura 5.6. It's got profiles for all the Elegoo printers. You can grab it on their support page.
@@davetriesthis so no prusa?
bom dia! o nivelamento automático não funciona ate o final, ela cobre 90% da área, mas na parte de traz ela simplesmente para e chega ate a dobrar a mesa no canto superior a direita, em seguida aparece o aviso: no trigger on probe after ful I moviment = nenhum gatilho na sonda após movimento completo. como resolver isso.
My Neptune 4 Max has been acting like the bed is too high on one side and too low on the other no matter what the mesh looks like. This causes the nozzle to be too close to the bed on the left side and too high on the right side. it's really weird. I updated the firmware just like in this video and I tried many different slicers. I tried for 3 months to fix it at my college's maker space with the 3d print people there. I just sent Ellegoo an email with all of the relevant data they asked for. Hopefully I can get mine printing larger prints. It can only do smaller prints right now because of this issue. If you have any advice I would appreciate it.
It sounds like you diagnosed it, the bed isn't level. They sent me a new bed for one of them and that was much better than the bed I replaced.
Do these updates work on the Neptune 4 Pro?
Yes though there aren't wheels under the bed for leveling so you can skip the part about dialing that in.
Love the video but I want a printer that prints not something I need to work on looks like I'm going to have to pay a little bit more just so I can not do the extra stuff just to make it do its job
Birthday sales on all Bambu Lab products. triesth.is/bambubirthday
The 4 Max is 20%+ off right now through various big sellers including Amazon!! We wanted a large print bed for our first 3D Printer and despite the software issues at launch (which is normal in the electronics world, everything we can find says the latest firmware updates released this year fixed all that.)
HELP!!! So, is it just we are new? ... or is there something special about the Neptune? For the life of us, we are attempting to needle filament into the Nozzle but it won't stick. (We tested moving the Nozzle around after we noticed how difficult it was to feed to the Breakage Detector but the filament just slips out the second the Nozzle moves around.)
Do you have the nozzle heated up?
this is so much more complicated and tedious than I expected 3d printing to be without even getting a 3d print out of it
It's certainly more like old school 3D printing. Luckily printers lines those from Bambu and others are pushing printers in a more automated direction.
Still, printers this big will always be more difficult to use because problems are magnified by the size of the print bed
I have gone thru 4 print heads losing them all to the blob of death. I have tried so many different things from making sure my bed is level to running test prints after every print and updated the firmware over and over multiple times but I still get the blob of death after about 20 minutes of run time. Please help me. I have contacted elegoo and they never contact me back. I am getting to the point of sending back and taking a lose on the printer because it won't work for me. I have a neptune 4 plus but it has the same print head as the max
I'm having trouble with the n4m firmware, I get a message saying MCU shutdown, please help
Usually it'll work if you redo the firmware upgrade.
@davetriesthis I've tried the ones from elegoo site and doesn't seem to work, so I'm kinda at a loss.
My elegoo Neptune 4 Max will heat up the bed for a print and then it will slowly lose tempiture after the print is about a couple minutes in and it will come up with the klipper error screen saying something that doesn't make sense.
Argh. That sounds like motherboard. Definitely email their support. Send them a video and the serial number. They'll need that before they do anything.
Can't a cover be added to the board/wires on the extruder to protect it from the filament blob? Seems like a poor design to leave those wires exposed like that.
Many companies put a silicone sock over the wires. The wires do need to connect to the print head, one of them is the heating element wire and one is the thermistor that measures temp.
But yes they can be put in an enclosure. It won't eliminate blobs but it will eliminate the wires getting damaged.
Bambu is one of the companies that has a covered filament heater and related wires.
couldn't find the silicone bumpers :(
They're in the Amazon storefront but here is a direct link amzn.to/4bwk7y4
my z offset keeps changing
Did you upgrade the firmware? Also did you watch the bit about having to save the offset with the button in the top right corner?
Neither one of the flash drives work. All I get is an error message.
