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Wow, that's high praise! I really appreciate you taking the time to leave a positive comment.

Thanks for watching!

They've likely stopped selling them because they are very poor quality. Unfortunately, I'm the owner of the only other Talos 1800 in existence (that I'm aware of) and the month I attempted to use it (March 2024) was a horrible experience. Multiple part failures (some due simply to heating the bed to 80*C), MAJOR design flaws (bed sags about 4mm over the length, z-motors skip steps during leveling, I can go on and on). I've been reluctant to post here because naively I thought Brandon was a possible ally in the situation against Project R3D but he has now also stooped to repeatedly lying about the problems. We have an open Paypal dispute and Brandon continues to lie about the situation. In January I drove 6 hours one way to see his printer partially assembled (the state it's shown in this video) and went out of my way to purchase from him as a thank you for showing me the printer and now a 3 month Paypal dispute is how he treats his customer. These printers were removed from Hartsmart's website shortly after I filed my dispute in early April and the 1800 has been listed as "sold out" on Project R3D's website since the same time. I'm willing to share more details in a dm.

I'm not sure what's next for Project R3D and the Talos printers (and it's not my place to say), but I can say that HartSmart Products has chosen not to offer Talos printers at this time. There will be a Part 2 video posted as soon as I can clear up some outstanding issues related to them.

I'm leaving this reply up because everyone is entitled to their own opinion, though I would advise against making public statements of a defamatory nature and/or about ongoing disputes.

@@ecostruder was your second reply perhaps meant to be a response to the other comment and not mine?

@@emberprototypes Yes, indeed! Sorry for the confusion.

Yes, bed adhesion is certainly an issue. The tricky part about PHA is that it crystallizes at a very low temperature, which is what causes it to warp up from the bed. So the lower the bed temp and the lower the nozzle temp the better chance of avoiding crystallization. Turn your bed heater off entirely and do a temp tower to determine your lowest possible nozzle temp. Also, glue stick (PVA) works quite well to hold the parts down. If problems persist then adding features to the print such as adhesion discs/mouse ears or brims have also proven effective for me. I hope that helps!

A part 2 video has not been posted yet because things have gotten complicated. I assure you that one will be posted in the future. But no, HartSmart Products is not selling Talos 3D printers anymore. If you'd like to discuss it feel free to shoot an email to ecostruder@hsp3d.com.

They've likely stopped selling them because they are very poor quality. Unfortunately, I'm the owner of the only other Talos 1800 in existence (that I'm aware of) and the month I attempted to use it (March 2024) was a horrible experience. Multiple part failures (some due simply to heating the bed to 80*C), MAJOR design flaws (bed sags about 4mm over the length, z-motors skip steps during leveling, I can go on and on). I've been reluctant to post here because naively I thought Brandon was a possible ally in the situation against Project R3D but he has now also stooped to repeatedly lying about the problems. We have an open Paypal dispute and Brandon continues to lie about the situation. In January I drove 6 hours one way to see his printer partially assembled (the state it's shown in this video) and went out of my way to purchase from him as a thank you for showing me the printer and now a 3 month Paypal dispute is how he treats his customer. These printers were removed from Hartsmart's website shortly after I filed my dispute in early April and the 1800 has been listed as "sold out" on Project R3D's website since the same time. I'm willing to share more details in a dm.

