Hello everybody and welcome to another review. In today’s video, we’re going to go over an alternative slicer program which the makers at Voxeldance sent over to me to take a look at. In the end, I bought a license to get a better idea of the installation process, and I’m happy I did since it would have significantly affected this review. More on that later in video.
Voxeldance dance has two pieces of software, the first of which is “Voxeldance Additive” which is designed for more industrial use cases and the second which we’ll be going over today that is called “Tango”. Unlike Chitubox and Lychee slicer, this one has a vastly different focus in comparison and is a paid product which will become important in the final verdict.
The primary focus of this software is enabling the user to have as much flexibility as possible when generating support structures, NOT necessarily slicing of the files. When it comes to generating support structures, this software is by far the best I’ve tested and does come with some interesting features. You start by choosing a pre-made setting and can then begin generating supports with these pre-defined parameters or by modifying them yourself. In this case, I already know what tolerances worked best with my machine, therefore I modified these settings and auto generated them. By clicking on the Manual button, I was further able to modify them by adding or removing what I saw fit. One of the best features is the ability to change the visibility of the supports, which makes it much easier to manipulate their position on the model itself. Furthermore, You can easily add different types of supports to the model by selecting a group of areas and applying a specific support to those structures. At any time, these individual grouped settings can be changed and updated. A great hidden feature is the ability to have supports move around objects and control just how close they remain to the model. I wish this was standard in all slicers, but this is the first time I’ve seen it implemented for resin printing.
But I did say you were mostly limited to creating support structures, which is true if you’re using an older machine that isn’t compatible with the .goo extension or PRZ. The reason why I say this is that you’re very limited in file formats for export and unfortunately during my testing I was unable to find a proper method to convert these files. A common solution, which didn’t work in my case, was to use the open source “UVTools” application to convert the .goo file. So to ensure that it wasn’t something with that one machine, I began repeating this test with my Elegoo Saturn 2 and Mono X printer, with the same results. All 3 gave me errors when attempting to print with the converted files. So, although I tried converting these into different CTB formats 1 to 4, none of these were recognized by my machines. In the end, I was only able to export the file as an STL and then slice it in Chitubox.
This software does come with some additional features which include the ability to fix or modify the mesh itself and even build objects to a certain degree. While this software isn’t designed for 3D modeling, it does have some of its more basic functionalities with the ability to boolean objects as well as the creation of primitives. Models can be mirrored and re-meshed to produce a solid object with varying degrees of resolution, which is a great feature to have. Along with these more innovative applications comes some of the more standard ones such as scaling, hollowing, creation of drainage holes, duplicating and much more.
I personally consider an offline activation to be a requirement for a good user experience as well as added security. While looking at instructional videos by Voxeldance, it does seem to show an offline activation option, but they’ve since changed to a subscription model where this appears to have been removed. From the instructional videos I saw, they do seem to be reliant on a cell phone to complete the offline activation process, which could be a problem for companies focused on security. So even if you pay for a yearly license, you still have to re-connect to the internet at least once every 15 days to be able to use their software. On top of the connection requirements, there’s an additional export limit, which is dependent on the subscription type. There’s free alternatives that don’t have any of these export limits or online connectivity requirements. Due to security concerns, many businesses have dedicated machines which remain offline. This helps protect them in case a server is compromised, whether it be from the service provider or their own. It’s something that the company should become mindful of in the future.
Overall, the software was quite stable and I personally didn’t have any crashes. It’s important to follow their hardware specifications, since this software does require something that’s pretty powerful. While more complex supports did require more time, they still completed without any issues. The fact that I had the option to customize the keyboard shortcuts is big because it allows me to use one’s that I’m already more familiar with. Overall, the user interface was great to work with and fairly intuitive. While this might be slightly overwhelming for new user’s, more experienced one’s would probably enjoy the added control.
But is this software worth the money? Well, I love the amount of control I have over the support settings and the software itself. The fact that I can’t export into the proper format for my 3D printer or that it has to always be connected really does sour my experience. While I didn’t mind paying for the software, I should be able to set up my file up for printing. That’s the true test of a slicer program, and that’s why I can only give an 5 out of 10. The only reason why didn’t get a 0 is that I was able to export it out as an STL, and it really was innovative in how it approached supports. IF the company includes a much larger range of export formats as well as fixing the offline activation they could have easily gotten a much higher result and I really do hope they fix them in the future. If you’re still interested in getting access to this software, the folks at Voxeldance are currently running a 70% off sale on the personal yearly plan. Although they were willing to provide a giveaway after I reached 4000 to 5000 subscribers, we’ll see if that’s still the case after this video comes out.
- Link to Voxeldance Software: https://voxeldance.com/Tango
- Installation guide by Voxeldance 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Mwkm3s5BE&t=120s