The Anycubic Vyper is an exceptional 3D printer for both beginners and advanced makers. Though calibration and quality control issues may frustrate some users, the prints are impressive once everything is dialed in. 

Key Features
  • 16-point auto-leveling
  • TMC2209 silent stepper driver
  • 4.3-inch touch screen
  • Heated print bed
  • 32-bit motherboard including Cortex M3 main control chip
  • Spring steel magnetic platform
  • Double-gear extrusion system
  • High-precision double screw design
Specifications
  • Brand: Anycubic
  • Build Volume: 245 (L) mm x 245 (W) mm x 260 (H) mm
  • Printing Accuracy: 0.1 mm
  • Connectivity: USB, SD-card
  • Heated Build Plate: Yes
  • Feed Type: Bowden tube via dual gear extruder
  • Dimensions: 508mm × 457mm × 516mm
  • Weight: ~10 kg
  • Dual-Color Printing: No
Pros
  • Large print area for sizable prints
  • Easy assembly
  • Common-sense interface
  • Low noise
  • Auto-leveling is great for novice users
  • Textured surface resists fingerprints
  • Included Cura profiles
  • Wide variety of filament choices
  • Beautiful prints when dialed-in
Cons
  • Auto-leveling didn't work on first try
  • Settings require tweaking to get good prints
  • Difficult to achieve consistency in models
  • Magnets installed incorrectly in tool drawer
  • Hot end components seem inaccessible on our demo model
Buy This Product
Anycubic Vyper

 

When you first see what you can do with 3D printing, it’s hard to keep your imagination from running wild. Your head fills with possibilities, and you start to convince yourself that it wouldn’t take that long to make a full-sized Iron Man costume. But to make those superhero dreams come true, you’ll need a 3D printer.

Anycubic is a company that has been making 3D printers since 2015. Some reviewers have even called the company’s i3 Mega the best 3D printer under $300. But in the world of 3D printing, you have to evolve, or you get left behind.

For Anycubic, this evolution comes in the form of its new Vyper 3D FDM Printer. But is this printer truly an evolution, or is it a step back? Let’s find out.

Build Quality and Design

Like its namesake, the Vyper is a sleek and relatively silent creature with some killer surprises. The most prominent of which are the new self-leveling and heated bed features. At its core, the Vyper is an FDM 3D extrusion printer built to compete with printers like the Creality CR-6 and the Elegoo Neptune 2. Normally, the Vyper retails for $359, but Anycubic is currently offering an early-bird discount to the first 3000 buyers.

Stepper Motor Detail

These types of budget-level hobbyist printers are ideal for folks getting started in 3D printing. That said, the Vyper will also work well for more experienced users.

Vyper build plate

Based on testing, we found it a competent unit once we dialed in all of the settings. We’ll discuss settings in just a moment, but first, let’s talk about some other features.

The Vyper offers a 245 x 245 x 260 mm print area with a removable magnetic build surface. This large-sized surface means that you can print large parts and multiple parts without issues. In addition, the textured build plate is said to be scratch-resistant and is flexible for easy removal of completed prints.

Vyper touch screen

The bed on the unit is also heated. If you’re new to 3D printers, a heated bed helps keep the extruded plastic warm. This warmth allows for better print adhesion of the first layer and better overall print quality. The Vyper also includes a color screen and an easy-to-use software interface.

Related: Everything You Need to Know About 3D Printing

Hot End, Sensors, and Electronics

Vyper hotend assembly

The Vyper is equipped with an all-metal, volcano-style hot end with what looks like a full aluminum heatsink. Additionally, there are dual cooling fans built into the hot end’s cover that help mitigate heat. Anycubic’s unique double-gear extruder feeds filament into a Bowden tube and down to the .4mm brass nozzle. The Vyper also includes a filament runout sensor.

Underneath the hood of the Vyper is a 32-bit Cortex M3 architecture high-performance main control chip capable of handling resolutions down to .1 mm. As for noise level, to minimize this snake’s hiss, Anycubic has included an integrated TMC2209 silent-stepper driver. Overall, this means the stepper motors are almost silent.

What’s Included in the Box?

What's in the box?

Inside the box for the Vyper, you’ll get:

  • The Vyper base and frame
  • The display screen
  • A filament holder
  • 4 x M4 x 45 screws with washers
  • 3 x M5 x 14 screws
  • A data cable
  • The power cord
  • A section of test filament
  • A replacement nozzle
  • An SD card and USB SD card reader
  • An After-Sale service card
  • A tool kit which includes: a scraper, hex-head wrenches, box-end wrenches, a pair of snips, and a nozzle cleaning tool
  • The assembly instructions and tips sheet

Assembling the Anycubic Vyper

Filament switch into extruder

The Vyper goes together quickly. Four hex-head screws attach the base to the Z-axis frame, which includes the gantry. Three additional bolts connect the screen to the base. Unfortunately, in our demo, one of these bolts was missing, so we only used two. Once you’ve installed these seven bolts, you’ve completed most of the assembly.

