Table of Contents
The TEVO Tarantula is the 1ST DIY kit 3D printer from the Chinese manufacturer TEVO. It has a construction volume of 200x 200x 200 mm and can be used with a variety of different filaments ranging from PLA, TPU, PETG, ABS and many more.
To make the Tarantula print good there had to be a lot of upgrades, but of course, it is a DIY Machine. Once you got the machine dialled in, after many hours of print time and upgraded the 3D printer printed great quality prints. There are a lot of printable modifications for STL, OBJ repositories. These can be found on Thingiverse, Cults, Cgtrader and other downloadable 3D model websites.
After three years of Tevo designing and selling their 3D printers and a lot of user comments and reviews. They must have thought we need to go back to the Tarantula and make the machine better and they did! Calling it the Tarantula Pro.Â
In this article of the Tevo tarantula Pro review we will be going over features looks how we compare it to the original Tevo tarantula, and much more.
Homers Odyssues And Homers Odyssues RS
The new Homers Odyssues Pro and Odyssues RS look identical there are differences between them. Tevo has now re-branded to Homers. I can’t understand the reason behind this move because the company in my eyes were doing a good job, and now this will more than likely be a set back for them, lets get on to the Tevo tarantula Pro review.
To find out more information about these two 3D printers have a look at the articles bellow
About The Pro
The Tarantula Pro is an FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) 3D Printing technology. This is the standard format for most home desktop and consumer-grade 3D Printers. FDM printers like the Tarantula Pro have become the norm for most hobbyists and small businesses looking to take advantage of prototyping and even end-use products. FDM 3D Printers produce physical objects by interpreting the information from a CAD file and a slicing application like Cura or Simplify3D then laying down plastic layer by layer until your virtual concept becomes a physical object in the real world.
Software
The Tarantula Pro, like many similar i3 based FDM printers, is an open-source 3D printer and can, therefore, take advantage of the current slicers available. Slic3r, CURA, Simplify3D, CraftWare, MatterControl – to name a few.
Why Is The Tarantula Pro Better?
In our opion we prefair the PRO better for the following reasons, but we aren’t going to go into every little detail just the sections we found that had been improved alot more, please read on.
Tarantula (PROS)
- Good Print Quality (once modded)
- Highly Moddable
- Inexpensive
- Active User Community
Tarantula (CONS)
- Frame Isn’t Rigid Enough
- Poor Quality Control
- Infuriating Instructions
- Missing Essential Parts
Tarantula PRO (PROS)
- Unique Aesthetic
- Highly Versatile
- Inexpensive
- Great Packaging
- Heats Quickly
- Great Print Quality
Tarantula PRO (CONS)
- Takes a Couple Of Hours To Build
- One Part Was Counter Sunk The Wrong Way
- Bolts Go Through The Bed
Athstetics And Frame
The Tevo Tarantula came with aluminium extrusions for the frame, plastic pulleys running in the extrusions’ grooves and XY axes are belt-driven. Z is driven with a leadscrew. With the structure being so weak and unstable, it needed to be modified quite a bit by printing new brackets.
Acrylic parts ranging from the LCD screen, motherboard and base of the print bed, the acrylic parts break easily if under stress. I have experienced this before, and it is very time consuming having to re-print parts to replace the broken brackets. The layout, you say? I don’t see a design just a mess of randomly placed pieces. It was not a very appealing 3D printer to look at.
For the Tarantula PRO, the frame comes with the standard black colour scheme. There are two Z extrusions that are 40mm x 20mm x 424mm, the X extrusion is 20mm x 20mm x 345mm and last of all the Y extrusion is 40mm x 20mm x 394mm. The only acrylic part is for the z limit switch which is not a structural part, so it won’t matter if this is made out of plastic but if it does break it won’t take long to design and re-print. The rest of the brackets are aluminium with a beautiful sparkly anodised green. The part that struck my eyes is the front screen face cover.
That has slots for the LCD screen and memory card. It also helps hide the cables, MKS Genl V1.0 Control Board, MKS MINI12864 LCD screen and of course the power supply keeping everything all neat and clean. I’m loving the fact that Tevo is now re-designing their 3D printers to have a nice design with a touch of colour. I like having a colour theme for my 3D printers instead of dull old black. The machines that have colour seem to attract people more.
Tarantula Pro Review – Technical
Cable management
The Tarantula had virtually no cable management at all to make the cables look a bit better and neater you had to think out of the box. The wires are all over the place you needed to use zip ties and cable sleaves. There was no quick and easy way to take the cables out of the control box you had to unscrew the top cover on the mks board to get to the wires.