To ensure my comments above do not get misconstrued as statements of a defamatory nature I've decided to share two paragraphs of Ecostruder's own words regarding the Talos 1800 after it drove the bed and associated linear bearings off the linear rails: "It seems like I need to discuss your situation with Joe and one or both of us will be following up with you. One thing I do want to make sure I point out though is that you may have had some incorrect expectations about this machine. This is a low cost large format printer and, as we had discussed previously, there is a big difference between how we build our industrial machine and how these low cost machines are designed and built. They don’t have the same level of sensors or sophistication in the software, which means that they are very much intended to be monitored during operation, especially at the start of a print. They are better than other (Modix) machines, but the same approach should be used in both situations. These are not unattended reliable production machines, but very capable printers with the potential print large parts if used and kept running properly. I am pointing that out because, just to be completely transparent with you, I would consider some of the issues you’ve experienced to be user error. You stated below that it’s unacceptable that the printer wouldn’t catch a problem that happened when it wasn’t being monitored. Sensing and catching that type of thing requires additional work and R&D costs, which is why a machine like the HSP1-I has that capability and also why it costs $45k. The Talos is even bigger than the HSP1-I and yet only costs $14k. There’s a reason for that price difference. As we’ve discussed there are definitely issues which I agree are true machine problems, but I also think there are inappropriate expectations for how this machine is meant to be used and what level of reliability to expect from such a low cost machine. I hope those expectations weren’t something that came from how I was describing the machine, especially since you were aware that I was just getting started with it myself, but it is something important to understand." In addition to the parapraph's above, before I purchased the printer I explicitly asked if the IDEX system could do duplicate or mirrored printing. I was told by one of Hartsmart's employees "yes the IDEX system is absolutely capable of doing mirror/duplicator modes on both printheads and I believe the printheads park outside of the build volume, allowing you to still utilize the whole 1200mm of printing space provided!" When I asked how to set it up the day prior to picking the printer up I was told by Brandon "I don’t yet know how to set up duplicator or mirror mode on these machines, and I’m not sure the Simplify3D profile has those options in it at this time. My guess is that they’ll provide those once we discover that there is nothing that currently enables it to be done." I continued to ask about how to make this functionality work and I eventually learned via Project R3D's response via the BBB where he stated: "customer was expecting features that were never intended to be available on unit. The customer expected it to do things that it was not set up for and he was never informed it could do. Tony stated his intentions on what he wanted the machine to do and we repeatedly told him that its not what its meant to do and he would have a high failure rate with his plan." I'll withhold further commentary and allow any readers here to draw their own conclusions about this printer and these companies. Should these comments be removed from this page I'll be certain to post them elsewhere.

Thanks for watching! I didn't do a full review of Beyond Plastic's PHA, but I did talk about in my video here: ruclips.net/video/PNyUyTBKRdY/видео.htmlsi=lMQGerUsGXtjIays. Their PHA filament is the best I've tried by far. Highly recommended.

​@@ecostruder Cheers! Ill check it out

Well, thank you! Ur awesome for watching and commenting!

Thanks for watching! Perhaps if I do another video like this one in the future I'll add that to the things I'm testing for. 200mm/s is ridiculously fast for any sort of TPU--congratulations on achieving that!

@@ecostruder I was only able to achieve that on my FLSUN V400 by bypassing the filament sensor, locating the spool very close the extruder (off to the side) using a magnetically levitating spool holder that can spin with practically 0 friction. The key to fast printing soft filament is reduction of friction anywhere you can.

I believe the reason why there's more focus on PHA than PHB is that PHB tends to be more fragile and has a lower Heat Deflection Temperature, so it's not as useful. I could be wrong though--it's something I looked into briefly before doing my PHA video a while back. PHB might make an interesting support material though, assuming it will bond properly to other materials. If you could easily melt it out, or break it away because of its drawbacks as a primary material then maybe there's something in that?...

Keep in mind that the price is really good on these right now due to the fact that they have been discontinued by Creality. But yes, they're great. Enclosing them is difficult because of the size of the frame, but mostly because that's a huge bed that has to have room to travel forward and backward. Based on the measurements of my CR-6 Max I'd suggest a minimum enclosure size of 800mm tall, 1000mm wide, and 1200mm front to back. That's a big box!

Unfortunately this machine has been discontinued by Creality at this point. It's still a machine I use a lot, and it's still working great, so if you can find one it's worth picking up. But right now the best deal on a machine of this size I've seen is the Elegoo Neptune 4 Max. It's cheaper and bigger and direct drive. Hard to beat that.