After assembling the frame and the screen, you’ll need to plug in the stepper motors and other sensors. But the data cable routes these connections close to each endpoint which makes connecting everything foolproof. Additionally, Anycubic used zip-ties to secure some of the components during shipping, so you’ll also need to remove these. After that, you’ll set the proper voltage coming from your wall outlet, plug the Vyper in, and switch on the unit. It’s that easy.

Leveling and Calibrating the Vyper

Vyper Logo Detail

As for leveling, one of the most significant selling points that Anycubic boasts is the auto-leveling of this unit. So naturally, leveling the print bed was the next step.

Essentially, you’ll tap the Prepare tile on the LCD screen and then on Leveling > Auto Leveling. Once you start the process, the hot end tracks 16 points on the print bed. This process takes about three minutes, and after leveling, you shouldn’t have to make any Z-axis adjustments.

Unfortunately, this is where hit some teething problems. Once the auto-leveling was complete, we started to print the test file, but the nozzle screeched and gouged the print bed. This was surprising because the auto-leveling showed it had correctly completed, so we adjusted the Z-axis slightly and tried to perform the leveling a second time.

This time, the hot end touched down at the lower-left corner of the print bed, then moved to the lower right corner, touched down, and then beeped three times. From there, the unit’s screen froze.

Dual gear extruder

We were concerned that the scraping of the bed had caused some issues with the nozzle, so we removed the cover for the hot end to check the assembly. Sure enough, when the unit scraped, the metal strain gauge holding the hot end had shifted. We adjusted the strain gauge until the hot end was perfectly level, put everything back together, and restarted the auto-leveling process. This time, everything worked.

For someone without any mechanical experience, this issue may have resulted in a sizable amount of frustration. However, for us, it was only a minor inconvenience that offered some additional insight into how Anycubic constructed the Vyper. That said, it’s important to approach the leveling process cautiously. Don’t walk away from the printer during its first print, and don’t trust the leveling to be perfect without a possible Z-axis adjustment.

You load filament on this unit via the extruder and Bowden tube. Like setup, this was an easy process. You get the hot end up to temperature and feed the filament into the dual-gear extruder. Press a few buttons on the touchscreen, and wait until you see filament oozing out of the nozzle.

Slicer and Onboard User Interface

Cura Profile Default Settings

For the slicer, we used Cura as Anycubic included it with the Vyper’s setup materials. There were also three material-specific Cura profiles on the SD card that came with the printer: one for PLA, ABS, and TPU. The owner’s manual also claims that the Vyper also can print PETG and wood.

You control the printer via a 4.3-inch touch screen that is just a bit smaller than an iPhone. This interface isn’t exactly full color—it’s more of a monochromatic blue. The menus are easy to understand, and everything is nested in a logical order. But, the one area of the interface that was confusing was the lack of nested folder access.

Anycubic included two folders on the SD card, but neither was accessible from the touchscreen interface. If you tapped on the folders in the interface, then nothing happened on the screen.

This limitation means that if you’re using an SD card to print g-code files, you’ll need to have them in the card’s root directory. While this isn’t a massive issue if you’re only printing one or two files, if you want to keep lots of files accessible, you’ll have to ensure you have another system of organization. Folders don’t seem to work.

One of the best features of the included interface is the ability to change settings on the fly. So, for example, if you realize your nozzle is just a bit too high or your temps are too low, you can adjust these items while the print is still going. During testing, this feature saved a couple of prints.

Related: How to 3D Print for First Timers and Beginners

Printing Quality on the Anycubic Vyper

Octopus and Benchy test prints

As far as the slicer settings, the included Cura default PLA profile did a decent job of getting passable prints, though there was a bit of banding, and corners weren’t the sharpest. Like many other testers, we used the popular Benchy and calibration cat models available on Thingiverse to dial in the settings. We did find that, like most 3D printers, slower prints resulted in much higher quality. The default printing speed for the Vyper is 80mm/s, which may be a bit too fast, in our opinion.

With the Benchy, hull banding was minimal, though we did get a bit of over extrusion and stringing in a couple of places. We solved this by upping the extruder retraction rate and increasing the retraction speed. And also set the printer profile to print walls before infill, which helped.

