Anycubic Kobra Max: Two Minute Review
The Anycubic Kobra Max is likely to be the printer that people will have on their wish list if they want to go from cosplay, prop production, or just maximizing their production output. Pictures alone cannot make you fully appreciate the size of this FDM style printer, with a capacity of 17.7 x 15.7 x 15.7 in / 450 x 400 x 400 mm.
Large-scale Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is hardly a new or unique concept, but the options are much more limited if you want something larger than a traditional printer, and with printing technology evolving at such a rapid pace, features are present on the Anycubic Kobra Max that were either too expensive to include on older hardware, or just didn’t exist for consumer machines a few years ago.
What the Kobra Max offers at its core, however, is convenience. Depending on what you want to print, the smaller build sheet on traditional FDM printers may be too restrictive for batch printing, or you may not like having to split large models into smaller sections, requiring some technical skills if the file doesn’t come. pre-cut.
This will sacrifice your own space as a larger printer will dominate most of your workbench, but to some, that’s a small price to pay for a machine that can print an entire cosplay helmet in one piece.
Anycubic Kobra Max: price and availability
- How much is it? You can buy it for $570 / £540 / AU$860
- When can you get it? It’s available now
- Where is it available? It is available almost worldwide (check Anycubic website for full availability†
The Anycubic Kobra Max is available in the US, UK and Australia, as well as other regions worldwide, and you can purchase it directly from the Anycubic website or through third-party retailers such as Amazon.
It will cost you around $570 / £540 / AU$860, although there are many sales so you can probably pick one up for less if you keep an eye out for offers. That said, this feels well-priced for the Anycubic Kobra Max, considering its size and features will have a more niche appeal to consumers.
In comparison, the Creality Ender 5 Plus is a popular large-scale FDM printer with a smaller print capacity (350 x 350 x 400mm) and costs a little bit more at $579, although smaller machines will save you a ton of money if you’re on a tight budget. have a budget. The Anycubic Vyper is a smaller alternative from the same brand with a build volume of 245mm × 245 × 260mm and costs $359 (about £255 / €300 / AU$460).
Anycubic Kobra Max: design
- Great build quality, ideal for professional workshop or studio environments
- Large size can be difficult to set up in a typical home
Assembling the Anycubic Kobra Max is an easy process if you have previous experience using printers, and for those who don’t, the instructions are well written with clear illustrations. It only takes about 20-30 minutes to get it up and running, although we don’t recommend trying to assemble it on your own given its sheer size.
It’s also worth noting that because the bed moves back and forth, there needs to be space behind the printer so you can’t leave it flat against the wall. This means you might struggle to place the fully assembled printer on surfaces in your home such as a cupboard or desk, but a standard size kitchen worktop wouldn’t have had any problems so most workshop workbenches or dining tables should be fine too.
Anycubic Kobra Max Key specs
Printing technology: FDM
Supported Filaments: PLA, TPU, ABS, PETG
Build volume: 17.7 x 15.7 x 15.7 in / 450 x 400 x 400mm
Print resolution: 0.05mm – 0.3mm
Positioning Accuracy: X/Y 0.0125mm; Z 0.002 mm
Extruder Number: Single; Nozzle diameter: 0.4 mm
Print Speed: 20 – 100mm/s (recommended 80mm/s)
Ambient temperature: 8°C – 40°C
Operating nozzle temperature: 500°F / 260°C
Operating hot bed temperature: 194°F / 90°C
Connection mode: SD card; USB cable
Machine Size: 28.3 x 28.1 x 26.2 in / 720 x 715 x 665 mm
Weight: Machine weight: ~16kg
The Anycubic auto-leveling system is called ‘LeviQ’ and works well, eliminating the need for people without any printing experience to manually level the print bed. That said, it’s not perfect and we experienced an immediate failure due to print bed adhesion during our first test.
However, it is a feature that we recommend that you prioritize printers, as manual leveling can be difficult, as well as time consuming. Even seasoned professionals and experienced hobbyists will appreciate being able to get a machine ready to print with just a few clicks of a button.
