Peopoly Phenom 3D printer review
Our Verdict
The Peopoly Phenom costs nearly half as much every bit the Form 3, while offering a bigger build volume and producing excellent prints. This resin printer has its share of quirks though, so it's only ideal for people comfortable with tweaking 3D printers.
For
- Costs less than leading resin printers
- Supports wide diversity of resins
- Huge impress area
- Tin print things up to 15.8 inches wide
Confronting
- Noisy
- No Wi-Fi connectivity
- Interface tin be confusing
Tom's Guide Verdict
The Peopoly Phenom costs nigh half as much as the Form 3, while offering a bigger build volume and producing excellent prints. This resin printer has its share of quirks though, and then it's only ideal for people comfy with tweaking 3D printers.
Pros
- +
Costs less than leading resin printers
- +
Supports wide diverseness of resins
- +
Huge impress area
- +
Tin impress things up to 15.8 inches wide
Cons
- -
Noisy
- -
No Wi-Fi connectivity
- -
Interface can be confusing
One thing that strikes yous immediately nearly the Peopoly Phenom when yous first lay eyes on this 30.seven-inch tall 3D printer — it's one of the biggest models available to home users. That'southward considering this 3D printer has a huge build area: a stonkingly large 10.8 10 6.i x 15.8 inches, for a total of over a million cubic inches of build volume. That'south more than than four times the build book of the Form 3 at well-nigh one-half the cost.
That sounds awesome, only is the Peopoly Phenom usable enough to land on our list of the best 3D printers? Our Peopoly Phenom review detect that the respond is yes, simply with enough caveats to make this a pick for 3D enthusiasts only.
Peopoly Phenom review: Price and availability
When we first reviewed the Peopoly Phenom near a year agone, information technology cost $1,799. These days, the printer costs $1,999, which is still significantly less than the Form 3's $3,499 request price. You tin can buy the Peopoly Phenom direct from Peopoly's website.
Peopoly Phenom review: Design
The Peopoly Phenom uses a combination of an LCD screen and UV LED rather than the UV laser used in the smaller Peopoly Moai and the Form 3. In the Phenom, the UV low-cal comes from a grid of LEDs under the print bed which shines through the LED screen.
Where this screen is opaque, the lite is blocked and the layer of resin between the build plate and the impress bed remains liquid. Where the screen is encounter-through, the UV light passes through and the resin is solidified. Once the resin is solid and sticks to the build plate, the plate is raised, liquid resin rushes in and the process repeats, building the print layer by layer.
The upside of Peopoly's approach is that it is simpler and requires fewer moving parts: y'all don't have to use an intricate mirror system to bounce a laser beam around. The downside is that the parts wear out quicker: the LCD screen can be damaged past the intense UV low-cal and volition need to exist replaced somewhen. Peopoly estimates that this volition happen after nigh 400 hours of print time. That might sound like a lot, but with large prints oftentimes taking 24 hours or longer, it can quickly get eaten up. The LCD screen, which is a modified 4K laptop screen, tin can exist replaced with a replacement unit costing virtually $100.
Although the Peopoly Phenom design and construction is more often than not fantabulous, nosotros noticed a few quirks. For one, there is no Wi-Fi on the 3D printer, despite the on-screen display advertizing it as a characteristic. Peopoly told us that this is because the firmware used on the printer supports Wi-Fi and that the company was not able to remove it. Instead, y'all have to utilize wired ethernet to connect to the Peopoly Phenom.
Peopoly Phenom review: Controls
You command the Phenom through a minor affect screen on the front end of the printer, which is pretty easy to use. With that bear on screen, you control every function of the 3D printer including moving the print bed up and down, setting the brightness of the UV lite and starting and stopping prints.
The impress files are sent to the printer either through a wired ethernet connection or on a USB drive. To create files for the Phenom, you could use any 3D press app, but Peopoly recommends the free Chitubox. Bachelor for Windows, Mac and Linux, information technology's a good selection that is piece of cake to utilize and is focussed on printing with resin printers like the Phenom.
With Chitubox, load the model and click on Add Supports; the program analyzes the model and automatically adds supports that will brand information technology easier to impress. Chitubox can also do things like automatically hollow a model, removing the interior so it uses less resin to impress.
Once the print file is ready, you can save it to a USB bulldoze or send it direct to the Peopoly Phenom over the wired ethernet connection.