Benchy Groot Benchy

There were a few gaps with the default profile settings when bridging, but nothing too extreme. Toying around a bit with infill percentages and print resolutions didn't seem to yield consistent quality results even when using the same model and settings. Some prints came out fantastic, and some had to be stopped because they weren’t going to complete correctly.

Octopus on top of printer

If you think that optimization is fun, and it’s interesting to dial in the settings to try and eke out as much quality as possible, then you'll appreciate this quality. But if you don’t like tinkering, you’ll need to consider calibration when looking at the Vyper.

What Do We Love About the Anycubic Vyper 3D Printer?

Anycubic logo detail

The novice-friendly setup and interface are two notable features here. While leveling didn’t go right immediately, everything functioned great once we worked the kinks out. We've managed to get through almost an entire roll of filament during testing, with around an 80% success rate.

Additionally, from opening the box to printing your first test print takes less than a half-hour, and if you’ve put together and set up these types of printers before, it may go even faster.

The heated bed and flexible spring-steel build plate are also exceptional on the Vyper. These features make removing projects easy, and the textured surface didn’t seem to pick up any fingerprints.

Noise on the unit measured at around 59 dB while fans were at 100%. Of course, turning the fans down would cut that noise out a bit. But, while the fans may be the noisiest part of the unit, once you leave the room, you can barely hear the Vyper. It's also nice to see a wide variety of filament choices that you can use for this printer.

Finally, once you get the settings dialed in, you can achieve fantastic prints with minimal effort. It's shocking some of the prints you can create without the need for babysitting.

What Could Anycubic Improve?

Rear stepper motor

Because the auto-leveling is the main selling point of the Vyper, it was a bit disappointing for this process to go so wonky at the beginning of our testing. Given that this is a demo unit, we always assume that quality will represent the pinnacle of the specific design. So to have this unit gouge the scratch-resistant plate out of the box makes us a little cautious.

Another thing that was concerning with the Vyper was the lack of accessibility to the hot end components. Customization and 3D printing are almost synonymous, and many makers want easy access to parts like the heater block and thermistor.

For the Vyper, the hot end components were tethered in place by the data cable connection. Even after removing the bolts for the cover, some flexible adhesive had to be picked out of the electrical connector. Without doing so, the data cable would not release, which prevented the removal of the cover.

Vyper adhesive on cables

While this might not be an issue for some, for us, accessing the hot end to diagnose the leveling issue was the difference between a working unit and a non-working unit.

In our opinion, preventing access to the physical elements of a commonly customized component doesn't make much sense. And what if a thermistor dies or a nozzle breaks inside the heating block?

We also had a slight issue with the tool drawer. Two rear magnets hold this drawer in place, and it’s a good storage place for having tools close at hand. But for some reason, on our demo unit, the drawer would not close completely. Instead, it stuck out about a half-inch. After some testing, we found the magnets on the drawer installed opposite of their intended polarity.

So, we used a small screwdriver to remove these magnets from the drawer, then reversed them. Then, the drawer snapped shut. The orientation of these magnets is a minor detail, but again, it reinforces the assumption that quality control might not have been great during factory assembly.

Finally, dialing in this machine was done over several days through trial and error. With Anycubic’s included printer profiles and recommended software, one expects the unit to be almost plug-and-play. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case here.

Can You Repair the Vyper?

Filament Roll

Except for the mainboard and the connector mentioned above on the hot end, all of the components of this printer are easily swappable. None of the motors or switches are concealed. Likewise, the nozzle, extruder, Bowden tube, belts, and plate bearings are all on display if something goes wrong. So yes, knowledgeable 3D printer mechanics can fix things if something happens outside of the 1-year warranty period.

Brave souls could attempt removing the hot end, but you may void the warranty if you open the Vyper up. So, do so at your own risk.

Our Verdict: Should You Buy The Anycubic Vyper 3D Printer?

Vyper Featured Image

Yes, but with a few caveats. For a first printer, this unit, like its namesake, might provoke fear unless you’re careful. Be prepared to do some calibration, and don’t expect that you’ll be able to take the unit out of the box as a first-timer and have everything run perfectly. To us, Anycubic designed this printer for those who are comfortable with tuning. That’s not to say that this printer is terrible. It’s terrific, but newbies might not appreciate the steep learning curve here.

On the other hand, once you have adjusted everything the way you like it, the Vyper can generate some genuinely magical prints with a high level of detail. To us, the Vyper would be an excellent fit for a second printer or for someone who would like to add it to an existing farm.

For us, the Vyper is a fine 3D printer with a few kinks that users need to account for. Additionally, Anycubic could improve quality control. Granted, these issues aren’t bad enough missteps to warrant a poor rating. On the whole, the Vyper is a superb printer that might have been perfect if a little more attention was paid to the details.