Artillery Sidewinder X1 V4.0 Experience

After my Creality reality from a few years ago, I was disappointed, to say the least in how things turned out using the CR10S Pro. I was pretty impressed when I first got it. it's a stunning design and way better than the previous offering in the product line. The Pro indicated that for the higher price, you get a more finished product that could handle just about anything you throw at and it did up until I discovered it had a flaw which was why I could not print TPU anymore and was the main reason for writing this article and why I must move off this platform. 

The flaw was in the hotend design. The way it was discovered came from a well-known beta tester. This is a Bowden system which means it uses something called a TPFT tube to connect to the hotend this tubing gets inserted inside the hotend and touches the nozzle that is screwed into the heating block. What happens is the tube starts to creep up leaving a gap between the tube and the nozzle causing a filament flow leak this stops the flow of filament and hence no printing. There is a workaround but not getting too much into its detail this must be performed every 4 to 5 months and this is not what I expected from a pro system. I had all kinds of anomalies from bed adhesion to printer noise Currently they have not addressed the hotend issue and most likely never will. Their solution is to always purchase the next model.

After expressing my frustration on FaceBook forums with this situation to Creality they never responded to me, in fact, some of my posts that I mentioned about getting a direct drive option from third party companies or just replacing the hotend with a volcano had been deleted and not because I was insulting them in any way they just didn’t seem to want that out there.

Then something happened I started hearing about this new system which was being talked about with all the YouTube makers some even dub it the Creality Killer This new system didn’t use a Bowden tube it was direct-drive much more suitable for printing all kind of filaments even TPU it was the Artillery Sidewinder X1. This had to affect sales for Creality because not too long after this Creality had an announcement. They also had a direct drive system they called it CRS10S v2 but it seemed rushed to market. Gone was the modern look they went back to the old sidecar power supply style they started with they told me “they wanted it to be more fun for the user” Bullshit! and even though the advertising had the direct-drive pictured in it they said it was not ready and would be an option. Double Bullshit!

I had to make a move so I put the CR10S Pro aside and made room for the new Artillery Sidewinder X1 coming from China. I could have gotten one in the US but no one was selling the updated version 4 here which had all the current improvements and updates so I opted to get that one and wait.

09/18/2019 - For this purchase, I opted to use Alibaba and had an interesting conversation with George he assured me it was going to be V4 when it arrived. This was ordered from China then it gets shipped to a warehouse in CA which is sort of a landing port for this reseller from there it gets shipped to me. The total time could be 15 days.

10/2/2019 - It has arrived! I know you have seen unboxing of these before but you have to marvel at how well this thing has been packaged the care they took to protect it in shipping does show. You have the base which pretty much is just waiting for the gantry to be attached to it. then it just follows the instructions for plugging everything in and you're done about 35 to 40 min. Also, you get a pouch of tools and what’s missing is a set of nippers and a roll of test filament which all come with other 3D printers as standard stuff we all get SSWAG

If you follow the instructions and most people don’t it brings you to the last thing you must do which is leveling the bed. With this unit, it's done manually and I have no problems with that. If you just rush into this and skip this most important step you most likely will have the nozzle dig into the glass build plate. My first print was from the supplied USB stick It's a test cube with the Artillery logo on it. It printed flawlessly and then I took the plunge and tried TPU. At first, I had wanted to use a cheaper TPU filament but that was a no-go so I had some smaller rolls of the more expensive TPU it works perfectly and I have been printing ever since.

As much as I wanted to make my investment with Creality work they didn’t want to address my issues or anyone else's for that matter. So because of this, I had to move on but you don’t have to go through the same thing just get yourself an Artillery Sidewinder X1 V4.0 or higher and be done with it. Now the Artillery is not perfect the flat cable connected to the hotend had worked its way out of the connector sockets. All I had to do was push them back in and now other makers have created a part that keeps this from happening but that's it. I really can't find anything else I would say is a deal-breaker for $400.00, this system is as close to perfect as you are going to get.

07/15/2024 - It's been some time since I updated this article but I have to say I'm using the Artillery Sidewinder as a backup now. The main 3D Printer I'm using today is a Bambu Lab P1S. Hands down this is one of the best 3d printers around not only for ease of use and maintenance but the prints that come off the build plate are always stunning. Bambu with the release of these printers has revolutionized the world of 3D printing and all the manufacturers took notice. I've been printing with this for over a year now and gone are the days of countless bed leveling. The only drawback is the size of the build plate 256x256x256 much smaller than the Artillery Sidewinder but I think we should see a larger one coming from Bambu soon. Creality on the other hand has made a few attempts to copy Bambu and the current Creality K2 Plus is close but not perfect. My advice is to wait until Bambu releases its larger format they just may change the world of 3D printing again. 

Link to Alibaba - https://tinyurl.com/y46c7s75 - Speak to George
3D SoluTech on Amazon - https://tinyurl.com/y6yzqwpp
GearBest - https://tinyurl.com/rq72htz