Anycubic Kobra Max 3D Printer Review

Interface

The Interface is how you interact with the printer itself, this is how you will change settings and calibrate it. You will be using the interface for pretty much everything so you’d hope it’s easy to use and functional, that is why we are having a look at it, to understand if this is going to be a user-friendly experience or if you will be struggling to work it.

The main menu of the interface is well laid out and easy to understand, there is a temperature readout at the top for monitoring the printer and knowing if it is preheated or cooled down, There is also buttons to access four different sub-menus which we will take a closer look at individually.

Within the print menu is a list of all of the G.code loaded onto the micro SD card, to print one you simply select it and press print. The codes are all presented in a single list that you can scroll through with the arrow buttons below the list, unfortunately, the printer will display all files that are loaded onto the SD card even if they aren’t G.code, this could be confusing for someone new to 3D printing. One last gripe I have here is the inability to put the files in folders for keeping the file list clean and easy to navigate, both of these issues could be fixed through a firmware update though.

When printing, the display shows a screen that gives you information on the status of the print and information on the temperatures the printer is running at. At the bottom of the page is the option to pause or stop the print and a settings page that lets you tweak settings mid print.

On the prepare page there are three options, a levelling option, a preheating option and a filament option.

The levelling page contains the option to run the LeviQ automatic bed levelling and the ability to adjust the Z-offset, this is a vital thing to configure before you start printing a lot since this will affect the quality of the entire print, as you can see with our calibration cube tests.

The preheat page is very simple, it gives you a readout of the current nozzle and bed temperature and two buttons, one to preheat for PLA and one to preheat for ABS.

In the filament tab, there are three options, a filament remove option and a filament in option, each of these will preheat the printer to the correct temperature if it isn’t already at it and then you wait for the extruder to bring it out or in depending on what you are doing and a stop button for halting the process of what is currently going on, you will need this for both other options as it will continue to run either way until you tell it to stop.

The tools page has more options than any other page, starting with a move axis option, then a temperature option, followed by a speed option and finishing up with a light option and motor option, each of which are toggles and have no sub-menu.

The move axis menu is as it sounds, it allows you to move any axis in any direction you want in either 0.1mm, 1.0mm or 10mm increments.

The temperature page contains information on the current temperatures and the ability to change the target temperature.

Speed is as it sounds, giving you to change the current fan and print speed and also change the target speed for each, this would be a way of manually changing these values instead of relying on the software to do it automatically, and the same goes for the temperature settings.

The Final page to look at is the system page, this contains the ability to change the language of the interface, the “voice” which is actually just a toggle for the volume of the notification beep and an about screen with firmware version listed.