The PYI Neptune – What has happened to crowdfunding?

A look at a large, promising, 3D printer that tries to check all the boxes, but isn’t quite ready for prime time yet. Also, how not to do crowdfunding.

The PYI Neptune

Nothing i’m going to say about this machine in this video has any sort of relevance. But i’m going to say it anyways.

So this is the PYI Neptune, which is currently being offered on their Indiegogo campaign starting at $699. Which is, simply speaking, amazingly cheap. And towards the end of this video, i kinda want to get into whether that super-cheap price really is a good thing and maybe i can kinda reiterate how that fits into what crowdfunding is supposed to be in the first place.

But before that, let’s stick to the printer itself. So the Neptune is a plus-sized machine, it’s got a 300mm or almost 12inch cube build area, a non-genuine, bowden-fed Volcano hotend, which comes with a few different sized nozzles, definitely a good choice for such a large printer, but of course, it comes with some quality tradeoffs for smaller prints and i would have liked seeing the actual E3D Volcano in here. The linear axes are all riding on Hiwin MGN rails, awesome to see those adapted in more and more applications, and what’s also nice to see is that stationary printbeds which only need to move along the Z-axis seem to finally be getting some more love. So the heated bed is optional, depending on which part of the Indiegogo campaign you read, it’s an extra 89 or $99, and it’s a decently powerful low-voltage silicone heater on the bottom of an unsupported aluminum plate with a clipped-on sheet of glass on top. It also comes with a bed sensor, now since the actual print surface is glass, a standard 4mm sensing distance inductive sensor won’t work, instead they opted for a mechanical sensor that flips down when needed.

The printer’s electronics are hidden out sight behind this panel – the main board is an MKS base and it also comes with an LCD panel, clickwheel and SD card reader in the other corner of the machine.

And what’s kind of impressive is how small the printer is in relation to its build volume. It’s basically a 500mm cube, which is smaller than for example E3D’s BigBox, which i built and reviewed here, but offers a larger build volume at the same time.

So the story behind why i have this printer so early on in its development phase goes something like this: PYI, the newly founded company making the Neptune, contacted me about promoting their Indiegogo project and their printer, and as usual, i went, “well, i have no idea who you are or what your product feels like, so let me have a look at the Neptune first and then we’ll talk about sponsorship and promotion and whatever else you want to do”. So the team personally delivered this machine to me from their headquarters in Slovenia, we had a nice talk and all, and then i started digging into this machine.

And I’ve got to say, i was ever so slightly disappointed by a few things. First of all, i double- and triple-checked with them to make sure this sample was going to be representative of the final machine that would be delivered to the Indiegogo backers, because testing pre-release or beta hardware so far has always left me with quite a bitter taste in the end as either the hardware was finicky to get working at all or still had too many beta-specific flaws and unfinished spots that I’d be forced to overlook in a review situation and simply trust them to improve things before they start shipping. And that’s exactly what is going on with the Neptune, which is why i started out with noting that nothing i’m about to criticize – or praise, for that matter – would have any sort of relevance for the product you should expect to receive when backing this campaign. Point in case: The print quality of this Neptune unit is pretty horrible, it produces some of the worst prints i’ve ever seen from a non-DIY machine. And i have a feeling it might be the bed assembly that’s causing this, as that thing just wobbles around all over the place and squeaks and, you know, just isn’t a particularly nice assembly. It even has the heated aluminum plate as the only structural part directly connected to already splitting printed parts of the Z-axis assembly. And in fact, PYI have already noted that the z-axis and bed assembly is going to end up completely redesigned for the final machines. Which, by the way, has been the last i’ve ever heard back from them after i complained about everything else that was still wrong with the Neptune. So let’s go through that list, shall we? Again, keep in mind that these are flaws i found with this particular unit, the finished and shipped one could end up completely differently, for better or for worse.

First off, screwups on the screws, and as an engineer, this just makes me cringe. And not even the ancient Sells Mendel had that many different screw types – the Neptune packs everything from cap-head inhex screws, countersink machine screws with flat and Phillips heads and even wood screws threaded directly into printed parts with Pozidriv heads. Some of the screws were apparently too long and are adapted with washer stacks, some had the wrong head and were also adapted with oversized nuts as spacers and washer stacks, some which are already splitting, then there are some that are threaded directly into the acrylic panels, which i betcha will split sooner or later, and at a few spots, the screws are completely missing, like here at the electronics cover, others are completely loose.

The next shocking – haha – discovery was that the power socket, reaching into the open build area, has a completely exposed live pad. I mean, it’s one thing when something like that is inside an enclosed compartment, but it’s an entirely different story when you can just reach through the printer and grab your daily dose of 230V at 16A. That s**t hurts.

Then it’s small stuff that could have been so incredibly easily avoided. Corner radii not matching up and exposing the raw cutting edges of the aluminum profiles, or using a heated bed that is way too small for the aluminum plate and will leave you with colder edges.

