Nova 3D Whale SE Review - S'alright innit 

Good, fair review, as usual. I have these Nova3D printers: Bene4 Mono (still works great after 3 years), Whale2 (still works great after 2 years), Whale3 SE (works great, have it for about 1 year) and the Whale3 Ultra (have it for about 3 months). All of these Nova3D printers are built like a tank. The optics (LCD and light source) on all of them are way above average, the only disappointment is they used a "matrix" LED on the Whale2 but it still prints very good figurines (the matrix grid artifact is basically invisible on figurines on the Whale2, but flat prints, ugh). The old Bene4 Mono (2K) is of competitive print quality with a Sonic Mini 4K, subjectively quite a bit better even, for the kind of engineering prints I do, probably due to the outstanding mechanics and light source in the Bene4 Mono. The Whale3 Ultra is at nearly "industrial" printer quality, and yes, their heater methodology reliably gets and keeps the temp of the chamber, plate and resin exactly what you set it to, it also does an effective "stirring" action by raising and lowering the build plate while it's heating up before printing. That ball screw is the bees-knees, too. I don't like the one-piece plastic-frame FEP (with FEP built in) that one needs to buy only from Nova3D (AliExpress or Amazon also have it usually), I also had the same problem as you with the punctured FEP on my Whale3 SE. The inner wiring for the z-motor and end stop had disconnected during shipping on the Whale3 Ultra, so I had to plug them back in myself (fortunately it was very easy and intuitive to open the printer and do this). I don't use the Novamaker slicer anymore (the older versions were actually better than Lychee for print quality, and Lychee doesn't support the Whale3 printers so it's moot) - I now only use Voxeldance Tango for these printers, and the results are very satisfying. Regarding the one-piece plastic FEP frame, I made and FDM printed a frame from PA12CF and put ACF in it (😲) and it worked so well for 3 months that I had the same frame machined out of 316L stainless steel for both of my Whale3 printers. Also, I ordered a spare resin vat, the one they sent me was for the "Whale3 Super", and it came with a metal FEP frame. Bottom line, in my opinion the Nova3D Whale3 series are excellent printers (the printers themselves), unfortunately Nova3D didn't put enough effort/resources into UI and QC, which is a shame because the consistent excellent high quality of prints that these printers can do reliably is a step above the other "big" brands, including the GK2. [Nova3D customer support is actually excellent in my experience, they care and try to resolve issues, and their facebook page is quite active]. For me personally, I only care about printer reliability, maintainability and of course repeatable print quality - in my experience, the Nova3D printers are at least a step above the other brands in terms of print results for my use cases, so it was very worth overcoming one-off minor frustrations to get the consistent quality results from Nova3D printers. The Nova3D printers will do until someone actually comes out with an affordable, high-quality large LCD mSLA resin printer with a good light source and optics (not that LED matrix junk) and a real force sensor with effective control firmware (like the Asiga, but less expensive).

You NEED to fix the errors and send another for review. I agree that more competition benefits everyone and hope that you can succeed. BUT.... based on this video I would be very hesitant to buy one of your products until I saw more video reviews saying the issues had been fixed. Best of luck to you!

yeah, this is good, but that's all, it's just good.

@@FauxHammerIt's probably fine for stuff where you just don't want layer lines that require more than a kiss with a sanding sponge. For example, I build movie prop replicas and this thing could pump out the shell parts for a Star Trek tricorder while a better machine with a higher pixel density makes the buttons and light pipes.

always

It’s because it’s not out yet outside of the origin country. It should come down if/when it’s on global release

It's not an issue for me personally with Fauxhammer videos in particular, but I can relate to the general statement. There's a few documentary podcasts I had to drop because they used background "music" consisting of high-pitched clicks, beeps and scratches. Outright painful to me. So I support any calls for changes in background music in these video here as well.

Mine's not coming till tomorrow. but "14k" is absolute bullshit!

I changed my acf last week for nfep because i deformed my acf while cleaning it, changed my settings from the saturn 3 ultra to the normal saturn 3 and have no isue printing, i recomend changing it , i did a calibration test with the ultra settings and it got pulled of the build plate

What would the Mighty 8k do better?

@@FauxHammer Customer service and support 🤷🏾‍♂️

No, I prefer this, much easer to tighten and I tighten one handed

Right!?

agreed on every single point you just made

Yeah, that;s the one they should have sent for testing.

Yeah I have a new video using ACF coming out next week, which is live fir members today. Once again it shows the lines. I’m just convinced I just got lucky on the Saturn 3 Ultra

​@@FauxHammerinteresting, but I guess if someone figures out the luck factor, it must be possible to get the best of both worlds. Something there must be repeatable.

just 4 small drainage holes

@@FauxHammer hi Ross, thank you for the reply. That makes sense now.🙂 Great videos and as always full of the info we really need.

Welcome!!! I have just printed an awesome Samurai bust diorama from CA Sculpts. Also, check out black forge games

When obvious firmware issues won't get fixed with a simple firmware update but in future printers *is an absolute red flag.*

me too

thank you! as always!