Anet managed to bottle lightning with the Anet A8 3D printer kit. And despite the occasional horror story of house fires making the rounds, nothing seems to be able to dent the printer’s momentum and popularity.
The single most contributing factor to its enduring success, we suspect, is price point. Often reduced in sales across the big re-sellers of budget kits, the A8 can commonly be found around the $200 mark.
New for 2018, the company has released the Anet A9. Retailing at approximately $50 more than its numerical predecessor, it offers a smaller print volume, but greatly simplified setup. Will the company be able to experience the same success with this smaller printer? We can only speculate and wait to find out.
In the meantime though, what we can do is nerd out over the specs. Read on for the rundown of the Anet A9. Keep in mind that this is not a full review — we haven’t gone hands on with it yet, but will build a bigger picture here over time when we have.
Tech Specs
- Print area: 160 x 160 x 200mm
- Nozzle: Single 0.4mm
- Filament: 1.75mm PLA, ABS
- Max. print speed: 120mm/s
- Layer resolution: 0.1mm
- Connectivity: SD card, USB
- LCD screen: Yes
- Print precision: X & Y-axis 0.012mm, Z-axis 0.004mm
- Packing type: Unassembled kit
Price & Features
At the time of writing, we’re seeing the Anet A9 for approximately $220 on Gearbest and BangGood. No doubt depending on which you visit on a given day this will change, since both of them have a tendency to hack and slash prices every other day.
Unlike the acrylic A8, the Anet A9 features an all-metal frame, utilizing aluminum extrusions for its cantilevered X-axis and Y-axis tower, plus sheet metal for its base and control box housing.
Integrating the power supply and control board in its base, the Anet A9 also boasts a relatively compact footprint, taking up just 375 x 335 x 525mm when full assembled. Part of this height includes a handle for convenient carrying of the printer. We’re not ones to hoist our 3D printers about enough to wish for a carry handle, so are a little unconvinced at the usefulness of such a feature.
Judging by the array of pieces pictured on the aforementioned store pages, there’s little to assembling the Anet A9. We count fewer than two dozen pieces to assemble, with the control and power base, hot end, X-axis carriage and extruder coming fully assembled.
We also see that there is a Y-axis belt tensioner integrated into the base. Something we saw on Anet’s E12 3D printer too, it’s nice to see such quality of life features becoming commonplace on kits that would’ve been the barest of bones had it released at the beginning of 2017.
Likewise, the Anet A9 features a dedicated print cooling fan right out of the box — another printer component we’d rank as essential, but inexplicable missing from some 3D printer kits still. So that’s nice.
Besides this, there’s not a whole lot to shout about. For your money you’d be getting a Bowden drive extruder pushing the filament onto a middling size heated print bed.
At this point in there’s little to no chatter online (even on the Anet subreddit and Facebook groups). We suspect this is due to the printer’s newness.
Where to Buy it
You can find the Anet A9 at the following retailers.
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