So I've jumped into the rabbit hole

Dabbler

Dabbler

ersatz engineer
A magnanimous member donated their old 3D printer to me because I have showed interest in these things... He suggested it might be a curse rather than a benefit, but it does work, and it will serve to let me learn some practical 3D printing things.

It is an Anet A8 (I think) @Dan Dubeau will be familiar with the series!

Now I have to get a roll of PLA and start learning!
 
D

Dan Dubeau

Ultra Member
Welcome to the party. I have an Anet A6 (I always forget whether I have a 6, or an 8, and just had to look it up). It was my first printer, and is a great starting point, especially if free. It's not without it's faults, though. My suggestion it to find a good stable permanent home for it. It's not the most rigid self supporting structure, so moving it around will drive you to fits. Once it's setup and leveled, it was pretty capable of decent results right out of the gate. I don't use mine much anymore since getting my little kingroon sidearm, but have fired it up for bigger prints occasionally.

If it's not already done, I would look into adding mosfets for the bed and nozzle heat, as it is in stock form, it sends all the current through inadequate connectors on the main board, and could lead to a potential fire.

Anet's were a great first printer for many back in the day. Very cheap entry point into the hobby, and they either drove you out screaming, or sucked you into getting another one.
 
PaulL

PaulL

Technologist at Large
Premium Member
Yeah. What everyone keeps saying. Incredibly useful. I'm amazed at how often I'm reaching for it for simple things. I now have a little drawer under my desk that keeps my computer glasses and cleaning things. Would never have gotten around to it without some machine just spitting one out for me.
And my main rolling cabinet now has an *empty* drawer by virtue of having printed off a much tighter storage space for taps and dies.
And a trivial bushing on the lathe improved my 5C runout well past what should have been allowed. I'd have never been able to make that bushing "just right" out of bronze turned on the lathe.
 
B

Bandit

Super User
I am in the rabbit hole too, or maybe a worm hole running off the rabbit hole. Some days a bit of lite coming down the tunnel, gotta watch for trains. My unit is a Prusa i3, or some clone. Son had it, put about a million hours on it printing. Rebuilt "X" axis with some changes, new bigger bearings and new shafts, have new shafts and bearings for "Y" axis, not in yet. But it is working, brain in over time, overload, "G" code, Cura slicer, Thingcad, need to get into code of printer to change a "line or 2" for the new 3-1 drive extruder,
All in time! One at a time, get in line #123!
 
slow-poke

slow-poke

Ultra Member
Yesterday, I needed a simple tube of precise dimensions to stop the balls from falling out of a ballscrew nut during transfer to ballscrew. Opened my PCB program, made a circular PCB with correct outside dimension, placed a hole in the center with correct inside dimension, and then made the PCB 88mm thick. Saved as step file It took all of two minutes and it was printing. Touch wood this Prusa has been trouble free.
 
Tomc938

Tomc938

Ultra Member
Premium Member
Welcome! A 3D printer is definitely one of those tools that you cannot see any practical use for - until you have one. Then everything is a 3D printer solvable problem! (Well, maybe not quite everything)
 
B

Bandit

Super User
I am still amazed that mine works, but then machinery working has nearly always been worth watching to me, sometimes more so when I am operating it, or as in the printers case, that I wanted it to make the thing it's making and doing it. Well! More pla in the bin! Big problem,it does what it's told, not what you "think" you told it!
 
Janger

Janger

(John)
Administrator
Vendor
I ordered a filament swapper for my prusa MK4. They had a lot of trouble applying it to the MK4 and it took them a year to finally ship it. Now I have a big project to put it together. There are bags and bags of parts, fasteners, and they supplied 800g of filament to print a bunch more parts! It’s as least as complicated as assembling the MK3 printer kit!
 
djberta

djberta

Active Member
Premium Member
Dabbler said:
A magnanimous member donated their old 3D printer to me because I have showed interest in these things... He suggested it might be a curse rather than a benefit, but it does work, and it will serve to let me learn some practical 3D printing things.

It is an Anet A8 (I think) @Dan Dubeau will be familiar with the series!

Now I have to get a roll of PLA and start learning!
Click to expand...
I had an anet a8 years ago. Pulled it apart after I got my ender 3 pro in 2018.

If you do not know already?

One thing to note with the anet printers from that era. They can be a fire risk. anet did not set the thermal runaway protection in the firmware and there was fires. If the thermistor falls out of the heat block the printer will continue heating until failure. Also the main board for the a8's had very small trace points for the power connection and were prone to failure. I had the board failure happen on mine. Luckily it just died and did not catch fire. Earlier I had to solder the wires for the heat bed directly to the bed as the connector burnt up. That's when I got the ender 3.

Make sure to at least upgrade the firmware and make sure the thermal runaway protection is set. The mosfet upgrade is a must as well as it removes all the high current off the controller board. Better option is to find a board like a btt e3 board and install that.

Do a search on anet a8 fire risk and there are some comprehensive articles on the issues with these printers.
 
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