The bed sensor does seem a bit wonky as well, don’t get me wrong, it works, but when you see a rubber band being used to pre-tension the entire thing, you do have to ask yourself how well that’s going to hold up after being exposed to the heat from the bed for any decent amount of time. These rubber bands wear down and get brittle under any adverse conditions, including heat, so it has no business being used like that in such a sensitive mechanism here. I really don’t see why they didn’t use something a bit more… industrial and simpler for the z-sensor.

And again, even though this was supposed to be a “very close to final” machine, there are still some very rough corners that make it feel more like a design study than a delivery-ready machine like the top acrylic piece being held in place by stuffed-in pieces of heat-shrink tubing, the machine lacking any sort of soft feet, so i had to be really careful not to scratch my work surface here, and the extruder not coming with springs or the like, which would usually be ok if these screws weren’t so incredibly loose.

Ok, so while the Neptune in its current state really isn’t something i’d recommend anyone to purchase, it does hold some promise if it is eventually turned into a finished product. If i find the time to do so, i might fix it up with a direct-drive Titan extruder, a real E3D v6, a larger 230V heated bed, these things are super cheap from China, and an entirely new Z-axis assembly. And that brings me to that entire Kickstarter or not, thing.

So when Crowdfunding started to become a thing, be it Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Patreon or Etherum – ha -, it was all intended to fund creators that offered some sort of value to the community, be it just innovative products, programming or free education. The goal for Kickstarter and Indiegogo specifically wasn’t about selling products, it was about kickstarting businesses, to get them off the ground, when they could not or didn’t want to go for venture funding or bank credits. The reward the community got in return were – intended to be – something closer to a warm “thank you” rather than a heavily discounted pre-order for a product. The thing is, if you have a physical product you want to get out there, making that first batch and the process of even getting there is by far the most cost-intensive process per delivered product a company is ever going to go through, so it totally makes sense to set up a crowdfunding campaign to cover not only the product cost itself, but also account for research and development, legal, marketing, labor costs, certifications, documentation, customer support and service and so on. Oh, and a buffer in case things go wrong, because something will go wrong at some point. And that’s the same reason why i thinks it’s ridiculous when people tell me “hey, Tom, just start making your own 3D printers and sell them!” Well yeah, it seems super easy from the outside, but to do it properly is an enormous can of worms you’re opening up.

And for those reasons, Kickstarter campaigns that are set up to only generate presales for a product that’s just barely out of its concept stage, especially when said product is sold without a profit – which, guaranteed, will end up as a loss once all the other costs are factored in – those kind of campaigns i just can’t take seriously because they are set up for failure. What will often happen is that the funds are not enough to deliver all the rewards and machines that were originally promised to the supporters, so the company starts setting up preorders outside of the crowdfunding campaign to pay for those original rewards and then somehow also has to find a way to pay for those additional orders in the end, that’s roughly what Makible tried to pull of with the infamous Makibox, but that’s a story all on it’s own. Or the manufacturer just “forgets” that they need to go through the process of acquiring a CE or FCC label, which is why the original Pebble kinda had some issues shipping their smartwatches to backers inside the European Union.

But i guess “first totally reasonable crowdfunding campaign” just doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely as “world’s cheapest 3D printer”.

And while, arguably, that line between “unreasonable” and “PR-worthy” is getting increasingly thinner these days, i’m not saying that all crowdfunding campaign are bound to fail. Some actually have a business-experienced member of their team to make things work, others make it through due to sheer luck, and the last group just gives up on having a life for 6 to 8 months until the rewards are fulfilled. My favorite examples have got to be the original machines from Printrbot and MrBeam, both products that were priced right to get attention, but not too cheaply to be a scam, but most importantly, filling an actual market need with an innovative product.

So to close that circle to the PYI Neptune, obviously whether you think their campaign is well set up is up to you. Do i think it is a promising machine? Sure, but so is every other decent crowdfunding campaign when it launches. Do they have what it takes to pull through and is the machine well-priced? Well, it’s probably being sold much too cheaply, as the targeted retail price is twice as much as the Indiegogo pricing, but if it turns out anything like they are promising and actually manage to deliver your machine, then you’ve got yourself one hell of a deal.

So i hope you’re not too disappointed that this wasn’t a full review of this machine, but again, that wouldn’t have made too much sense anyways. If you liked this video, i’d really appreciate it if you shared this one or one of my other videos on your favorite social network. And if you want to support this channel directly, have a look at my Patreon page up here. So thanks for watching, and i’ll see you in the next one.

Neptune Indiegogo campaign

Printrbot and MrBeam footage are from their respective Kickstarter campaigns and (c) by their respective creators.

The rest of this video is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike thanks to my supporters on Patreon!
Music is Cartoon feat. Jüri Pootsmann – I Remember U (Xilent Remix) [NCS Release]


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