What’s your thoughts about Sovol M1D?
I am interested to buy M1D - it will be my first Sovol printer ever.
I asked Claude to make the below comparison table and explanation (I fed it with specs published on their official site). I used Sovol SV08 Max to compare as it seems like SV08 is their best printer (Max because I am also interested in a bigger printer and if there is an available toolhead upgrade for Max, I am happy to consider it.)
I used Bambulab A1 as benchmark as it is the only printer I currently have.
In short, it says here M1D will be almost at the same speed as Bambulab A1 - in which I will be satisfied if that's the case but this comparison made by Claude use the features and specs published by Sovol. In general "max" specs are just marketing - but do you think Sovol is always true to their spec words?
Since it will be my first Sovol printer if ever, what should I expect in general?
I heard there's a lot of tinkering needed to Sovol printers to get the print right, how difficult it will be?
# Master spec table (confirmed data)
| Category | Sovol M1D | Sovol SV08 Max | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concept | Multi-material IDEX + 6-toolhead changer | Big, fast, single-color CoreXY | Different problems entirely |
| Kinematics | Cartesian, aluminum frame | CoreXY, Voron 2.4-derived | CoreXY = lighter moving mass = speed |
| Build volume (single) | 300×300×350 mm | 500×500×500 mm (450 Z w/ enclosure) | Max is \~4.6× the printable air |
| Build volume (dual overlap, 7-head) | 240×300×350 mm | — | Both heads on one object = narrower zone |
| Build volume (mirror / copy) | 138 / 178 ×300×350 mm | — | The fine print on "print two at once" |
| Max speed | 600 mm/s | 700 mm/s | Nearly meaningless — see below |
| Acceleration | **10,000 mm/s²** | 40,000 mm/s² | The number that actually matters: 4× gap |
| Max flow | 30 mm³/s (PLA, 260°C) | 50 mm³/s | Max melts \~1.7× faster |
| Nozzle | 300°C, **hardened steel**, ceramic heating | 300°C, ceramic heating | Tie on temp; M1D wins on abrasives out of box |
| Bed | 100°C, 800W AC, PEI steel | 100°C, 1300W AC, 8mm aluminum | Tie on temp; both fine for ABS, marginal for PC |
| Leveling | Eddy current + real-time Z offset + camera XY calibration | Eddy current + pressure touch points | Both fully automatic |
| Cameras | 4 total (chamber + 2× motion calib + XY offset) | 1 (720p, Obico AI) | M1D's cameras are load-bearing, not a luxury |
| Enclosure | **Optional kit + top cover** *(correction: not enclosed by default)* | Optional kit (costs 50mm of Z) | Both open-frame machines |
| Heated chamber | **Up to 60°C — M1D Advanced variant only** | $69 module, no stated target temp | M1D Advanced has the better-specified chamber |
| Materials | PLA/TPU/PETG/**PVA**; ABS/ASA/PA/PC w/ enclosure | PLA/TPU/PETG; ABS/ASA/PA/PC/CF blends w/ enclosure | PVA (dissolvable supports) is the M1D's ace |
| Electronics | 5" touch, Wi-Fi/USB, 32GB eMMC, OrcaSlicer | Klipper, TMC5160, CAN bus, Wi-Fi/**Ethernet/HDMI**, 1GB/8GB | Max has richer connectivity; M1D has no LAN |
| Power draw | \~450W total | 1300W bed alone | Max is a space heater on long jobs |
| Footprint | 715×626×1100 mm (tall — spool on top) | 700×710×750 mm | Both huge; M1D needs *height* clearance |
| Price | $1,199–1,499 early / $1,799 MSRP; Advanced TBD | $1,099 sale / $1,299 + enclosure + $69 heater | Comparable money, Kickstarter vs retail |
| Availability | **Kickstarter, unproven, Sovol's first campaign** | Shipping now, reviewed | The biggest non-spec difference |
# The five verdicts that matter
**1. Size: SV08 Max, no contest.** 500³ vs 300×300×350 — helmets, furniture parts, full props in one piece. And remember the M1D's volume *shrinks further* in its signature modes: mirror printing caps parts at 138mm wide, copy mode at 178mm. If your dream was mirror-printing two large armor pieces simultaneously, the spec sheet quietly kills it — that trick is for smallish parts only.
