The Peopoly Phenom is one of the best resin 3D printers on the market. Read on to find out the specs, features, performance and price of the 3D printer.
Peopoly Phenom 3D Printer Review
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Printer Set
Let’s start with the equipment.
The Peopoly Phenom 3D printer comes with a bunch of accessories that are sufficient for it to work. Insider the box, you will find:
- A power supply for 24 volts, 6 amperes
- 2 spatulas (metal and plastic)
- A flash drive
- 2 hexagons (screws for attaching the table and bath)
- More spare hardware
- 2 material filters
- Disposable polyethylene gloves
- A table and a bathtub for printing
- Spare film in the kit. This is a definite plus, since it is difficult to find a film of this size on sale.
Check the photos of the items below:
Appearance and Construction
The external dimensions of the Peopoly Phenom 3D printer are 450 x 360 x 780 mm. This is quite big, and even a competing printer like Phrozen Transform seems small against it.
By design, the printer is a black iron box with a large door at the front. The door is covered with a protective window made of orange plastic.
Let’s take a look inside.
Inside the 3D printer is a massive column, along which, on 15 rails, a reinforced frame made of 13 mm aluminum moves.
This structure is driven by a ball screw, which, in turn, rotates in bearings that are also fixed on the column.
The screw communicates with the motor by means of a coupling with a rubber insert. The rubber insert compensates for the misalignment between it and the motor shaft. That’s all mechanically.
You cannot draw any conclusions here, since everything is quite standard for a resin 3D printer, if only there is enough rigidity.
Electronics
Let’s move on to electronics.
The Peopoly Phenom 3D printer is equipped with the ChiTu Motherboard based on a 32-bit STM processor. This is a 2-in-1 board, where one processor controls both the picture and the movement along the axis.
The display controller is a fairly large board mounted towards the back of the printer. We did not identify the controller because the marking on the chip was erased.
This printer has a display with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 px. This is of course 4K. However, because of the size of the matrix, the XY accuracy is 72 microns. For printing large models, this is enough with a margin.
The printer also comes with a ParaLed module with a power of 75W installed as a UV floodlight. Its heat sink takes up most of the space at the bottom of the printer. Moreover, it is directly blown by two 12 cm fans, and 2 more for blowing are at the edges.
Despite such serious cooling, the manufacturer claims that the service life of the diode panel is approximately 400 hours. However, we are sure it can last much longer.
The power supply is installed outside the case, despite there being a lot of free space inside. For this reason, there will always be a rather large black box next to it.
Now let’s talk about what will directly print our models.
Let’s start with the bath.
The bath is made of anodized aluminum and has an impressive working volume of almost 2 liters. In the corner, there is a cut-out that allows easy draining of the material. The film is stretched with a frame screwed from the bottom.
It is a pity that handles are not provided, as on the same Phrozen Transform. This deprives the bath of some convenience.
Let’s take a look at the table.
The table is also made of anodized aluminum. The anode was not removed from the bottom, and this upset me when unpacking this printer.
The sizes of the tables of the Phrozen Transform and the Peopoly Phenom are different. The Peopoly Phenom’s table size is 276 x 155 while that of the Phrozen Transform is 292 x 165. I’m not sure why Peopoly made such a huge case when everything fits perfectly in a more compact one.
Let’s move to testing this unit.
Peopoly Phenom Printer Testing
We calibrated the printer according to the instructions, filled in the resin (we decided to use Phrozen Water Washable Model Gray). From there, we started preparing the models.
The first few prints were not entirely successful. However, when we got resin settings right, we printed a small model and it came out in high quality.
We printed the model, washed it and post-processed it.
Let’s take a closer look at it.
We printed the model of the X-Wing fighter from the Star Wars franchise. The layers on the model are quite visible and vertical streaks appear on the vertical surfaces. Nevertheless, all small details are printed and easily distinguishable. For a print accuracy of 72 microns, this was an excellent result.
For these print sizes, chasing perfectly flat surfaces is completely useless. In general, the printer coped with its task.
Next, we tried to print something bigger.
Second Model
The second model we printed was the Eiffel Tower. This is a larger than our first model.
We have already seen the quality at which this printer prints. Now, let’s talk about time.
This model was printed with a layer of 50 microns and it took 35 hours. This is quite long despite the fact that the layer exposure time is 10 seconds.
Third Model
For the third model, we decided to change the conditions and took a different resin. This time, we chose the Phrozen Aqua Blue.
We decided to print a full-size iron mask. Unlike the Water-washable polymer, this resin has a rather unpleasant odor and can only be worked with in ventilated rooms. But due to the different chemical composition, this resin shines a little faster, sticks better to the table, and generally behaves more stable.
After about 30 hours, the mask was printed.
As you can see for this model, I did not use a solid raft, but made the supports separate. This would save the model in case one of the support sections came off.
The printer’s anodized table has a slightly worse adhesion. The surface quality is good, but the model itself does not have many details. Overall, the quality is clearly better than we could get with an FDM printer.
Peopoly Phenom Review Conclusion
Let’s summarize this review.
Despite some difficulty during the first setup and problems with adhesion of some resins to the table, I really liked the Peopoly Phenom 3D printer. It does an excellent job with its main task – printing large-sized models.
The printer has a friendly interface that is fully compatible with the Chitubox program. It is simple and convenient to work with. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that Peopoly has gained such great popularity as a workhorse for the home and small workshops.
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However, looking at the price of the printer and the cost of materials and maintenance, it is difficult to consider it as hobbyisyt’s 3D printer. However, since the quality of any resin printer today surpasses the quality of FDM, it will be an excellent choice for those who need to either print many models at once, filling the entire table with them, or printing really large parts without gluing and any assembly.
If this is not enough for you, you can get other higher end Phenom models, such as the Phenom L and Phenom XXL, which has a print area of 345 x 195 x 400 and 527 x 296 x 550, respectively.
Disadvantages of the Peopoly Phenom 3D Printer
Let’s now look at the not very good sides of this printer. It’s worth starting with its size.
The Peopoly Phenom is really unreasonably large, while in the print chamber there is a lot of free space. It’s competitor, the Phrozen Transform, has a slightly larger print area, but even the power supply is found inside the case.
The next issue concerns the print bed. Anodizing on a printed bed is not good. Even Anycubic in their MONO line figured it out. And the Phrozen Transform, while not much more expensive, has a milled table.
Finally, we have noise. The printer has 4 12-centimeter fans, which create a tangible air flow. Therefore, there is a lot of air howling such that it’s impossible to stay near a working printer for a long time.
To summarize, the Peopoly Phenom is one of the best printers for the money. Of course, it has some drawbacks.
This printer creates competition in the market of large resin 3D printers. Therefore, other manufacturers will have to reach the quality bar of their products and improve technologies.
And you can make your choice by choosing a printer that ideally solves your tasks in our online store.
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