3D Printers

3D Printer Review: The 3ntr A4v3 is a Workshop Workhorse

3ntr is a relatively new player on the FFF Italian market. Their A4v3 printer, which is already the third generation of its type, belongs to the family of Cartesian printers with CoreXY architecture, which are on the fast track to popularity in the 3D printing community. That is why we can compare, mechanically speaking, the A4v3 with a number of the recently released printers (such as, for example, the FABtotum and Sli3Dr).

The printer is equipped with a double Z-axis, with trapezoid bars connected by mechanical coupling, making these two fellows much more precise and stable. The A4v3 is able to print using almost any filament, thanks to its extruder, which, I believe, should be described in detail, since it is one of the elements that makes this printer outstanding.

Picture this: a full metal body extruder, capable to curb almost any type of hard material with 3 mm diameter, with a heater capable of reaching up to 415° C. All of this, while being supported and improved by a liquid cooling system, an absolute first for a commercial 3D printing system.

The A4v3 creators are not looking for their offspring to be an aesthetic delight, giving their priority to reliability, usability, and functionality during the development process. The simplicity and conciseness of the iron case gives us 32 kilos in weight and an impression that this machine will work no matter what. The very thing that caught my eye was a “panic button”, rarely used on low cost 3D printers. It is big enough and located at the front panel for easy access, though you will have to apply a certain amount of force to activate it, which excludes “accidental pressing”. The display used is a good old LCD – 16 characters, 2 rows.

The 3D printer arrived carefully packed in a wooden pallet box with one coil of HIPS and one of ABS. After unpacking, the only thing I had to do with the printer to start working was to place the cold end and connect it to the hot end with the boden pipe. The instructions were pretty clear, so it took me no more than 20 minutes to have my A4v3 ready to play with.

A nice touch was to discover, inside the package, all of the tools for assembly and a spare cooling liquid bottle. The filament holder is located on the back side of the machine and is easy to access, so I just followed the regular filament loading and setting procedure. I encountered a small issue when placing the microSDcard. Unlike many of the models, the card slot is located on the back side, which, in combination with the small size of the microSDcard and a gap between the slot pocket and the slot itself, makes the insertion a bit risky. If you are not careful enough, clumsy, or just had a glass of wine for lunch, you will probably end up with a screwdriver, trying to retrieve your little fugitive.

For slicing the model, I used Cura and Slic3r, and both of them worked perfectly. 3ntr recommends using Kisslicer but I preferred to use something I already knew. Using the SDcard, so I was printing via the stand-alone mode. The bed of the printer is made up of two parts – the metal base and the carbon plate (with two very convenient handles) that does not require any special cover material before working. The metal base has a 400W built-in heater that shortens the preheating process up to 3 minutes. Thanks to this heater, distribution of heat along the bed is quite even. The metal base and the carbon plate are fixed together with the magnetic clamp, firm enough for quality printing. When you are taking out the printed object, all you have to do is pull the handles of the carbon plate to take it out of the printer with no risk of burning your hands.

I consider myself to be a creative person with endless fantasy, so, obviously, the first thing I printed was the calibration cube. I chose the ABS material for that, and, I would say, compared to the majority of 3D printers, the speed of printing was a bit below average. The calibration cube, on the other hand, had an outstanding quality, but also had an “elephant foot”, so I decided to calibrate the Z-axis. The calibration process went surprisingly smoothly, since I only had to calibrate one screw – the one that corresponds to the Z-offset.

I worked with this printer for about a month in total. I also have to mention that, in the beginning, the printer’s noise seems quite loud, but, later, you start to enjoy it like you enjoy the sound of a Harley Davidson. During this period, I even tested the machine on a 30-hour print, and it performed the task without any problem.

I had a chance to test four kinds of materials: PLA, ABS, PETG, and XT-Fabb, and the only one that was challenging was the XT from colorFabb, but that was mainly because of a faulty layer fan. I would recommend this printer for professional labs and people, who already have had experiences of working with 3D printers. Its designers named it the “workhorse”, and it lives up to its name, easily coping with long hours of printing. This is a reliable machine, with new features and high-quality mechanics, that result in high-resolution and high precision models.

*This test and review is the result of a collaboration with NTT Data Italia‘s internal Maker Lab, managed by Ruggero Di Benedetto e Daniele Acquadro. Juan Luis Felipe Luna e Mauro Monti tested and reviewed the machine.