ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX – Review

 


ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX
ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX

ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX

| 3D FDM Printer | 500mm/s | Klipper |


ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX, the biggest 3D FDM printer from ELEGOO.





The ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX is part of the newest line of filament 3D printers, belonging to the Neptune series in its 4th generation – which we have reviewed nearly all of them.

ELEGOO has long expertise in the creation of 3D printers and, to be honest, we find the Neptune 4 machines to offer superb performance and a bang for buck that is not easy to find on the 3D printer market.

In this review of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX we will test it and analyze if the MAX model follows the same high-standards and results of the other Neptune printers that we have reviewed.

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ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX Review

Tests & Scores


Scores Scores

ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX Scores

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A

ACCESSORIES & PACKAGING
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The ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX comes in a large packaging with plenty of soft protective foam inside.

With the printer you will also get:

• Assembly tools
• Assembly screws
• Cooling fan module
• Spool holder
• Display screen and holder
• Filament detector
• WiFi antenna
• Rapid PLA+ sample filament
• Net cable
• 8GB USB disk
• MicroSD card reader
• 512MB MicroSD card
• Build platform glue stick
• Replacement nozzle
• Needle


D

DESIGN
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The ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX is a big 3D printer, in fact, as we mentioned in the intro of this review, this is the printer model from the brand that has the largest build volume of all; reaching a max. printing size of 420 x 420 x 480 mm³ – being 480mm the maximum height.



The printer includes a multi-LED strip light hidden on the top arc frame which does an exceptional job illuminating the printing bed and general working area, a secondary LED is positioned on the printing head itself providing a direct light on the printing nozzle area.

Despite the serious working capability of the printer, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX is nicely polished and aesthetically pleasing with its deep space-blue paint and an overall feel that does not look neither overly industrial nor toyish as many other 3D printers on the market.

The right front edge of the base holds most of the connectors of the printer while the left front edge has a hidden drawer with good capacity to store all your tools, needles, replacement nozzles and even a scraper and plier.

The bed has a magnetic attaching PEI sheet and 6 independent adjustment wheels to level the hotbed with much more accuracy than the standard 4-wheels leveling system of most other 3D printers.

To provide a stable and secure working condition, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX has 4 tall, fat and very rubberized feet that do an excellent job keeping the printer in place and wobble-free.

If you own other machines from ELEGOO you will see that the brand creates a coherently looking ecosystem of products which will look seamlessly harmonic next to each other due to the use of similar colors, finish and overall designs.

Given the large size and solid construction, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX is not only big (measuring 658 x 632 x 740 mm) but it is also a heavy machine, reaching 18kg.


AS

ASSEMBLY
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Despite being a particularly big 3D printer, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX comes much more pre-assembled than other printers and laser machines from competitors.

The X-axis and Z-axis arc, structure, rods, belts and motors come already assembled from factory, reducing the time to put the machine together and avoiding misalignment or assembly errors from the users on this crucial section of the printer. Similarly, the Y-axis, base and full bed comes already assembled as well.

On top of that, the machine comes with a detailed assembly guide and the well-labeled screws are easy to recognize and not wonder which one should be used on each step.

It is fair to congratulate ELEGOO for the good job done keeping a simple assembly for such a large printer.


DS

DISPLAY SCREEN
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Due to the huge size of the printer you might think that the display screen of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX is smaller than on other ELEGOO Neptune 4 printers but it is not; it is the exact same 4.33″ screen that the siblings use.

This display is touch sensitive and provides an user-friendly UI thanks to its color screen, organized design and sharp resolution that allows to fit plenty of information with clear fonts that are easy to read.

The touch screen is the main controller of the printer that enables users to access all the functions and settings of the machine such as:

• Files navigation
• Printing control
• Leveling
• Axis control
• Extruder control
• Filament loading/unloading
• Fans control
• Lights control
• Advanced features access (input shaping and pressure advance)
• Offset corrections
• Live printing parameters adjustment
• Real-time printing task details

Compared to other displays found on 3D printers, resin printers, laser engravers and laser cutters; the one of the ELEGOO sits among the best.


