If it doesn't work anymore you could try swapping out the board and drivers for something more current. I'd probably start cheap with an Arduino and Marlin just to see if it'll work. Then if all is good, go for something more substantial.
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Looking into 3d printing
- Thread starter WilliamTom
- Start date
My first printer was an extruder mounted on my CNC router printing on a glass plate. Without heat most of the PLA lift or didn't stick well. So I bought one that a few other people had. I figured best to use the common denominator. OctoPi and OctoPrint made it so easy to use and monitor.
Next was a Delta Type I call the POS printer. Just badly engineered. It printed and had two extruders so I could finally change filaments on the go. I even invested in a new Beagle Bone Black base Linux system that worked with new drivers and LCD display. Support vanished once he'd supplied all the people who signed up and one of the drivers failed so it couldn't do dual extruders anymore. The Delta Printers are magic to watch though.
I scrapped the old printer when the driver board failed. The printer at over 10 years old had done enough. I looked at a new driver board but anything modern appeared to be close to the price of a new printer.
I bought the SOVOL-06 because someone suggested it was a pretty good printer. And I could still talk to it with a Raspberry Pi and OctPrint so my user experience wasn't 'enhanced' by anyone. And yest that's sarcasm. And it had a much bigger build bed and with the extruded frame was way more solid. It doesn't have the 'Klipper' interface whatever that is. And it wasn't enclosed so the same issue with printing ABS and some other plastics and I still hungered for more than one filament.
Enter the Bambu X1C, enclosed with AMS (4 spools). I heard about this one from Katie.
To be truthful I've left the internet connection active. Haven't tried the local method. I've only had jams where I've used old filament that snaps into short pieces in the feed mechanism. But then all my printers have had problems like that. All of them. The Bambu is a bit harder in some ways because my old body doesn't like bending into the case and vision isn't what it used to be. But once you learn how to unscrew the extruder, heat it up and poke the broken piece out life is easier.
On top that yesterday the SOVOL also acted up. I finally ended up restarting the slicer with the default SOVOL-06 values and suddenly printing was good again. I suspect I'd accidentally changed something...
And there's the rub. They are all turnkey just load and print until something goes wrong. And then they aren't.
But 3D printers are a great excuse to dive into CAD and especially 3D Parametric Design. The knowledge of that will follow you into the metal workshop with better capability there too.
My two cents.