Darren's Anet A8 3d Printer

Man that is impressive.

Darren i am itching to pull the trigger. Its the cad side that concerns me and the free time.

The bang for the buck on these things is pretty high. It's all that free time that is really going to cost you. But it is a lot of fun....
 
Cad Schmad. Just download and print. That alone will keep you occupied for a long time. Long enough to learn sketchup or something else to make your own stuff.
 
I added some of the 8mm wide, 12v led strips around the frame to help light things up.
2017-02-11 22.10.44.jpg

Still a little dim under the carriage, so planning to add a small strip of it there also.
dimbed.jpg

I'm picked up some relays to control the power and lighting from octopi using these instructions: http://furick.com/icbd/2016/12/setup-relay-control-on-a-new-raspberry-pi-3-b/

Though I found you can do without the sh files simplifying the action shown here: https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint/wiki/Controlling-a-relay-board-from-your-RPi

I plan to just switch off the 12v feed to the controller board for turning it on/off.
 
The last couple of days I've been working on a new auto bed level sensor bracket that mounts to the front fan rather than the extruder fan. Each time I got a piece of filament stuck in the extruder from doing filament changes, I had to remove that fan/heatsink/sensor in order to work on the clog. This caused me to have to redo the offsets and re-calibrate the table/nozzle heights. I did end up cutting off the ring from the old bracket and using the mount to keep the fan and heat sink spaced properly.

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Here's the new bracket design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2111157
 
So here are a few recent updates to my printer.

First, someone posted some frame braces, which I've desperately needed to keep the head from shaking so much while doing lithophanes.
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Next was a new Auto Bed Level sensor holder, which I designed to keep the sensor in the same place as the previous sensor (so I wouldn't need to update firmware again). This upgrade kept my sensor from having to be recalibrated each time I needed to remove the extruder cooling fan to clear a filament jamb from changing out the filament.
2017-02-14 00.00.43.jpg 2017-02-14 19.44.02.jpg 2017-02-14 20.08.14.jpg

Lastly I've have had minor issues with the auto level not working for a while, I couldn't print anywhere but the middle of the bed. I eventually found that the H frame Y axis carriage plate was twisted and bent. So I ordered a new solid plate to replace it with from RepRap Champions (https://reprapchampion.com/collecti...ate-upgrade-v2-for-prusa-i3-reprap-3d-printer). In order to install that plate I had to first print some risers to raise the bed above the motor, and print a new belt mount. Oh, and installed drylin bearings on my bed, which never need lubrication and are much quieter.
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This is the best test print I've done since setting up the auto level, before I was about .4 mm high in the back left corner, and .2 mm high in the front right, while the other two were measuring correctly.
2017-02-26 19.27.49.jpg
 
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I printed your auto-level sensor bracket today and am still studying the rest of the process from a software/firmware view.

I haven't seen any issue with my table like you describe - yet, anyway. Thanks for the heads-up about an option.
 
I need to ask a clarifying question.

How do you guys actually measure the differences in printing thickness. By this i mean practically and physically.?
Is it adequate to simply be using a vernier caliper?
Or are u using a micrometer?

The differences you have picked up to identify the table was not flat have me thinking one can get carried away here seeing ghosts and replacing parts ad nauseam.

Without a feel for it how pliable is the printed plastic when it comes to measuring 0.1mm or less differences.?

There are two ways of looking at what you guys with the A8 are doing.
One is enjoying the techie ride of building fine tuning and fiddling with the printer, the other side is, when i buy a machine, take my planner, jointer, table saw et al, i want the machines to plane , joint and cut.
I somewhat resented the fact that out of the three examples the only one i did not fiddle with and fine tune was the planner. But that was mostly because they made it so you have to accept it as it is.
The other was these all needed tweaking due to price point.

So it strikes me that there is significant value now, (in hindsight having watched what ya all have been up to) in buying higher up the cost chain if one can ascertain that the higher up the chain unit has been refined to the extent you have done with these A8 machines.
Thats where my doubt and trust factor comes in and it somewhat puts one off getting into this market.

Tech has built this Aura around it of acceptance by the consumer of all sorts of what i consider to be malpractices.

First we have to accept terms dictated on software use or dont get to use it.
Then we buy devices, from a to z types and are expected to accept somewhat unfinished or under developed devices and just accept as you all have done, repairing and evolving them as a community of fixers/tinkeres OR buying into just replacing them when the next developed iteration makes its debut.

I guess its better than the old vapour ware promises of the past , given today most often you get a certain amount of genuine functionality, however as a consumer i truly resent this trend of waste being sold to us as continuous improvement.

Just consider how incredibly old woodworking machines, i think particularly of old bandsaws fundamentally still work and do so well for the owner, that after having changed hands in its lifetime many times over.

I think of the Shapeoko buyers who bought a ver 1 then a ver 2 now its at ver 3.