OC

OPERATION & CONTROL
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Beside the touch screen controls, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX can be connected to a local network through the ethernet connector or wirelessly through WiFi thanks to the built-in module and antenna.

When using the machine through a network connection, users can access the full detailed controls, parameters, macros, printing tasks, upload of sliced files, etc. through fluidd’s net user-interface by accessing the IP of the machine on web browser.

In addition to this, the printer can work as a standalone machine by printing directly sliced files in an Udisk plugged to the USB-A port on the device or can be fully controlled by a PC when plugged through the USB-C connection.

To position the filament in place, the printing head is equipped with a load and unloading dedicated function that helps to auto feed the filament in place with its dua-gear direct extruder design.

 


CB

CONSTRUCTION & BUILD
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Unlike 3D printers that use a single Z-axis, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX has a dual Z-axis support with an arc-styled design, which gives the machine a much more reliable and stable support for both the Z-axis and X-axis.

With the exclusion of some plastic details such as end caps or the back vents housing, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX is entirely made of solid metal with a rugged feel that will make the machine last as long as you wish.

The printer makes use of high-quality building materials such as CNC machined aluminum frames and axis supports, PEI magnetic platform, POM V-wheels, an all-titanium alloy throat pipe, ceramic and brass heating elements on the nozzle’s printhead module and ball-bearing blowing fans.

Internally, the machine is powered by a ARM 64-bit CPU (4-core 1.5GHZ) running on a Klipper motherboard with upgradeable firmware.


CON

CONNECTIVITY

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On the front right you can see the USB-A, USB-C and a telephone-alike connector (this is for the display connector); while on the right edge of the base you will find the power connection with the switch and an RJ45 connector for LAN network wired use of the printer.


VE

VERSATILITY

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The massive print volume that the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX is able to reach does not only make it a printer exclusive for huge prints, it also expands its versatility as an all-in-one 3D printer that can cover both small, everyday prints or large prints in a single piece that you will not need to print into several pieces and then go through the time-consuming process of gluing, sanding, etc.


P

PERFORMANCE

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The main and huge advantage of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX was its printing volume/size, which allowed us to make very large prints that no other 3D printer (FDM and resin) was able to reach.

Despite having a massive 420x420mm bed, the Neptune 4 MAX is still able to work as fast as the smaller siblings, reaching 500mm/s of max. print speed – if you do not specify it, the machine will print at 250mm/s by default.

As expected by the large hotbed, the bed of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX will take longer to heat up than on the way smaller and bed of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 PRO.

Our advice is that to not rush to get your first prints going, you need to take it with calm and dedicate the needed time to calibrate and level the printer correctly as this will be the key to get prints with no errors and avoid any printing failures.

Similar to other ELEGOO printers that we have reviewed (FDM and resin printers) the Neptune 4 MAX is way more silent than other 3D printers with its axis, rods, bearings showing no signs of screeching nor grinding noises. The only element that is louder are the strong bed’s/printing fans but you can disable them when not needed.

Of course, these fans that we have just mentioned, though, are a superb addon that not many 3D printers include, and which ensure better results while printing cooling down in real-time the fresh hot filament immediately after it has been printed.

A sidenote about leveling of the machine, the printer includes a smart auto bed-leveling feature and the brand lists 121 points of auto-leveling but our machine out-of-the-box offered 36 points with its auto-leveling function. This is because the machine comes set to a “Standard Leveling mode” which applies 36 points but you can access the 121 points by changing the leveling mode to “Professional Leveling mode” in the settings of the machine; the auto-leveling of our printer was working flawlessly even with the standard mode and 36 points.

Throughout all the print tests, the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX always exhibited a constant flow, extrusion of the PLA filament and no clogging nor blobs on any single printing task.