Peopoly Phenom review: Materials and maintenance
Peopoly doesn't place limitations on which resins you tin use with the Phenom: yous tin cascade whatever resin y'all like into the print tray. Different resins require different settings, though, so yous will need to tweak settings (notably the LED power and exposure time) for different types. Peopoly mentains a Google Canvass of recommended settings and there is an active community of users on the Peopoly forums.
Peopoly offers its own Delft resin for this printer, which is priced at $60/kg. Due to the coronavirus pandemic occurring during our testing, this resin was not available. Instead, nosotros used Siraya Tech Fast, a resin designed for use with LED printers similar the Phenom that was recommended by Peopoly. This costs a very reasonable $35/kg. It'southward a expert example of the benefits of not having your 3D printer tied to merely one material — when the global supply chain is interrupted, you can merely switch to another.
As noted above, the LCD screen that the Phenom uses is damaged over time by the UV light and requires replacing after virtually 400 hours of print time. A replacement screen costs $100, and the process of installing it requires removing the tape holding the old i in place under the print vat, disconnecting the controller cable, plugging in the new screen, putting it in identify and taping it down. It'southward not a difficult process, merely it is more hands-on than the simple snap-into-place procedure of replacing the laser module on a Grade 3. It likewise presupposes that you are comfy plenty to outset trigger-happy big amounts of masking tape out of the printer and unplugging things.
Peopoly Phenom review: Print procedure
Producing a 3D impress with the Peopoly Phenom is adequately straightforward, though it involves a few manual steps. First, you take to fill the print tray with resin since at that place is no auto-fill characteristic like what you lot'd detect on the Form iii. The Phenom also lacks the power to notice low resin, so, if you don't fill the tray enough, your impress will just fail role way through without warning or notice.
Once the tray is prepare, you insert the USB drive with the impress file and striking Impress on the control panel. If you need to confirm you are printing the right thing, the Phenom shows you a small preview of the impress on the screen.
During our testing for this Peopoly Phenom review, nosotros found press to exist a scrap of a stinky, noisy procedure. To continue the UV LEDs cool, the Phenom has two fans on the side of the case, pulling and pushing air over the LEDs. This makes a lot of dissonance — nearly the same as a vacuum cleaner running in the adjacent room. This also means that the slight chemical odor of the resin gets spread through the room. Let'southward put information technology this manner: Yous wouldn't desire to slumber in the same room as the Peopoly Phenom.
Peopoly Phenom review: Print speed
The Phenom is a fairly fast printer, because the UV LED and LCD screen approach ways information technology can print an entire layer at once. That doesn't make information technology much quicker than printers that employ a single laser spot, though, because the LED lights aren't as intense as the laser, and so they have to exist exposed for longer.
In the end, the ii unlike approaches are well-nigh equal: The Phenom took just under 13 hours to impress a 4-inch high Thinker model, which is comparable to the Form Labs 3.
Peopoly Phenom review: Print quality
We were impressed with the impress quality of the Phenom, which produced clean, polish-surfaced prints. We establish that our test print of Rodin's thinker was printed with natural, smooth curves.
Our geometric sculpture print had precipitous, clean edges, and our exam print of a set of gears fit together well, requiring footling cleaning to make the various gear teeth and spiral threads fit together.
That'due south non to say that the process is hassle-free, though: like all resin printers, you demand to treat the prints to get the best results, washing them in alcohol and hardening them with UV lite. None of this is handled by the Phenom; you have to handle all this yourself.
Peopoly Phenom review: Verdict
There is no doubt that the Peopoly Phenom is a dandy printer. Information technology offers a huge impress book, information technology'southward relatively like shooting fish in a barrel to use and it tin can produce first-class prints. And the cost for this 3D printer is not bad: at $one,999, the Peopoly Phenom costs almost half every bit much equally the Grade Labs Grade 3 and can print much larger objects.
In that location'due south some "buts," though. The Peopoly Phenom is a hands-on printer that needs a off-white amount of tweaking to become the best quality out of it. To utilise it effectively, you need to be comfortable with getting into the guts of the affair, tweaking settings, little with rather unpolished software and doing multiple print tests to find the settings that work best for each type of resin. That's a different approach to the easily-off, printing-and-impress approach of the Form 3.
If you lot just want to print and not worry nearly the process, the Form 3 is the better pick. Just if the idea of tweaking and fiddling to get the best results sounds like fun (and you lot have the time and energy to exercise it), the Peopoly Phenom is the resin printer to get.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/peopoly-phenom-3d-printer
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