The Sovol Pro SV01 is a budget FDM 3D printer with some interesting features for its price class. I personally took a very close look at it and tested it for over 100 hours to see if it is a good printer.
As a whole, the Sovol SV01 Pro is a good budget printer with a direct extruder and a big print volume. The quality of the printer is great and it’s easy to set up and work with. The heated bed does not spread the heat well so the bed temperature has to be adjusted slightly for each print.
The pros and cons of the SV01 Pro:
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Large build volume with 280*240*300 mm | Bad heat distribution of the heated bed |
| Direct extruder | The fans are quite loud |
| Budget-friendly printer | |
| 200g PLA filament included | |
| Easily and quickly assembled |
I did test the Sovol SV01 Pro very thoroughly and I printed a big project with it to see how well it prints even after printing over 100 hours on it.
And here is how that went.
Features of the Sovol SV01 Pro
The SV01 Pro from Sovol comes with quite a few features:
- Direct extruder
- Auto bed leveling
- Touch screen
- Flexible build plate
- Filament sensor
- 280*240*300 mm build volume
- Dual Z-axis
The two most interesting features of the Sovol SV01 Pro are the direct extruder and the big build volume.
Both of these features are quite unique for a 3D printer of that price range. The SV01 Pro costs around 330$. You can check the price on their official site right here.
Assembly
The assembly was really simple and fast. It took me around 5 minutes from unpacking the machine to turning it on for the first time.
The printer comes already 95 % pre-assembled. All that you have to do is screw the z-axis to the base and plug in all of the cables.
The cables are labeled and the instructions are very easy to follow and heavily illustrated.
What You Get With the Printer
The SV01 Pro comes with the usual stuff:
- Tools for tightening and assembling the printer
- Pliers
- A metal spatula
- A spare 0.4mm nozzle
- A micro SD card
- A needle to fix clogged nozzles
- Some cable ties
- A 200g PLA mini spool
Most of the things that are being delivered with the SV01 Pro are pretty standard with the exception of the 200g PLA spool.
Normally you only get a 5m PLA test piece that is barely enough to print a tiny benchy but Sovol gives you enough filament to finish your first small project. This is a really nice change that I really appreciate.
Bed Leveling
Once the printer is assembled you have to level the printer.
This is luckily very easy as the SV01 Pro has an auto-leveling feature utilizing a bl touch sensor.
The printer will move to 9 separate locations on the bed sensing and saving the distance from the printing head to the bed.
Finally, the print head will move to the center where you can set the right distance of the nozzle to the printing bed with the help of a thin piece of paper.
After the whole leveling process, the printer is finally ready for printing.
Print Quality
The overall print quality of the SV01 Pro is really good.
First, I printed a benchy, and aside from some stringing the print quality was very convincing.
I printed another benchy, the Cali Dragon from McGybeer, in PLA. And that turned out really well too. Again, some issues with stringing but the details turned out great and the overhangs were also very good.
Finally, I also printed a Cali Dragon in ABS and TPU. Both turned out very well as you can see here.
Accuracy
The printer is accurate enough to do pretty much any project you like with it. The Z-axis is very accurate but the X and Y-axis are off by about 1%.
I tested this by printing several calibrations cubes and then measuring every side to see how accurate the dimensions of the cube were printed.
The Z-axis was exactly 20 mm high which is perfect. The X and the Y-axis were both off by about 1% with 19.8mm each.
This is normal with budget 3D printers and really doesn´t have any impact on prints. The printer is accurate enough for pretty much any hobby project you want to do with it.
Heated Bed Temperature
The heated bed is quite big on the SV01 Pro and, unfortunately, it has some minor issues because of its size.
The heating element that will heat up the printing bed is located in the middle of the print bed. So the further we get to the edges of the print bed the colder the print bed will get.
On smaller print beds this is usually just one or two degrees Celcius difference but on bigger printers, this can become an issue as the difference becomes too great and prints might not adhere to the print bed properly.
I tested the heat distribution of the heated bed by preheating the print bed to 70°C. Then I waited 10 minutes before measuring the temperature of the print bed. The center of the bed had 70°C while the edges only had 67°C and the corners sometimes only had 59°C.
This is a little annoying when you want to print something that uses the whole volume of the print bed because the print might not adhere to the corners or the edges of the print bed as you can see below.
You can easily work around this issue by raising the bed temperature by about 8°C for each print to ensure that the minimum temperature can be reached even at the corners of the bed.
And just like that, the SV01 Pro printed the model perfectly.
Noise
The Sovol SV01 Pro is pretty silent if it weren’t for the very loud fans on the print head.
These cheap fans can be switched for high-quality ones though if you wanted to upgrade the SV01 Pro at some point to make it quieter.
During printing with fans running at full power, the Sovol SV01 Pro reaches about 60 decibels. This is about as loud as a normal conversation or as loud as an air conditioner.
My Thoughts After Printing for Over 100 Hours
Ever since I got the Sovol about a week ago I printed almost nonstop on the printer.
I printed the honeycomb storage wall by RostaP. The walls needed the full build volume of the SV01 Pro and I printed 6 of them.
I also printed several organizers and tool hooks for the honeycomb storage wall.
While printing all of these models with different PLA filaments I never ran into any issues.
Every single print came out well after adjusting the bed temperature and the print quality was slightly above average. And that is really good for a printer in this price class.
I can recommend the SV01 Pro from Sovol to anyone who is searching for a budget printer with a big build volume. The direct extruder is a nice add-on that will allow you to easily print TPU.
Hi, I am a passionate maker and professional prop maker for the entertainment industry. I use my woodworking, programming, electronics, and illustration know-how to create interactive props and puzzles for Escape Games and marketing agencies. And I share my knowledge and my experience on this blog with you so that you can become a maker yourself.