**2. Speed: SV08 Max for single-color, M1D for multi-color — and the M1D is not "slow."** The confirmed 10,000 mm/s² acceleration and 30 mm³/s flow make the M1D *exactly* a Bambu A1-class mover (A1: 10,000 mm/s², 28 mm³/s) — a perfectly respectable modern printer that looks slow only next to the Max's 40,000 mm/s² / 50 mm³/s CoreXY monster. But flip to multi-color work and the hierarchy inverts: the M1D's \~5-second dedicated-nozzle toolhead swaps versus the purge-and-reload ritual of single-nozzle systems (a minute-plus per change, hundreds of changes per print) means the M1D should demolish any AMS-style machine — and the Max can't do multi-color at all.
**3. Enclosure & chamber: now genuinely interesting, and I had it backwards.** Both ship open-frame with optional enclosure kits. But the spec sheet reveals the M1D **Advanced** gets an actively heated chamber with a stated 60°C target — the sweet spot where ABS/ASA stop warping — while the SV08 Max's $69 chamber module never states a target temperature and has to fight half a cubic meter of air. On paper, the M1D Advanced is the more credible ABS/ASA/nylon machine per cubic centimeter; the Max still wins if you need those materials *big*, accepting more warp risk at the extremes of its bed. Caveats: Advanced pricing is unannounced, upgradeability from base M1D is unknown, and six parked toolheads living inside a 60°C chamber is exactly the kind of thermal design that only real-world units will validate.
**4. Materials: closer than expected.** Both hit 300°C and 100°C bed. The M1D counters the Max's raw size with a hardened steel nozzle standard (carbon-fiber-ready day one) and official PVA support — dedicate one toolhead to dissolvable supports and print geometries that are miserable on any single-nozzle machine. That's arguably the M1D's most underrated spec.
**5. Risk: the widest gap of all.** The Max is a shipping, independently reviewed product from Sovol's most successful product line (the Voron-derived SV08 family), with known flaws — rough software, weak documentation, an inactive LAN port at launch — that the community has already mapped. The M1D is Sovol's most mechanically ambitious machine ever, on their first-ever Kickstarter, from a company whose historical weaknesses (firmware polish, docs, fading GitHub support, slow logistics and warranty friction) are precisely what a camera-calibrated seven-toolhead system depends on. Their SV04 IDEX heritage helps; nothing else about the risk profile does.
# Final recommendation, updated
* **Big things, one color, engineering materials, want it now:** SV08 Max + enclosure + $69 chamber module. \~$1,400–1,500 all-in, proven, fastest machine here by a real margin.
* **Multi-color/multi-material is the whole point:** M1D — and specifically consider the **Advanced** trim, since the 60°C chamber is the difference between "PLA rainbow machine" and "genuine multi-material workstation." But treat it as a bet: put down the refundable deposit, then wait for production units in backers' hands and independent reviews before committing. With Sovol, the spec sheet has historically been the honest part; the software and support around it are where the gamble lives.
* **If you can only justify one machine and print mostly functional single-color parts with occasional color accents:** the boring truth is the Max covers more real-world ground — and a proven A1 Combo beside it would cover the multi-color itch for less than the M1D's early-bird price, today, with none of the risk.
>*can you please dig deeper on the speed? I dont understand the numbers but its seems that m1d is much slower? can you use Bambulab A1 with AMS Lite as benchmark to compare the 2 sovol printers?*
Great instinct to ask — because here's the twist: once you put the Bambu A1 next to them, the M1D suddenly doesn't look slow at all. It looks *exactly as fast as an A1*. The confusion comes from marketing speed numbers measuring the wrong thing. Let me build this up from zero.
# The three speed numbers, ELI5
Think of the printhead as a delivery truck driving around a city dropping off plastic.
**Max speed (mm/s)** is the truck's top speed on an empty highway. The A1 claims 500 mm/s, the M1D 600, the SV08 Max 700. Sounds like Max > M1D > A1, right? Problem: prints aren't highways. They're city streets full of intersections.
**Acceleration (mm/s²)** is how fast the truck gets back up to speed after every stop sign. And a 3D print is *thousands* of stop signs — every corner, every direction change, the head must brake and re-accelerate. Here's the real table:
| Acceleration | |
|---|---|
| Bambu A1 | 10,000 mm/s² |
| Sovol M1D | 10,000 mm/s² |
| Sovol SV08 Max | 40,000 mm/s² |
The M1D and the A1 are **identical**. Here's why this number dominates: at 10,000 mm/s², reaching 500 mm/s takes 50 milliseconds — during which the truck travels **12.5mm**. So on any print feature shorter than \~25mm (which is *most* features — walls of a phone case, letters, small details), the head physically never reaches top speed before it has to brake for the next corner. The "500 vs 600 mm/s" difference between A1 and M1D is largely fictional in practice; they spend their lives in the same acceleration-limited zone. The SV08 Max's 4× acceleration means it gets up to speed in a quarter of the distance — *that's* a difference you actually see on real prints.