On top of that, there were no wrapping issues, stringing nor any type of problems with bed adhesion or prints getting unstuck and knocked down while printing.

As a matter of fact, the PEI magnetic sheet of the hotbed did such an efficient job handling bed adhesion that we never needed to use the included build platform glue stick.

We then proceeded to test the filament detector by running out a filament spool in the middle of a printing job; the filament detector worked as intended with immediate pause of the printing task and informing that the filament needed to be replaced. Moreover, the printing task was kept paused waiting for the filament to be loaded again and then continued without issues with the printing process.


PC

PRINT QUALITY
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The printing tests were conducted with a classic ELEGOO gray PLA filament and most of the prints were done at 300mm/s.

As with all other 3D printers from ELEGOO that we have reviewed, you will get pre-sliced designs with the bundled Udisk, available to print right away.

With this Neptune 4 MAX, we saw a tool holder custom-designed to fit the spool holder of ELEGOO Neptune machines so we decided to print this design as the 1st test print, instead of the all-time classic Benchy.

The print was fully printed in 1:15 hours with impeccable performance.

To test part of the volume capability of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX, we printed a vase using the full height capacity of the printer.

The print was finalized in 2:37 hours without pushing the limits of the machine, setting a print speed of 300mm/s and obtaining very good results after finely leveling the machine. The print did not suffer from wrapping and presented solid build adhesion – we did not use the adhesion glue.

You can see how much bigger the printing size of the ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX is when looking side by side another print that we did using the full printing height capacity of a Creality Ender-3 series printer – grey one is ELEGOO, blue one is Creality.

A highly detailed bust with a height of 100mm was printed with so much precision and resolution that, combined with the color of the gray filament, makes it look as if it was printed in resin with a 12K resin printer.

We also proceeded to do a print testing the full area capacity of the machine, using our own custom design of a wall-decor that filled-in nearly all the 400x400mm of the bed.

This was a “special” semi-hollow print that we custom-designed and was intended to be flip around when hang – the lines that you see are connectors that were intentionally part of our custom design.

The final result of the print resulted precise fidelity to our custom design.


PC

POWER CONSUMPTION
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From our measurements while printing, we can confirm that you can expect an average of 350W to 400W of consumption while printing and heating up the bed & extruder – this is an average, so peaks were slightly higher at 470W and dips lower up to 105W.


SW

SOFTWARE
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The ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX comes with a customized version of Cura, fine-tailored by ELEGOO but the printer is also compatible with the latest version of UltiMaker CURA or other mainstream slicers such as ORCA Slicer.


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Specifications

ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX Technical Specifications

PRODUCT MODEL
Neptune 4 Max
PRINTING TECHNOLOGY
FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling)
FRAME MATERIAL
CNC machined aluminium extrusion
VOLTAGE
100-120V/220-240V
FILE TRANSFER METHOD
WIFI, USB, WLAN
FILE FORMAT
STL, OBJ
UI LANGUAGE
English, French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese
BUILD VOLUME
420 x 420 x 480 mm³
PRINTING PLATFORM SIZE (PEI AREA)
430 x 430 mm²
MACHINE SIZE
658 x 632 x 740 mm³
PACKAGE SIZE
790 x 690 x 290 mm³
MAXIMUM SIZE FOR MACHINE ACTIVITY/MM
658 x 950 x 960 (Including Rack & Tray)
MAX. NOZZLE TEMPERATURE
300 °C
MAX. HOT BED TEMPERATURE
85 °C (ambient temperature 25 °C)
FILAMENT COMPATIBILITY
PLA / TPU / PETG / ABS / ASA / Nylon
NET WEIGHT
18.1 kg
GROSS WEIGHT
26.35 kg
RESUME PRINTING
Yes
FILAMENT DETECTION
Yes
MAX SPEED OF TOOL HEAD
500 mm/s
MAX ACCELERATION OF TOOL HEAD
8000 mm/s²


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ELEGOO Neptune 4 MAX

9.7

SCORE

9.7/10