As for build quality, the Kobra Max was well built (humblebrag) and we couldn’t see any of the messy wires or tape that made its smaller cousin, the Anycubic Vyper, look so unkempt. There’s a lot of plastic to see, but it’s solid and clean, so the machine won’t look out of place in a professional workshop or studio.
Anycubic Kobra Max: Features
- The lack of a bigger mouthpiece is a disappointment
- The glass surface is easy to clean and remove smaller finished prints
Unlike other Anycubic printers, the build plate on the Kobra Max is made of borosilicate glass covered with Anycubic’s patented Ultrabase texture that becomes ‘sticky’ when warm and then separates from the print itself as it cools.
Unfortunately, we have mixed feelings about the glass build plate. The concept is innovative (though not exclusive to Anycubic) and it’s fascinating to see finished prints going to be too remove oneself after the glass has cooled, but as this is a large scale machine it means we were disappointed that the print bed is not removable like the PEI Flexplate system of the Vyper and the stock Kobra.
The textured glass surface works well to keep the build plate clean, unlike metal surfaces which can quickly collect stubborn filament residues, but removing large prints was more of a hassle. We didn’t have to use too much brute force, but there is always the risk of damaging a print by removing it too forcefully, which isn’t ideal if the print is a huge, detailed model that can take several days to complete . complete.
A disadvantage of the Kobra Max is its enormous weight, so while you can increase the print speeds in your cutting machine, pushing it too far can cause ghosting or ringing of fine detail in your print due to the acceleration. It also makes it difficult to move if you can’t keep it in a fixed location, so this is a printer you’ll want to keep in one place.
The LCD control panel on the right side of the printer is very responsive and easy to use, with clear on-screen instructions even if you don’t want to read the paper manual. It tends to make some sharp beeping noises when a print is complete, but you can adjust this directly on the control center.
Another point of criticism is with the mouthpiece. The 0.4mm Volcano hotend is great, but the size is limited and becomes a bottleneck when you put it on a printer of this scale, especially if you mainly want to print large models. It would have been nice to see a 0.6mm mouthpiece in the box, especially since Anycubic doesn’t shy away from free accessories.
Using a larger nozzle has some drawbacks, but it has a 50% greater line width, which would improve stiffness and print speed, and at a large enough size, most models wouldn’t see a loss in detail.
Anycubic Kobra Max: Performance
- Default settings cause a lot of basting
- Fantastic details, high quality prints with minimal effort
The print quality on the Kobra Max should be adjusted to the default settings, but you can get high-quality models from it if you’re willing to do a lot of tidying up. Within the crafting space, 3D printing is known to be a skill, and like any other skill you need to make adjustments and do some practice to see high quality results, but without even fiddling with the cutting settings , the models we tested were of satisfactory quality or higher.
Print speed on the Kobra Max is a slog, but that’s a given due to its weight. For those with less experience, it’s also worth noting that scaling up models to a larger size can mean the machine takes several days to complete a print, especially if you’re printing something with a lot of detail, but running the 500W peak power for that duration is a cost to be reckoned with.
We tried a selection of different test models and found that stringing was a persistent problem, especially with the default Slicer profile settings. This is easy to clean up and it is possible to reduce them with some tweaking, but it was a bigger problem than we encountered using other FDM printers.
However, cosplayers and prop performers will love this machine. Yes, you have to play around to optimize the results, but that’s a given with any consumer-grade 3D printer on the market, and the ability to print an adult cosplay helmet or armor pieces like pauldrons is truly incredible to behold. and saves time fine-tuning and gluing a cut-out model on a smaller machine.
The detail was mediocre, but most of the criticism we had was based on models printed with default settings, and we found that issues such as filament warping (as seen on the teeth of the dragon skull dice tower above) can be improved by reduce the speed of your machine and adjust your extruder temperature.
In short, the Anycubic Kobra Max is as good as you make it, and the capabilities on offer are a worthy compromise for the work you need to do to improve your own skills to operate it effectively. It’s also arguably easier to learn how to make adjustments in cutting software than it is to learn how to split models into sections for printing separately.