For the Tarantula PRO, on the other hand, comes with the cables in a braided sleeve and with a quick way to disconnect the cables from the mainboard the wires are more hidden and looks more appealing to the eye.
Power Supply
On to the messy power supply for the Tarantula, this was a nightmare sitting on the table right next to the printer is this box with a lot of cables coming out of it maybe about six roughly that all went to the control board that was a hazard.
The Pros power supply is under the frame; this makes it all hidden; there is not much more to say about it.
Features
Extruder – Hotend
It was a long time ago since I had the Tarantula I can’t remember precisely what the hotend was I did try and do some research but couldn’t find much information regarding the extruder. I’m not 100% sure but I think it was the Tevo clone E3D Chimera.
Now on to the pro, this has an E3D Volcano Hotend clone. The advantages of this are faster printing speeds. I do have a genuine E3D Volcano on one of my other printers; this is an all-metal hotend, the clone, on the other hand, I’m not sure, also we cant leave out the extrude which is the titan.
Layer Cooling
Tarantula comes with no layer cooling what so ever so you do need to print one.
I’m glad Tevo took out the Tarantula PRO with dual fan layer cooling. Besides helping with overhangs, you can print a lot faster due to the layers bellow cooling quicker.
Print Bed
The Tarantula has good adhesion but could be better. Comes with no insulation under the heatbed this can make the bed temperature fluctuate more. The aluminium beds have been known to be warped.
Excellent adhesion on the Tarantula Pro print surface but please do not squish the filament too much or you won’t get your 3D print off. You do not need any products to keep your print stuck to the bed lets rule out what you don’t need, the popular one’s glue stick, hairspray, 3dlac, filaprint. This 3D printer comes with insulation under the heat bed a cosey evenly heated print surface with no warpage.
General Specification
- Technology: FDM
- Year: 2019
- Assembly: DIY kit
- Mechanical arrangement: Cartesian-XZ-Head
- Manufacturer: Tevo 3D
- Filameter diameter:Â 1.75 mm
- Third-party filaments:Â Yes
- Materials:Â PLA, ABS, Flexible PLA, Wood, PVA, HIPS
- Build volume:Â 235 x 235 x 250 mm
- Outer dimensions: 434 x 333 x 504 mm
- Recommended Slicer: Repetier (provided)
- Operating systems: Windows, Mac OSX, Linux
3D Printing Properties
- Accuracy:Â X/Y-axes +/-50 micron, Z-axis +/- 10 micron
- Layer height: 50– 350 microns
- Feeder system: Bowden drive
- Extruder type: Single
- Nozzle size: 0.4 mm
- extruder temperature: 240°C
-  heated bed temperature: 70°C
- print speed: 150 mm/s
- Frame: Aluminum
- Print chamber: No
- Temperature controlled print chamber:Â No
- Bed leveling: Manual
- Print bed: Heated
- Display: LCD Screen
- Firmware:Â Marlin
- Connectivity: SD, USB cable
- Built-in camera: No
- Print recovery: No
- Filament sensor: No
Un-Boxing What Have We Got Here
Set-up Of The Beast
3D Printing
Models:
- Frozen / Tigger/ Owl / Joker /Â Benchy / Test / Shao Khan / Venom Pool / Freddy Kruger / Cloud Strife
Was All Of This Worth It
The Tarantula Pro is a fantastic, friendly beginner 3D printer that comes as a DIY kit but is very easy to assemble. There are several YouTube video tutorials online that make this a reasonably straight-forward build. Most people should be able to assemble the Tarantula Pro between 45 minutes to 90 minutes, depending on your skill level. I enjoyed the build process and have since been using my Tarantula Pro for many hours every day. The quality of the prints out of the box is excellent, and with a few tweaks to your slicer’s profile for the Tarantula Pro, you will print superior quality models, comes with additional accessories.
But in the meantime, if you are unaware who Tevo are or what other products they have read on.Â
- Who Are Tevo All About them
- Tarantula RS 3D Printer – 32Bit?
- Nereus 2019
- Tevo Pulsar DLP Reaching New Heights
- Tarantula Pro Community Questions And Answers
- Tevo Flash Review
- Tevo Tornado Gold Edition
Â
The Tarantula Pro is a fantastic, friendly beginner 3D printer that comes as a DIY kit but is very easy to assemble. There are several YouTube video tutorials online that make this a reasonably straight-forward build. Most people should be able to assemble the Tarantula Pro between 45 minutes to 90 minutes, depending on your skill level. I enjoyed the build process and have since been using my Tarantula Pro for many hours every day. The quality of the prints out of the box is excellent, and with a few tweaks to your slicer's profile for the Tarantula Pro, you will print superior quality models.
