High Speeds

The Voxelab D1 is making some bold claims for a bed-slinging 3D printer: print speeds of up to 180 mm/s.

Typically, Ender 3-style clones such as the D1 print at a speed of 50-60 mm/s. This is because the gantry is prone to wobbling, especially when the print head is whizzing back and forth at the top end of the Z-axis. The weight and inertia of a direct extruder — which the D1 features — can aggravate this even more.

So, one wonders how the D1 aims to achieve such print speeds without compromising print quality. For one, the printer comes with linear rails instead of the pulleys you’d typically expect for the X and Y-axis. According to the manufacturer, these linear rails offer a precision of up to 0.02 mm.

The D1 also comes with a dual lead screw setup for its Z-axis. This should increase the smooth movement of the gantry up and down the axis, resulting in less wobble.

300 °C hot end

The D1 doesn’t only print fast; it prints hot. Installing high-temperature hot ends on consumer 3D printers seems to be something of a trend in recent months, and we quite like it.

With a 300 °C hot end, the range of compatible filaments becomes broader, expanding from the usual PLA, PETG, ABS, and TPU usage to more sophisticated materials such as carbon fiber reinforced blends, nylon, and other pro-type filaments. Printing these materials without an enclosure and heated build chamber will always be tricky, but it’s nice to have the ability to experiment with them in the first place.

While they have listed PLA-CF in their marketing material, there’s not much indication that the extruder is wear-resistant to such materials, so after prolonged use it could cause issues. You’ll also need to switch out the stock brass nozzle to a hardened steel one to prevent wear.

Grippy extruder & Cool Fans

High print speeds need an extruder capable of feeding filament steadily and continuously into the hot end. For the D1, Voxelab uses a direct extruder with a transmission ratio of 1:2.83 and a feeding force of 70 Newtons – an increase of up to 180% from the Aquila C2. This should ensure smooth feeding of filament even at higher print speeds and ease the handling of noodly filaments such as TPU.

Further down on the printhead, the D1 sports dual cooling fans that should help with rapid cooling at high print speeds.

Auto Bed leveling

The Voxelab Aquila D1 has an automatic bed leveling function which should make setup much easier. With the touch of a button, the sensor will probe a 25-point mesh across the build plate and factor in any unevenness. From the marketing materials and preliminary imagery of the printer, we could not quite make out the probe in use, though.

The printer comes with manual leveling knobs attached to the print bed so users can ensure the print bed is somewhat level before letting the probe do its thing.

PEI Build Plate

Another neat feature on the D1 is the inclusion of a PEI textured print plate. This removable sprint steel plate allows for the quick and easy popping of prints, and the rough surface texture should provide good adhesion without the need for extra adhesives.

We see more and more manufacturers making the switch from tempered glass or PC-coated beds to PEI coatings, which we generally deem to be the best and easiest to handle. That being said, during our review of the Voxelab Aquila S2, we found its PEI-coated print plate to perform rather underwhelmingly. From the looks of it, the PEI-coated metal sheet on the D1 looks different, though. Fingers crossed, it provides the typical-PEI experience.

Motherboard & UI

Underneath the hood, the D1 comes with Voxelab’s N32 – a 32-bit motherboard with silent stepper drivers. This should ensure an ambient operational noise level of about 50 dB. Furthermore, it’s open source hardware, so it’s possible to modify it further should you choose to.

UI-wise, the D1 is equipped with a 4.3-inch LCD touch screen, which should make operating the 3D printer a cinch.

Further Features

Additional features on the Aquila D1 include:

• Smart sensors: Pretty much a given these days – the D1 comes with a filament runout sensor and resume power function; a nice-to-have.
• Quick assembly: A modular design and a 5-step quick assembly should see this printer up and running in just 10 minutes.