Airwolf 3D Unveils “Stretch” Professional 3D Printer

Airwolf 3D announced a rather large 3D printer, the new EVO 22. 

The Southern California company has been producing highly reliable 3D printers for professional use for several years. Their equipment has gradually grown in capability over that time, adding the ability to now 3D print a very wide range of engineering materials. 

Some months ago the company announced a machine that was so capable of producing industrial parts they called it the “EVO Additive Manufacturing Center”, rather than simply a “3D printer”. It is in fact a 3D printer, just a really effective one. 

The EVO included all the features you’d expect to find in a professional 3D printer, including a large build volume, ability to 3D print engineering materials, high reliability, network connectivity and more. They now say they can handle around 40 materials. Most notably, it includes internal heaters to precisely control the ambient air of the printing environment well beyond mere stray heat from the print bed. To us it seemed like an excellent choice for professionals.

Now they seem to have improved on the concept by introducing the new EVO 22. 

At first it would appear that the EVO 22 is simply a “stretched” version of the earlier EVO model, made by extending the Z-axis upwards. But upon a deeper comparison of the specifications, that’s not entirely true. 

Let’s compare some key statistics between the EVO and EVO 22:

Build volume: 305 x 305 x 279mm vs 305 x 305 x 578mm. Here it does seem that the EVO 22 has just more than twice the height of the EVO. This, by the way, is how it gets its name: 22 inches tall.

Maximum recommended print speed: 60-150mm/sec vs 100-150mm/sec. So it appears that Airwolf 3D wants you to print more rapidly on the EVO 22. Perhaps this makes sense because the presumably larger prints done on the larger box would get completed faster, or that if you were printing smaller items at slower speeds, you really should use a different model. 

Maximum extruder temperature: 300C vs 315C. Aha – they have increased the maximum temperature, thus allowing the possibility of 3D printing with a few more high temperature materials. 

Maximum bed temperature: 150C vs 160C. Similarly, they’ve increased the maximum temperature on the bed. This again should assist in 3D printing certain high temperature materials that are subject to warping. 

Minimum recommended layer height: 0.200mm vs 0.180mm. This is interesting: in spite of the machine being larger and able to print huge objects, Airwolf 3D recommends a smaller layer size. I would have thought they’d recommend a larger size to print larger objects more quickly. 

Nozzle size: 0.35mm vs 0.80mm. Here we see that they are positioning the EVO as the fine detail machine and the EVO 22 as the faster printing, large scale machine. However, both machines have swappable nozzles and the company provides nozzles in multiple sizes. 

So you can see the EVO 22 is not simply a stretched version of the EVO 22. It’s a slightly more powerful 3D printer that, like the original EVO, has a large number of performance and reliability features. 

Priced at just under USD$12K, the EVO 22 is set to ship in September. 

Via Airwolf 3D