Review on 🔧 TRONXY X5SA Leveling for Smooth Assembly: 330330400 by Gabriel Rosenberg

This printer is a real value for money. It has a few issues which I'll highlight below, but I'll start by saying that this thing met my expectations for the price for a printer with a build volume of this size and true CoreXY kinematics. Pros: - 350mm x 350mm x 400mm build volume that you can really make the most of. Some printers specify a montage volume that the printer itself cannot print to. This goes beyond the scope of assembly with the nozzle. - Sturdy construction, frame is very stiff and looks well made, cuts are square and everything fits together well, read the cons below to see what I would add. - The touchscreen is responsive and full color, seems to work well and feels precise. - The instructions were decent enough that I didn't have any problems with the build order, although the screw sizes were a little confusing I used a process of elimination and educated guesswork to figure it out. - 24V power supply, everything heats up to a decent speed and the motors seem powerful enough - The main control board is 32-bit and seems fast and stable. has built-in TMC drivers that are pretty quiet. The ribbon cable that powers the motors, hotend, and endstops on top of the machine is convenient and keeps the wires tidy. the hot end is not used properly and sags a bit vertically as it is used horizontally without support. The bed chain works great and is used correctly, but the brackets do not tighten properly to the extrusion due to the nuts that attach the chain to the bracket. Modular design means easy upgrades and modifications. While there aren't many mods on Thingiverse right now, it's probably because a small number of people are buying them right now. The build platform appears flat and mostly level. Probably the best I've seen in terms of price-to-size ratio. I would still use glass and throw away the tape surface. Makes removing prints from the bed easier. The prints definitely stick well to this "adhesive tape" when printing, but a little glue makes it even better. - Marlin 2.0 is available for this printer and can be easily flashed via SD card. Worth taking the time to do, stock firmware works out of the box but leaves a lot to be desired (see below) Cons: - It's not easy or impossible to make adjustments to firmware settings like speed, acceleration, etc. This also does not have to be done by a slicer or, if available, via G-code. Settings and firmware are displayed in Hanzi Chinese instead of plain English, so it's hard to tell what's what without a translator. - Standard firmware is slow and the menu system is a bit unintuitive. - Wheels with V-grooves are used instead of better and more reliable linear ones. rods or linear rails. I assume the pro version has splints. - Belt alignment is very bad. The belts ride up the pulleys in the corners and make a lot of noise and create artifacts in the print. Loosening the strap helps, but then there's too much slack in the movement. 3D printing spacers or modifying the belt system will help with this, but it's pretty bad to start with. - Tensioning the belt is difficult without some sort of tensioner. - Touchscreen - resistive touch rather than capacitive touch, probably worth it for savings, but resistive touch requires heavy finger pressure and is slower. Corner brackets are not included. Angle brackets for an aluminum profile really help to make the frame more rigid and align the profile when mounting. I bought a pack of 20 from somewhere else. The hot end is very cheap, I suppose that's the main saving here. The fan shroud is curved causing the platform level sensor to hang too low on one side, the hotend itself is similar to that of the Ender 3 and CR-10, it has a small heatsink and tends to generate heat and reduce noise. Make sure everything is secure for the first few prints. Heat it up and tighten it several times. - The heated bed is not completely level, there are bumps that cannot be removed by leveling the bed. Therefore, printing in rafts or thicker layers is required. However, I still have issues with the nozzle getting too close to the bed in some places and there are bits of filament that have become mixed up with the bed and now can't be removed. - Although it has TMC drivers with UART capability, in the board design they are not connected to the controller. It is therefore not possible to set the current and other parameters in the firmware. Next to each driver on the board are potentiometers for adjusting the current. You also cannot change the step multiplier or grind settings. I'm not sure why the board didn't take full advantage of these drivers. Generally if you are looking for a large CoreXY printer on a budget and for some reason don't have the opportunity to build a Hypercube. This is the perfect set. However, this is not a complete sentence. It's mostly assembled but requires some experience with 3D printers to get started right away. I highly recommend using Cura for slicing your models and spending some time tweaking the settings in Cura. I also highly recommend flashing Marlin 2.0 to get the most out of this printer. My only major criticisms of this printer are the belt alignment issues and lack of easy parameter adjustment in the stock firmware. Both of these are easy to fix yourself with a little time and research.