You can reformat them and reinstall the software. They have to be formatted as FAT or exfat
I've had mine for over a month and it still won't print. The unit defaults to 140 C nozzle temp every time. They are not worth your wasted time. Elegoo support is a 3 day email turnaround that I found generally useless. Mine delivered with firmware 3 updates behind the latest and it's a month old! Don't waste your money. Go buy a Bambu. They work!
Hey Dave, I just bought the Elegoo Neptune 4 max, and I'm having some issues, I'm thinking that I may be having this trouble because I did not install a new version of cura. Is that required to install the cura software that comes wth the printer, if you already have it? The printer I had before was the Elegoo Neptue 4 Pro. I 'm just trying to figure this out, I'm kinda new to 3d printing. The issue I'm having with the 4max is adhesion and level problems. I think I'm just going to go over your video again to be sure I have done everything as you say. Thanks for these great videos, I hope this does the trick!
Elegoo finally updated their Elegoo-specific Cura from 4.8 to 5.6. It's on their website. Use that. You could also use Orca but I have found in my initial tests that cura with its native support is better
@@davetriesthis Hello Again, Dave. I have an issue with the print bed. While leveling, it will auto-level the first 3 levels and then make a grinding noise on the left side. Do you have any suggestions on how to fix this? I am still unable to print anything, and I have done all firmware updates. I am at a loss as to how to fix this.
@@kristeenbeck2609reading thru the comments setting up my max I'm amazed this guy can respond to all the inquiries. Free tech support warrants a tip or gratitude. No problems yet. Haven't sent a print. Ill probably join the hey Dave club soon...
My Max keeps defaulting to 140 degrees on the nozzle. I keep changing it and when a print starts, it blinks back to 140. Infuriating!
Did you do the firmware update?
So, if I'm looking for something this size, and I don't want a loosely put together science project with some sub-par parts and no QC (but great customer service) , do you have an idea for one that works well out of the box? I'd like to spend more time in Fusion and less time fiddling.
Nope. There's nothing else out there. The alternative is the 3 Max but it's about 4x slower.
I've been running my two 4 Max non stop since this video. I've done serval multi-day helmets. They're good after these updates.
Is the printer with this bed size that doesn’t require all this 🤦🏻♂️
The ender 3 v3 plus isn't quite this size but has been less trouble configuring.
But my Neptune 4 max work perfectly now.
@@davetriesthis is the Neptune 4 max better than the K1 max?
i just updated my firmware and now i cant level my bed.
I was so enthusiastic to buy this printer model. After a month of use all hell begun... After a blob of death everything went pear shaped. I've got the replacement print head no doubt, but the next one couple of days later... I was so angry, I've just throw it to the bin... No replacement from this company. Since the installation and re-levelling of the latest pre-assembled extruder kit I was not able to print a single usable piece. As the latest repeated fails, I've checked the bed temp and found that: it is all over the place and some parts even 10C degree lower than the set level. I wasted countless hours and countless filament reels with this junk of a printer. Not happy at all! Wouldn't ever buy another elegoo in any shape or form.
I just got a N4Max for work, I would've never expected a RETAILED product to require going to such extremes of out-of-factory tweaks to get decent results, yet alone the ones advertised by the company .
My prints are literal morse code, the extruder can't do a full line without leaving gaps **everywhere**
I am seriously considering a refund, with a ticket to consumer protection office if I have to sink more manhour$ than the cost of the actual hardware to get results.
I don't think most consumer protection agency's have any control over companies in China?
@@davetriesthis if it's sold in your country there's a regulatory agency somewhere you can contact to make it stop if it's being done with deceptive marketing tactics
It’s like the early days of PC’s, lots of tinkering and frustration.
For an easy to set up and easy to use printer Bambu Labs are excellent
@@Scott4271 don't get me wrong, I picked up the makerbot cupcake back in the days so I'm used to all that nonsense. then i got the ender 6 with the inevitable direct drive sidegrade. I just wish companies would put some sort of warning label that a degree of troubleshooting will be required on the early batches, like the afforementioned did.