New from old

[wibblywobbly]

As many of you know, I have two printers. The first one I bought has served me well, but time has moved on, and designs have improved to the point where they are now capable of producing some amazing quality. The mechanical parts are pretty much still the same, eg Arduino for control, 4 stepper motors, and a hotend to extrude the plastic.

What has changed are the frame designs, so I am thinking of getting a bare frame and transplanting my gubbins from the old to the new. My question is, has anyone used an acrylic framed printer? The Prusa I3 Mk2 is reckoned to be the current best of the bunch, and Sintron do a bare version for less than £100, so I am thinking of getting one, unless that is, I can get a steel frame for the same money. A company in Spain does one for around £50 plus postage, but it would be a leap in the dark quality wise.

[AlwynTurner]

Hi Rob, my hictop aluminium frame is rock solid, why don't you contact them and ask them for a price on a bare frame?
https://www.hic3dprinter.com/pages/contact-us

Best regards
Alwyn

[AlwynTurner]

Hi Rob, here's a contact for the frame and connectors
http://www.aluminium-profile.co.uk/

That's the stuff my frame is made of. I can do detail pics of the frame if that helps.

Alwyn

[wibblywobbly]

That's the complicated way, lol. I am just looking for a bare printer frame, probably a Prusa Mk2 clone.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sintron-3D-pr ... Swu4BVillB

so that I can simply dismantle mine, bolt the components into the new frame, re-program the Arduino, and be up and running.

I can either do a transplant job, or sell this one and buy another, the CR10 gets excellent reviews, and the clones of the latest Prusa should be almost as good as an original one. It also seems Drylin bearings are a much better alternative than the standard bearings that are usually fitted.

phpBB [video]

[AlwynTurner]

Yup looks like a good deal, comes with all the fittings and rods so it should be just straight assembly - good spot.
Alwyn

[43rdRecceReg]

The Printer my son bought me is the Hictop Prusa i3 , and I'm embarrassed to say I've not yet had the opportunity to use it. (Loads of other higher priorities in play currently ) However, i can report that the frame is rock solid, and the overall build quality excellent. I even enjoyed the atmospheric music in the assembly video....and that must say something about the manufacturers.

[wibblywobbly]

It seems that the Chinese have upped their game as far as 3D printers go. They have latched on to open source designs, and produce the entire kits at bargain prices. The names that spring to mind are Sintron, Hictop, Tevo, Anet, Wanhao, and Creality. All of them now use quality parts, and assembly can be achieved within a few hours.

The original Josef Prusa printers can of course be bought from Prusa, but there is a price to pay. That said, they are superb machines and the RTR ones are the way to go for anyone who has money to spend on one.

The ones to avoid seem to be the Kickstarter items. There are numerous companies that have sprung up in garden sheds, and pretty much all of them are pretty designs that don't function properly. Poor customer support and spares vanish when the company does. Open source printers will always have a plentiful supply of cheap and upgradeable parts.

As an example there is a cheap used Delta printer on Ebay, looking at the specs, this was a $650 printer, self levelling, whizzy case, automated everything, just load up files and it prints. I did some research...the You Tube videos show pretty bad prints by modern standards, it is painfully slow, it makes an enormous racket when printing and the levelling doesn't work properly. Did some more research and people are almost giving them away as they can't get them to work properly, with one guy stating that his Sintron Kossel printer that cost $180 (the one that I have) prints flawlessly.

Almost all of the used printers that are on Ebay are the branded ones that look 'nice', which tells me a great deal.

[AlwynTurner]

Yes my experience with my HICTOP self-levelling printer has been wonderful and the printer is a joy to work with and produces some really great results, and considering I paid less than £300 for it I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. I have had a few wear and tear issues but these were relatively easy to fix and I have given that printer quite a bashing in a fairly short space of time. It is something to be aware of that I would suspect most 3d printers need occasional tlc and maintenance so don't expect any printer to be set up and carry on working for extended periods.

Just shows that buying something fancy looking with a fat price tag isn't always the way to go.

Alwyn

[wibblywobbly]

Well that has been an eventful week, lol.

Both printers were playing up, so rather than focus on tanks I set about sorting them both out.

First up was my old Smartrap. When I first got it it printed like a dream, but over two years it gradually, and so gradually that I never noticed it, was not doing so well. I tried different hotends, but it still wasn't up to scratch. So, I reloaded all the original configuration files for the control board, and for Cura, the slicing program so that I had a solid start.

I went over it tightening the pulley belts, and oiling bearing and rods, and after a couple of tweaks on the configuration files it was almost back to as new. I changed the bed levelling from a 3 point prod to a 9 point but I was still only getting quality prints from the back of the build plate. Then I noticed that one of the linear bearings seemed loose, and sure enough it was 'very' loose. I checked the other three and they were all loose as well. As to how it was printing as well as it was, was amazing to say the least.

Hmmm...now, do I write and ask the guys that sold the kit for a replacement part, or do see if the printer will print a replacement part for itself. I took the second option, as 3 hours waiting was better than a couple of weeks. The part it produced was a better fit than the new one when it was built?? It took 20 mins to fit it, and now all is good again.

IMG_20170724_152631.jpg (96.22 KiB) Viewed 283 times

The other printer was a nightmare. I fitted a new hotend in there, but it was shorter than the original. This should have been a simple adjustment to the configuration file, but things just went from bad to worse. I eventually figured out that the only way to get it to accept new parameters was to find a command that would erase the Eeprom. This was only mentioned in one post in one forum that I visited. I did that, reflashed the memory, and bingo it took the settings that I was trying to get into it. Unfortunately, this also means that I will have to reconfigure a whole load of other settings as well, which is a lot of work on Delta printers, but at least I can get it back to where it was.

The joys of 3D printing.