Big Space for Big Prints

At 350 x 350 x 400 mm, the Sovol SV03 has a printing area larger than most modern inner-city studio apartments. . Build areas of 300 x 300 mm are pretty commonplace, so a slight edge with 50 mm extra in each direction here is good – provided it has the hardware to heat it well enough.

The build plate is of the textured glass you find on more than a few printers nowadays. We’ve used plenty during time testing 3D printers here at All3DP and find them universally decent.

Heating to 100 degrees Celsius, the Sovol SV03’s bed should be suitable for your everyday filaments such as PLA, PETG, and flexibles.

Direct Drive

Direct drive extrusion brings a couple of claimed advantages to the Sovol SV03. Firstly, that it makes the printing of flexible filaments a bit easier – which we’d argue has as much to do with how tightly constrained the filament path is than the extruder’s location.

The other benefit to direct drive is that your printer can exercise a greater degree of control over the filament’s retraction. Depending on the rigidity of your printer’s build, this extra weight on the printhead could lead to some ripples in prints’ surfaces. It’s not a given but illustrates the challenges of the balancing act of a 3D printer.

Automatic Bed Leveling

Always a treat, the Sovol SV03 ships with a BLTouch already installed. That means it can register the height variance across a mesh of points on the bed, feeding this data to the printer so that it can make the necessary offsets as it prints. It is a nice little feature that saves you from getting out a piece of paper and twiddle with some knobs below the bed. We like.

X- and Y-axis Belt Tensioners

Always useful for keeping things nice and tight, the belt tensioners here should help you ensure that accuracy remains in your printer way down the road. Give them a tightening up occasionally, and the printhead should stay on track, reducing the chance of wobbly, messy messes of prints.

Dual Z-axis Steppers

Presumably, to keep things sturdy and well balanced, Sovol has opted to install dual z-axis stepper motors on the frame of the SV03. It’ll keep the weight evenly distributed and lower the center of gravity, which theoretically should stop any pesky vibrations causing wobble-based imperfections in your prints. It’s unclear if these are synchronized, so it may need a little attention from time to time to correct any drift between the two lead screws, leveling out the X-axis rail.

There are a few other noteworthy features:

• TMC2208 equipped mainboard: Promises quieter and smoother stepper movement.
• Filament sensor: Pauses the print when a loose end of filament passes through.
• Touchscreen and Tungsten upgrade: Official upgrades from Sovol. Perhaps these would have been better just coming with the printer as standard.