I'm assuming you are referring to ColorFabb's "AllPHA" material. I struggled a lot to get good prints with that material (as I showed in the video). ColorFabb has some suggested printing advice on their product page (colorfabb.com/allpha-black). The biggest issue with this material is that it doesn't want to stick to the bed. And overhangs are a problem. Make sure the bed is cold (no heat whatsoever), use a brim, and some sort of bed adhesive. I tried several and I believe regular old glue stick seemed to work best. For what it's worth, I found Beyond Plastic's PHA to be significantly easier to print with than AllPHA. I know that's not available everywhere (yet), but it's really good.

Glad it was helpful!

I'm glad you liked it! allPHA (or any other PHA filament such as the really good stuff from Beyond Plastic) doesn't actually require any sort of special printer. The key thing is to ensure that you can print without the bed being hot. Some printers, such as my Creality CR-6 Max want to heat the bed up at the start of every print in order to home the machine when the bed is warm. This is annoying with PHA since it is better to print it on a cold bed. But direct drive, bowden, plastic-lined hotends or all-metal hotends--it's all good!

Hi, yes we still have the STLs. I don't normally share customer STLs, but these were posted on a public forum for anyone to download years ago, so I feel ok sharing them. Email ecostruder@hartsmartproducts.com and I'll get them to you.

I have to admit that I agree with you. I didn't love this title for the video. It's a bit misleading. I'll probably change it, if I can. For what it's worth, I had a local customer volunteer to print some stuff and bury it in their yard. She recently dug it up and there was absolutely nothing left of it. It's fully biodegraded without any trace!

If it still biodegrades in the same (or a similar) way and it's an easily printable material then I'm into it! I've heard of Fillamentum's NonOilen before but I've never printed with it. I should fix that. Great suggestion!

Thanks for watching, and for the compliments on the video. I appreciate the feedback on the background music. I generally try to keep it low enough that it's not going to interfere with what I'm saying, but it seems like I may have missed the mark on this one. I'll keep it in mind for future videos!

Yes, I've used a lot of different extruder and hotend combinations on my various Modix machines. The Titan Aero was a nice improvement over the standard Titan that these came with, but there are significantly better options available now. The BMG is a great extruder, though I'd suggest a Mosquito Magnum if you switch to a Bondtech BMG(-M). That's a solid combo. Good luck!

Wow, nice suggestion! I had not heard of Balena before, but I've reached out to them to see what their filament options look like. Could be another awesome addition to the eco-friendly materials lineup. Thanks!

Great tip, thanks Fred!

Why thank you! This is a custom-designed temporary wall that we had made to separate our retail space from our community area. When we first moved into the space we didn't have nearly enough products to fill up the retail area so I had this wall made so the retail area would feel smaller and less empty, then we could move it as needed when we got more products in. It was designed by a local artist, Molly Spain. Then it was laser cut from corrugated cardboard by a local shop, Notch & Nail. It is meant to emulate the HartSmart Products logo with pieces that simply slot together. Since it's all just corrugated cardboard and no glue or fasteners, it's 100% recyclable!

95A is a great place to start. Rigid enough to push through the hotend without too much drama, but soft enough to give you the benefits of a flexible material. The softer it gets the more difficult it becomes, but man, the first time you print a super squishy part it's soooo satisfying. :-) Sounds to me like it's time for you to make the leap into squishy materials!!

@@ecostruder Yeah I def have no concerns about tackling the difficulty, I just don't want to pay $60 for 500g of 60A. 😂 I found some 83A for $37 per kilo and some 75A for $45 per 500g, but dang.

@@802Garage Gotcha. Yeah, beware of cheap TPU. That stuff is hard to make, and even harder to make with good quality control. Whichever way you end up going--good luck!!

@@ecostruder Surprisingly, my Longer brand 95A for as little as $16 a roll has been fantastic. I know I can't expect prices like that for anything softer though. I'm just broke and cheap. ;) Thanks for the video! If you could do a condensed faster version of this updated for 2024, like maybe a "Top 10 flexible filaments in 2024" I bet it would take off.

