GeeeTech Thunder 3D Printer: A bed slinger that claims to print at 300mm/s & 5000mm/s² acceleration

00:00 Intro
02:00 Unboxing, assembly
05:10 Test prints
14:33 Pros
16:50 Cons
19:09 Conclusions

Welcome back to Aurora Tech Channel. Today, I will be reviewing this GeeeTech Thunder 3D printer. This is a bed slinger that claims to be able to print at 30mm/s with 5000mm/s² acceleration. This printer doesn’t run Klipper or Marlin firmware, and instead, it runs a self-developed firmware called Smartto. As you may already know, Marlin can run on a slow processor, and even an 8-bit ATMEGA2560 on the Prusa MK3S+ can run Marlin pretty well, but it prints pretty slowly as all the calculations and the stepper motors, limit switches, as well as other components are controlled by the same slow processor. While Klipper needs a faster processor like a Raspberry Pi, Sonic Pad, or a BigTreeTech CB1 Raspberry Pi alternative board to run and do all the printing calculations, you can use the slower processor on your motherboard as an adapter to control other components. The Smartto firmware uses a regular 32-bit Cortex M3 72Mhz processor to control the components of the printer and uses another 168Mhz Cortex M4 processor for calculations.

The other hardware aspects of this printer are also quite interesting. The printer uses an extra large heated block with an extra long tip, similar to a Volcano-style nozzle. It has dual 5015 blowers on the print head and two 6020 large fans at the back to provide extra cooling. It uses closed-loop stepper motors on the X and Y-axis, it has silent stepper drivers, auto bed leveling, a dual Z-axis, belt tensioners on the X and Y-axis, and a unique Y-axis design. The extruder is a BMG clone with a bowden setup. I would like to thank Geeetech for sending me this machine to review, and with that, let’s get started.

Affiliate links:

Geeetech Thunder ($489):

Smartto firmware:

Other fast 3D printing options in similar price range:

Ender 5 S1 + Sonic pad:
Creality Ender-5 S1 ($503):

Creality Sonic Pad ($159):

Refurbished/Used 3D printer from $59:

Filaments:
$16.99 VOXELPLA Pro:

Eryone filament (PLA, PETG, ABS, ASA, TPU as low as $10 per roll, min 10 rolls):

Eryone $12 TPU 500g (min 10 rolls)

Eryone PETG Carbon Fiber filament

3D Models:

St Basil's Cathedral

Snorlax Lowpoly

Faceted Bowl

[jamesmatthew]

With settings like "crazy speed", it looks like other manufacturers are noticing the Bambu Lab X1 and P1P. In this case, unfortunately, it was the marketing department that noticed, but not the engineering department. Thanks for the review.

[DennisMurphey]

Yes you guys always cover the bases and more. They should pay you for the Cons, you are telling them how to improve the product for real users. I know my 10S Pro V1 is a bed slinger so it can not expect speed but with Z struts and SwissMicro Direct drive and Hot end the quality and reliability is awesome. So i loaded up three Fan Smoke Housing for my train and at 5:30 it is done with excellent quality while i was doing inventory. I think speed is important but it is not valuable at the lack of quality in my mind. Thank You for a wonderful video. Dennis

[themountain]

"Fast" is the new fashion term obviously...but what does it do good when the prints look crappy as that ?? 500 bucks for that printer is wasted money, sorry.

[MrGerhardGrobler]

Concise, to the point, objective.
A great review video.
The amount of effort you put into each video is impressive.
Way to go.

[polycrystallinecandy]

1:27 idk why but the shape of that nozzle is so funny 🤣 like a pterodactyl spewing molten plastic from it's beak

[avejst]

Great video as always 👍
Great idea with the massive blower at the back, if you are printing with PLA.
Thanks for sharing your expirences with All of us 👍😃

[dexperiments]

This is a VERY interesting printer. They have properly open sourced the firmware which is another pro IMO. I hope that the company will improve it further and that you will have follow up videos about this.

[TheReaper]

Awesome review! I could see this being beneficial for parts that are for more of a time crunch than for quality. Just need some sandpaper on hand lol.

[tHaHxr]

What a peculiar printer. You can really see that they did their very best to make everything as stiff as possible, and prevent common issues with high speed printing (ex. closed loop steppers for layer shifts, good cooling setup etc). However, if you want to make a printer for speed, why would you ever build a bedslinger?
Anyways, it doesn't seem like a bad printer, but for the regular MSRP of 700$, it just isnt competitive, especially in a world where you can also get the P1P for that price. Especially unacceptable is shoddy firmware for that price.

The early bird kickstarter price of 400$ is not too bad, but if you want a fast printer, you can get an FLSun SR for nearly the same amount of money! You could even upgrade it later with the klipper pad they offer. Plus inherently delta's are much better in moving fast.

[ame]

filla-men! haha i don't know why but this cracks me up every time

[Fredjikrang]

I have to admit, every time you say that "PET can't be printed a fast as PLA" I say to myself "But what if you did?" ;) My curiosity is a terrible thing. Thanks for the nice review! Very interesting!

[wesleydroll]

Nice review! you should take a look at the sovol sv06, looks on paper to be essentially a prusa for 1/4 of the price.

[richardspicer]

Can't believe geetech are still going. Was such a fan boy back in the day. First printer was geetech proB then had e180 and few a10 then a few a30 even had a a10m. One thing this new printer has wrong is smartto. I've still got two a30 with smartto which both stopped working with no fix. So there in bits and going to be turned into a core xy. Geetech ditch the smartto and you might get a customer back.
Cheers for the very good review 👍

[Getbent]

I can't believe Geeetech are still in business, they've always made pretty crappy printers that look and feel cheap. I should know, my first printer was an aluminium Geeetech i3 pro B and its needed rebuilding and modifying so much that its basically a frankenstein printer.

[noanyobiseniss]

Downvoted for misinformation, Klipper can run on the ATMega2560.

[frcetv]

ive just started learning about 3D printers because my dad has a Geeetech - he has no idea how to use it ofcourse...
Ive got no idea what youre talking about here- but its awesome either way

[rondlh]

Nice review again. It still amazes me to see the English spelling mistake in the main menu... 4 buttons only

[corlissmedia.]

I would love to see you look at the Lerdge K board with KLIPPER installed. Lerdge has now presented a tutorial on how to install KLIPPER on that board. The instructions are confusing to me, but I'm sure you're get through them easily. Your video would be much appreciated. I will find a way to thank you for it at Christmas Time.

[GreatJoe]

I got Geeetech's A10 Pro, back when that was relatively new. The damn thing shipped with an extra stepper driver heatsink lodged right on the pins of the USB port, and the eccentric nuts for the bed were so loose that it couldn't complete its own test print. It's also a huge pain to maintain in general, though apparently it had a couple features over its contemporary Ender 3. Still, I regret not getting an Ender 3 instead, since it's so much better documented, and mods are so much easier to find.

[AndrewAHayes]

Aurora is there any chance of you reaching out to one of the plastic recycling machine manufacturers for a review model, I have nearly two Blue Food grade barrels full of ground PLA and one nearly full of PETG and various amounts of other materials that I would like to recycle into filament