GEEETECH A20M 3D Printer Quick Assembly DIY kit with Mix-Color Printing, Break-resuming, Large Printing Area: 255×255×255mm³

Firstly i would like to say how great the build quality is on this machine, a full enclosed design is so nice to have so it doesn't take up massive space on a desk.Packaging, perfect, nice use of sponge as opposed to masses of polystyrene that is such a pain to get rid of. All items arrived straight and ready for assembly, extra pack of nuts and bolts just in case you lose one or they are missing from the original packaging, none were missing for me.Comes complete with scraper, some spare bowden tubes and a spare nozzle. I would say the 'samples' of filament that are received are a pretty poor show in this day and age with many other manufacturers at least sticking in a 500g-1kg spool to get you started, but at least there are 2 small samples to get you on your way to the first multi colour print.Installation - easy hassle free, however no instructions were in the box, just packing contents, but i did receive an email from Amazon and the Geeetech store the same day as arrival of the full PDF instrictions and they were on the memory card (might be confusing for some new people to 3d printing to check the SD card first though)4 bolts for the frame, nice grooves underneath so very easy to get aligned. A little longer than some builds i have done, this is mainly due to the fact you need to assemble the extruders onto the frame, spool holders and clip in the bowden tubes - its not hard, just takes 10 minutes longer than others to make sure you get perfect. Wiring is easy, everything is labelled and everything is the certain length so you can not really plug something in the wrong hole if understanding the labels is hard for you(maybe its your first printer and you don't know what xyz or E0 E1 is).Levelling the bed was simple, i did have to tighten the metal bed with the provided long spanners as it was 'rocking' slightly on arrival, to be perfectly honest it is probably better shipping with a bit of 'play' this means that any bumps it has along the way are absorbed rather than bending the aluminium bed. There is a 'corner' level feature which moves the head to the corners and is a great help.I won't go into the details of multi colour setups in 3d printing software as i don't have enough space! However what seemed a daunting task to start off with a few youtube videos later and it was printer the first multicolour print (see attached images) they are literally straight off the bed and prints 1, 2 and 3, no benchy testing for me. More tweaking is needed working out the right settings for the prime towers etc. but that is personal stuff that always needs doing with 3d printers.Geeetech have their own Colour Mixer software but every time i loaded a gcode to try and use it, it crashed and wouldn't reopen, i tried on several machines but it just failed, maybe that is down to my operating system rather than the software?Printing finish is great, having the ability to manually 'baby step' the first layer nozzle height is amazing and i want this feature on all my other machines now i have experienced it.Its not noisy, normal 3d printer loudness, which isn't too bad considering there are 2 x hot ends fans in the print head cage along with the blower fan too! Maybe the only feature that will need upgrading in the future is the cold air duct - but again i think that is personally preference and i've upgraded it on all my other machines so nothing new there really.One tip i would give is to try and only change one filament at a time, as opposed to pulling them both out as what can happen is PLA likes finding the path of least resistance and as you shove one down into the nozzle it can work its way back up the other side if its empty. So far i have found it best to remove one at a time and then manually feed both down the tubes at pretty much the same time, no nozzle clogs so far. Also remember if you are printing single colour (which this machine does great too) you should leave filament in the unused extruder - again for the path of least resistance reason!Overall a very nicely built machine, can see the improvements with time over the A30 i also have, maybe would've been nice to have dual z motor axis, and a bit more instructions/video on the colour change methods and options.Personally i think its not a beginners machine, but its not rocket science either and considering i went straight in for a multi colour print first (ignoring the demo models on the SD card) it printed great with just a few tweaks from my existing settings for other machines.Nice work Geeetech making multi colour printing affordable!

When I saw this dual extruder Ender 3 clone I thought it was the perfect addition to my existing Ender 3 as I'd been playing with the multi-coloured filaments and love the effects you get as the colours change and blend.However it appears that this printer unlike the Ender 3 which is built to a standard is instead built to a price. The instructions are poor at best which caused what should have been a quick build to take longer than it should.Regardless I got the machine built, powered it up with some trepidation and all appeared to be good. So I proceeded to calibrate the bed level, this all went without too much of a hitch. Then I decided to print one of the test models provided on the 1Gb memory card (really 1Gb in this day and age when they are so cheap?!?).The bed and print head moved themselves to their start position, the display showed 'heating bed' or similar, there was a small pop and a flash from the top rear of the motherboard box on the left and the display goes blank (hence why I can't tell you the exact message). I powered the printer off and on and the display came back up, so I proceeded to try again, but as soon as I selected a file to print the screen would go blank. Bottom line, after several attempts of re-booting the printer and trying options in the menu's I found that as soon as any attempt to heat the bed was undertaken the machine would crash. It appears that the circuitry on the motherboard that drives the heating of the bed had blown (the original pop and flash) and subsequently was shorting out or similar.At this point I decided to disassemble the printer again, pack it back neatly in its box and return it to Amazon for a refund.It is a pity as it could be a really good printer if a bit better quality control and detail were applied to it, but I guess the price point simply doesn't allow this. Of course if I'd had a different sample maybe all would have been well and good, but having previously had many reliability problems with a Biqu Magician and having had to go through the whole return/re-order cycle several times before giving up and buying the Ender 3 (which assembled perfectly and has been 100% reliable since) I have no appetite to try again with this model.

What can I say about this printer. It's my 4th Printer (my 3rd Geeetech device) I also have an A10 and A30. This printer is another example of a rock solid build and setup.Assembly was a piece of cake and took 10 minutes following a simple you tube build video.Leveling the bed is really straight forward with the built in corner leveling guide, and like my A10 and A30 the super plate means you don't need to mess about with glue - just keep it clean and hot and you will have no adhesion issues. It really does work.1st print was the dogs off the SD card with a gradient and the quality was spot on and I was quickly able to print the other test file. Once I was happy with the test print I was able to use the GEEETECH provided colour mixing software which is a doddle to use and makes colour mixing of precreated GCODE files dead easy.I struggled a little with CURA looking for config files but GEEETECH support provided a link to the forum where I was able to download CURA JSON machine files and dual 2:1 extruder configs ready to go as well as some really clear instructions on how to set up virtual extruder in CURA, so I can now select 1 of 5 different mix ratios direct in cura for printing.This for me is a perfect colour mix printer, its got a good bed size (255 x 255 x255) and comes with marlin pre-installed so adding the 3D touch I'd bought separately was simple and it gives me scope to upgrade to Marlin 2.0 and play with features like unified bed levelling.Overall if you are looking for a colour 2:1 mixing printer you can't go far wrong, it's a little dearer that the A10M but the increased build volume makes this a much more versatile machine and the 2:1 hot end seems to be rock solid and reliable - No clogs at all to date.