**Flow rate (mm³/s)** is how fast the factory can load the truck — how much plastic the nozzle can *melt* per second. Doesn't matter how fast the truck drives if it's empty:
| Max flow | |
|---|---|
| Bambu A1 | 28 mm³/s (measured @ ABS) |
| Sovol M1D | 30 mm³/s (@ PLA, 260°C) |
| Sovol SV08 Max | 50 mm³/s |
Again: M1D ≈ A1, nearly identical. The Max melts almost twice as fast, which is what lets it actually *use* its speed on big prints with long straight runs — and a 500mm-wide print is exactly the kind of "long empty highway" where top speed and flow finally matter.
**So for a single-color print of the same object:** SV08 Max clearly fastest, and M1D ≈ A1, essentially tied. The M1D never was "much slower" — it's precisely A1-class motion. It only looked slow standing next to a CoreXY monster. (There's a structural reason both are 10k: the A1 is a bedslinger flinging a heavy bed back and forth, and the M1D drags two extruders plus a tool-gripper on its gantry. Heavy things shake if you accelerate them hard, and shaking = ugly rippled walls. The Max moves only a single light toolhead on belts — that's what CoreXY buys you.)
# Now the part that flips everything: multi-color speed
This is where the A1 + AMS Lite comparison gets genuinely interesting, because the AMS approach pays a brutal hidden tax that never appears on any spec sheet.
**How the A1 + AMS Lite changes color (the "one crayon" method):** it has one nozzle. Every single color change means: stop printing → drive to the side → cut the filament → rewind old color all the way back to the AMS → push new color all the way in → **purge** (squirt out plastic until the old color stops bleeding through, into a waste chute or purge tower) → resume. That's roughly a minute or more per swap, plus wasted filament, every single time.
Sounds tolerable? Multi-color prints don't change color once. They change color **on every layer** where two colors appear. A two-color logo plate 200 layers tall = \~200 swaps. A four-color model can hit 500+ swaps. At \~a minute each, *the printer spends more hours swapping filament than printing*. It's completely normal for an AMS multi-color print to take 3–5× longer than the same object in one color, with a fist-sized pile of purge waste next to it. This is the single most common complaint A1 Combo owners have — the printer is fast, but multi-color turns a 4-hour print into an overnight job.
**How the M1D changes color (the "seven crayons" method):** every color has its own dedicated, pre-heated nozzle. Swap = park one head, grab another — \~5 seconds, and since each nozzle only ever touches its own color, there's (nearly) nothing to purge. That same 200-swap print: the A1 burns \~3+ hours on changes; the M1D burns \~17 minutes. Same 500-swap monster: \~8 hours of swapping vs \~40 minutes.
So the honest speed ranking depends entirely on what you print:
| Scenario | Winner | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Big single-color part | **SV08 Max**, by a lot | 4× accel + 2× flow + no color logic at all |
| Small/medium single-color part | Max still wins; M1D and A1 tie | M1D and A1 have identical motion specs |
| Multi-color part, few color regions | M1D slightly ahead of A1 | Fewer swaps = smaller tax either way |
| Multi-color part, many changes per layer | **M1D, massively** | 5-second swaps vs \~1-minute purge cycles, hundreds of times |
| Two identical/mirrored smallish parts | **M1D** | Copy/mirror mode literally prints both at once — neither the A1 nor the Max can do this at any speed |
Two honest caveats on the M1D side. First, all of this is Sovol's claimed behavior — no independent reviewer has timed a production M1D yet, and tool-changers historically add their own small overheads (nozzle priming after pickup, occasional alignment moves). "Nearly zero waste" will realistically be "very little waste," not literally zero. Second, remember from the spec sheet that copy/mirror modes only work on parts ≤178mm / ≤138mm wide, so the "double speed" trick applies to smallish objects.
# The one-paragraph takeaway
The M1D isn't a slow printer — it's *exactly* an A1-speed printer (same 10,000 mm/s² acceleration, same \~30 mm³/s melting capacity, and those are the numbers that actually govern print time) whose 600 mm/s headline invited an unfair comparison with a genuinely faster machine. The SV08 Max is the true speed outlier of the three, but only for single-color work. And the moment your prints involve frequent color changes, the entire hierarchy inverts: the M1D's 5-second dedicated-nozzle swaps should demolish the A1+AMS Lite's purge-and-reload ritual, which routinely triples or quadruples multi-color print times. Fast *at what* is the whole question — the Max is fast at big monochrome objects, the M1D is (on paper) fast at colorful ones, and the A1 is the proven, polished baseline that both are trying to beat from opposite directions.