Airwolf 3D 3D Printer Axiom

I bought an axiom (I guess one of the first ones they shipped) and it has been a lemon so far, they took their own sweet time in letting us return it to them for repair (it was in the 14 grace period that Airwolf gives) In fairness the machine had been damaged in shipment and they shipped us replacement parts, We got a few decent prints (nothing to write home about) then it stopped working we spent maybe 40 hours trying with and without tech support from Airwolf and they couldn't make it work so we decided to return it and see if they could get it fixed for us. I'm not real impressed with a $5000 printer (with options and materials) that doesn't work out of the box despite them telling us the machine had been run in before it left their factory. The damage was a scratch on the front door and the card reader wouldn't read (the usb port still works) the software is a real weak point the machine comes with three different software packages none of it written by Airwolf they are all cluged up attempts at using other online software. The machine appears well made except fo the 3-D printed parts holding the hot end and a few other bits. It seems a company selling 3-D printers, that uses 3-D printed parts would at least use decent looking parts. I have one cubex Trio (ugg) two XYZ davinci 1.0 (nice $500 machines) and one Einstart that is $700 and the prints put all of these machines to shame (yup). I really hope that Airwolf steps up and changes my mind because I WANT to like this machine, it's built in the US, looks great and if it had software that looked 10% as good as the machine I would love it, but in the end this is like all machines, it's a tool and if the tool doesn't work it's a waste of time and money. C'mon Airwolf step up.

I want to love this beautiful printer but alas, under the skin, it is a rough, over hyped under achiever. We are on our second replacement printer. It is very erratic and noisy. Everything breaks. It is impossible to find settings that allow it to print as well as the Ultimaker 2. The output is more like the M3D for over $5000 more. The idea of a fully enclosed system is excellent, but relying on a cantilevered bed and a Bowden tube and lots of poorly printed parts, non-rigid actuation system with mismatched hardware and firmware result in something more like a Frankenstein hash together. Airwolf does not provide Axiom specific software. I uses hijacked Cura and others that were not exactly intended for this printer. If you want to tinker attempting to make a silk purse out of a sows ear this is your machine. On the other hand, if you need to make parts, keep looking.

I had a hard time deciding on what rating to give this. Our main use is for printing polycarbonate parts, so we originally purchased an airwold Hd2X. That printer worked well for the most part but we had a lot of problems with warping. When we saw this model was fully enclosed we decided to get it. At first, we were very happy with its performance and at the time I would have given it a rating of 5 stars. However, after a few prints it started to have issues with the Z-axis and was not moving properly. Tech support tried to help us solve the issue, and we went through a lot of trouble shooting, replacing motors and even the rambo board, but ultimately we had to send the unit back for repair. While this was covered under warranty, we had to pay the shipping (which was not trivial), and we wasted several weeks and many hours trying to solve the issue prior to this. While they were very pleasant to deal with and tried their best to help solve the issue, I think that since we received a faulty product they should have replaced it as I am afraid that it will start acting up again and this was nothing that we did. We now have the printer back and it seems to be working well, but I am living in fear that it will break any print. So, my overall opinion is that this is a great printer, especially for polycarbonate, but I would be wary about ordering one based on the issues we had. Hopefully we just had a lemon...