The CR-6 Max is very quiet. So if your fan is loud and annoying then yes, I'd be concerned about what's going on with that. Maybe it's something simple like just some dust or a wisp of hot glue stuck in the fan bearings, or maybe there's something causing it to spin out of balance. Probably worth checking out though. Even a full replacement fan is quite cheap if that's determined to be necessary.

Brother!!!

Yeah. Fair. But proud of it! :-)

@@ecostruder Takes one to know one 😂 Life before death.

Life before Death. Strength before Weakness. Journey before Destination. Enjoy the journey of printing with PHA!

This is a great idea. While PHA won't necessarily break down when it's not in an ideal environment, having PHA pellets scattered around the woods/grass would certainly be better than PLA.

I no longer work with Modix, so I'm afraid I no longer have any insight into this. Hopefully someone else can chime in on how long it took for them.

Hi! We have a variety of printhead configurations we've tried over the years (too many to list here) for a variety of uses. The LGX is a good option for flexibles, as is the Hemera or the Omniadrop. Our general purpose printhead that we've standardized on uses a Bondtech BMG-M combined with a Takoto HE20 hotend. We like this combination so much that we've actually started offering it as an upgrade for others to use on their Modix machines as well. We call it our Premium Printhead 2, and we sell it here: hartsmartproducts.com/products/premium-printhead-v2. If you are printing with high detail or specifically with flexible materials then the Hemera could be a better way to go. We built one of those also, which is here: hartsmartproducts.com/products/revo-hemera-printhead-for-modix-printers. I hope that helps!!

Yeah...this is unfortunately a common problem with the Big-60 V2. Modix used a 3-ballscrew design which theoretically should work fine, but in practice it's hard to keep the big bed plate flat when it's only supported in 3 spots instead of 4. They changed this when they moved to V3 and the problem went away. Unfortunately there is no easy fix for this problem that I'm aware of. A thicker mic6 plate could help, or a totally different z-axis motion system (which would also require rewiring). Sorry I don't have a good option for you on this!

Thanks for watching! In reality, for someone who hasn't built a lot (or any) Modix machines before, putting one together properly, including the necessary calibration steps takes roughly 2 weeks of assembly. That assumes that 8 hours are being spent on the assembly each of those days. This is not a trivial assembly process and there are lots of things that could easily be done wrong. If it isn't done properly the machine will not operate as intended. Also, this video is showing a V3 machine but Modix is currently shipping Gen 4 machines, so your experience will be quite different. I would also add that these machines should not be run by anyone without a lot of 3D printing experience, as they can be rather difficult to operate and require a lot of ongoing TLC. There are some other machines out there which are fully assembled and calibrated from the factory (such as the HSP1-I from HartSmart Products), but those cost quite a bit more than the DIY kits from Modix. Good luck with whatever you choose to do!

Thanks@@ecostruder, that must be a long lead-time for building this printer all alone, but if we can increase the team size, and separate the steps by cluster, I think it would be faster, right? 😁

@@life_of_vin Having 2 people instead of only one will help, yes. But after that there are diminishing returns on adding more people. Most of what needs to happen with the assembly is on the machine itself. There aren't a lot of subassemblies that a separate person could knock out. In any case, I would strongly advise against rushing through it if you want a properly operating machine.

LOL, I'm not usually told that it was good that people didn't watch my videos, but I can see how that would be the case here. Hopefully the video is helpful for your NEXT flexible material selection. Though I have to admit that it's a bit outdated now. I made that video years ago and a lot of the flexible materials in the lineup have been discontinued. Maybe someday I'll have to put (a lot of) time into making an updated version. There are some cool options out there now that didn't exist back then. Welcome to the world of 3D printing, and good luck!

Wow, I'm glad that was so helpful! Congrats on getting your printer working properly, and thanks for the sub!

