Ultra clean prints in walled garden
Tom’s Hardware Verdict
HeyGears UltraCraft Reflex RS produces quality prints but has a locked down ecosystem with a poor user interface and a heavy dependence on cloud servers for functionality.
Pros
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Highly detailed prints
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Automatic features on slicer works well
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Self leveling
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Tilt back lid
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Slicer can send settings to wash and cure system
Cons
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Expensive
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Must use HeyGears materials
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Must use HeyGears software
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Clumsy user interface
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Must pour the entire bottle of resin into the tank
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Depends on cloud servers
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Resin printing isn’t exactly my favorite 3D printing activity, so I tend to dislike any machine that makes the gooey process more difficult. HeyGears has been getting rave reviews across the internet for its outstanding quality – and when it comes to quality, the results are impossible to ignore. But it’s also annoying to use.
The truth is, making a good-looking resin print is pretty easy these days. Where manufacturers need to focus is within the realm of user experience.
I knew immediately that the Reflex RS was trying to copycat Formlabs, judging both by its looks and the locked down ecosystem. I appreciate the effort – the idea of a walled garden is that by limiting the user to proprietary resins, you eliminate user error. Everything is precalculated for you, and HeyGears does that, right down to how long the wash unit shakes your parts. Again, I appreciate this.
But I couldn’t get over the software. The printer doesn’t just have a slicer. It has Blueprint, a cloud-based project management system. Nothing is intuitive, and I constantly search for the right button to move the files through the process. When you start a new job, you have to tell it which machine you’re running and what extras you have installed. I find this annoying, as the software greets me by name – if it can remember my profile information, surely it could remember my machine as well? Then you have to select the resin you are going to use, which have charming names like PARP10, PAP10, and PAWW10. I’m pretty sure I had poured in PAP10 and accidentally sliced it as PAWW10 and neither of us seemed to know. The poor UX carries over to the machine’s interface and even how you pour in the resin. We can get into that further within the review.
The bottom line is that the HeyGears Reflex RS has good hardware but annoying software. If you only use this one machine, you’ll probably get used to its quirks. I couldn’t, and for that, I’m not recommending it as one of the Best 3D printers.