Yes one can justify all the versions, but let's be real, the 1 came to market with a promise but was not fully developed and was a bit if a bait and switch job by the developers selling a person something they want (cnc) but in a form where it was not truly going to fulfill the end users true desires but did it to match a price point.
They knew the weakness. They knew the rails would need to be beefed up. But they needed to sell.

My apologies i think this stuff is truly great, but as one who has over his lifetime thus far supported tech most often as an early adopter, and been burnt time and time again, this is looking like same thing.

It should not be sold as a 3D printer is my point. It should be sold as a 3D printing learning kit like the mechano kits of our youth.

Seen in that light, bingo its a absolute winner. But if u want to do 3D printing, then like a decent table saw i guess one needs to fork out the extra coin.

I just would like to see these (by these i mean all the low cost kits) sold as what they are and not what they are not.

I don't know if i am up to spending so much scarce time fiddling and diagnosing what is wrong with the unit one receives.

As Bill noted he don't have the same issue. So maybe he has a different issue but he now needs the ability to diagnose cause effect and remedy on his own.

Thats one heck of a indicator to man in street as to the value of a company that supports its products say like a machine supplier like Grizzly for example.
Imagine getting a planner and being on your own and reliant on your virtual community for tech support to make it do what it was sold to do.

I dunno, this techie is getting old i guess.
 
Rob, I completely agree with you that this isn't a production floor ready printer, hope no one takes it that way. It's a "kit" and absolutely one to learn on at this price, but it does exceed most expectations of what they can do at the price they are going for.

I think most of us woodworkers started with a set of hand tools and a few hand power tools and have worked our way up to buying the better brands/tools as we can afford them. I don't see this as any different and wanted to document the build here to show what all is involved in the evolution of getting into this hobby.

For what I'm wanting to do with one, I'm definitely pushing it to its limits, which is why I'm seeing these little issues. However, I can't honestly say a $1200 printer will do much better for some of the things I'm doing without me pushing it to its limits. For me, I've spent about $60 total on new parts, the rest is time, which I'm enjoying, so I don't consider it to be a cost at this point.

As for measurements, I've been using digital calipers (haven't broke out the micrometers yet), and for truing the table I've got a starrett straight edge and a dial gauge.

And to be clear, the table can be completely flat if I manually level it, but this is a task one needs to do often if done this way, perhaps every new print. So keep in mind I've added the auto bed level features to get around doing that every print and I'm finding that it seems to be off a little from what it's advertised that it should do. I'm still working through the bugs on it and trying to figure out what causes it to be off.

So again, I do agree with you, it's not a production floor use machine and can become the ole "silk purse from a sow sack" analogy if one doesn't keep things in perspective. I hope I've not oversold this to folks here, but I still feel it's been a great value for what I expected from it. It's also allowing me to pursue doing prototyping of ideas and allowing me to test out concepts that I didn't have the resources to easily do before, so I don't regret the purchase or time spent learning from it.
 
I tend to think of it this way. It's sold as a cheap 'kit' and that's pretty much what it is. You can do a lot with it though.

You get a lot of learning from assembling it and maintaining it. If you bought an expensive machine that worked great out of the box, well, when it goes down, where are you going to turn?

And in all honesty, Some of the other machines are quite possibly terribly over priced and they don't address all of the other learning you need to do in order to use the machine.

The machine is just a very small part of the picture when you get right down to it. There's learning the tools to create the parts, edit things you find, how to slice it, what settings are required for different filaments.

A more expensive machine is not going to make any of that any easier or necessarily create objects that are much nicer.

Now if you want to go really expensive, you can go to different types of 3d printers that don't use filaments, but that's a whole nother kettle of fish.
 
Darren fear not i certainly don't think you have suggested this printer kit is anything it not.
I think you and Brent and Bill have done a fantastic job of creating that support community for someone wanting to walk the road of one of these kits.
Let's not forget the kit works as advertised. It does 3D print even without the upgrades.

Brent u hit the nail on the head, there is a load to learn besides operating the actual printer. That's the bit that has concerned me and has me on the sideline. I referred to it as Cad but its the total process outside of the machine operating.
You guys have cracked it and now have a new tool but lets remember all three of you have previously cracked the cnc routing nut which does give u a leg up on the xyz concept.

I so want to dabble in this but time is my concern.

I truly admire what you guys have managed to get this $200 dollar kit to do. Especially those lithophanes that Darren printed.
 
Tonight I'm testing out a script on Simplify3d that converts the comments in the gcode for each layer to an M117 command, which displays the layer and Z height on the display of the printer.

I found the script on this thread: https://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1959&hilit=scripts#p13999

m117scripts.PNG

Here are the display changes in the last line of the display.
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I don't know that it provides much benefit, other than knowing what layer it's on, but better than just seeing "Bed Heated" for the entirety of the print.

BTW, the first post on that thread covers some other variables available to use in Simplify3d, unfortunately the total number of layers wasn't a variable.
 
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