You're killing me, Fred. Yes, there will be more content coming on biodegradable, compostable, and generally eco-friendly filaments. Including the awesome Beyond Plastic PHA!

@@ecostruder LOL, btw nice industrial printer.

Hello there! Our shop is in Des Moines, Iowa and we'd be delighted to have you stop by. We have several Modix machines up and running in our production print farm (as well as several other brands). However, we are no longer working with Modix. We've moved on to bigger and better things (announcements coming soon)!

@@ecostruder So, which machines do u sell now? Just received my Big 120x-v4 and did the first prints. Their documentation sucks ;-)

@@MegaDraadloos Our main focus has been engineering and then building the HSP1-I industrial IDEX 3D printer. This is a high spec machine that is really not intended to compete with Modix machines in any way (it's a whole different tier of machine). hartsmartproducts.com/pages/hsp-1 The closest thing to a Modix that we sell now is the Project R3D Talos line of large format printers. They are very similar in a lot of ways to the Modix machines, but made and supported in USA, and with a lot of different design choices. Also, assembly takes just a few hours, rather than a couple of weeks. hartsmartproducts.com/pages/project-r3d

Oooh, you like to live dangerously! I respect that.

I'm sure Creality has improved the Ender-5 Plus over time, but my shop (HartSmart Products) offers printer repair services and we see a lot of Ender-5s with problems. It's the main reason why we decided not to carry them. The CR-6 SE and CR-6 Max have proven to be pretty reliable (especially with a couple of small upgrades), so I've been pleased with those models. That would be my preference, but I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would have the exact opposite opinion. Good luck with your new printer, whichever way you end up going!

I'm glad you found this video helpful! There has been some previous discussions in the comments on this video regarding upgrades to get the machine to perform better than stock. To summarize though, I'd recommend the Bondtech LGX Lite Arrow conversion to make it a direct drive system, a PEI flex plate system, and Community firmware. That combo works very well, and is what I'm currently using on mine. I also upgraded to an all-metal hotend so I could print with more materials. Good luck with the new big machine!

@@ecostruder Thank you!

​@@ecostruder Currently I am leaning towards the CR-10 Max. Would you happen to know if it is reliable and if there are any affordable modifications that you could suggest?

​@@jimbo1058 We nearly decided to sell the CR-10 Max, but after looking around the internet and reading reviews I decided against it. It seems to have some fundamental flaws, and is a rather old machine at this point. The CR-M4 is Creality's successor to the CR-10 Max (I believe), so I'd suggest that one between the two. But Elegoo recently one-upped Creality by releasing the Neptune 3 Max at a much lower pricepoint with similar specs (if not better in some ways). We cannot keep those in stock right now and haven't had any complaints so far. In the words of my favorite tool reviewer, (@projectfarm) "Very Impressive!"

@@ecostruder Thank you!

Thanks for the sub!

Hi there! I have some slicer profiles that work for my Modix printers, but they are v3 machines which have been highly modified to make them better production printers. Modix has slicer profiles in their Customers Zone, so that's where I'd suggest getting a profile for your Gen 4. I hope that helps!

@@ecostruder i have a gen 4 idex config. Cant really get the copy mode/dual print mode to work. I would like to print 2 parts at the same time to double my production on some parts. Have you solved that?

@@jensedlund5766 That sounds like a great use for an IDEX system. I don't have any Gen 4 machines in my shop (other than the ones we have assembled for customers) so I don't have any experience with their Gen 4 IDEX system, either. In fact, we no longer work with Modix. So I'd suggest reaching out to their support team. I know they were planning to support duplication mode (as I call it), but I don't know if they've gotten that profile put together yet. Good luck!

Agreed.

Glad you found it helpful!

Not much of a change. The CR-10 Smart is not a good machine. Creality sent me the CR-10 Smart Pro to prove that it was better, and they were right--it's better. But we've still had several issues with that one as well. I still consider the CR-10 V3 (long discontinued now) to be a superior machine.