Anet A8 3D Printer.

[tflnemesis]

I have been having some major issues with mine over the past few days...

It started when I noticed my bed needed levelling again, no matter what I tried I couldn't get it level.
I ended up completely stripping down the bed mechanism, tried various configurations to sort it, but what helped the most was widening the holes in the carriage plate to 4mm as the screws between the bed and carriage plate were binding.
Then I noticed that one corner of the frame at the front wasn't resting on the surface the printer is on. Naively I thought ' I'll just bolt it all down'... Big mistake!!! It knocked everything out! So I had a think after unbolting it and ended up shimming the whole printer wherever it needed ( All the support material I had saved came in very handy for this.).
I tried a print and it printed poorly, the part was complete but the amount of stringing and deformation was atrocious.

I had noticed a rattle when it was printing and set out to track it down... After a process of elimination I tracked it down to the 'Y' guide rods having up to approx 1mm movement in the holes where they slot into the frame. It seems shimming up the frame had removed all the tension in it and now the play in the rods is showing up.

This is where I am at atm, If I had a lathe I would just drill out the holes and turn up a bush. I think the easiest solution for me is to use some epoxy in the holes to take up the slack. As the bed shouldn't move in the Z apart from the usual amount caused by the machine moving I think epoxy will be up to the task, but, ofc I don't have any epoxy as its all been used by Mr Nobody again. I am gonna have to start charging the guy rent because he is costing me a fortune!!

Once I have got the above done I will spend a session re-calibrating it, especially the extruder because I think it is over extruding atm, although the roughness in the print might be down to the amount of play in the guide rods.

 

[DAPPH]

(

Had my first disaster this morning, set a print off just before I went to bed. Normally I will wait for the first layer to print before leaving it alone, but as it was very late I just set it going and went off to bed.

Got up this morning to a huge glob of plastic around the print head and the printer head jammed against the bed because of the excess of plastic. Lesson learnt I suppose!
I just hope I can get it cleared fairly easily.

I've had the same problem three times whilst observing things . I put it down to hair strands of plastic coming off the first six layers and dragging part of the print free of the bed , thus causing a molten plastic build up & disaster.

For complete cleaning of the printhead & nozzle my machine's help desk ( Original Prusa by Joe Prusa ) recommends:- Snipping off the filament so no more can melt inside the heater , raise the head to the top of the Z screws , turn up the temp to 250 oC. The blob will melt and can be brushed out with a small brass wire brush, in the mean time of it melting as the temp gets to the normal melt temp put a slight pull on the filament so it separates and what's left can melt down like runny treacle though the heater & nozzle .…
Watch it the molten plastic is at 250 oC and will stick to your skin and give severe deep burns .


When using the small wire brush take care with Pinda cable and the heater cables , fan cables & housings etc .as at that temp it won't take much to pull off their insulations or distort things once it has reached 250 oC.

( Perhaps keep the fans on if they are not automatic like mine . )

I suggest you don't let the runny filament plastic drain down onto the bed slip some carboard under the area for it to fall , drain down on & use another cold clean piece when doing the cleaning , so cut the two pieces carboard to size before you start the heating up , putting one in place well before things get hot .. I also used a cut down pointed 3mm thick x 250 mm long wooden BBQ kebab spear /stick as a " proggler " to pickout awkward bits that remained instead of going in hard with the wire brush .

Once you've got rid of the main blob be careful to wipe the nozzle with a cotton cloth as 250 oC will melt any man made plastic fibre cloth or artificial ( cellulose ) paper wipes . Once it's wiped clean use an acupuncture needle to clean the nozzle hole then re wipe the nozzle .


My tip ......Slide a mirror under the nozzle to ensure you've cleaned everything off and there is no damage to the cables etc. , pay particular attention to removing all microscopic hairs of filament as it's these that often cause blobs to occur.. If it's all OK switch things off and allow the printer to cool before doing the new filament feed exercise & temperature settings for the next print .

I got my brass brushes in a " Black Hawk" pack of two small plastic brushes , heads appro 12 x 35 mm with 10 mm bristles .one bright steel brushes and one springy brass looking brush ( brass or titanium coated steel ?) I got two of them from a pound type shop for £ 2 each pack .
At home I pulled out the central tuft half way along its length , then hacksawed the heads in half to make the brush smaller & more controllable .
I'm hoping to put a 3 inch long U handle of 1.5 mm thick spring of stainless steel in the two offcuts , super gluing them in after I've carefully drilled the mounting holes in the heads or I'll screw a small thinnish home made steel handle on to the tops so I have two more cleaning brushes for spares. Gave the other four plastic bristled brushes to my lass for her bonsai hobby & retained the steel brushes for my engineers tool chest .

The help desk instructions also recommend /say:- To prevent future blobs & hairs or prints not sticking early on they recommend ensuring the bed & nozzle is truly clean . Always clean them before setting up for every print . Also they suggest you also at the first run of the printer over the bed try lowering the nozzle a few numbers to get a better thinner spread of molten filament onto the bed . After three or four layers put the nozzle height back up to what you normally have it at and everything should then be OK.
They also say :- If the machine is left on for any length of time being heated up but not used the molten faliment will carbonise in the nozzle and give you a poor extrude so either don't leave it on heated & not being used or be prepared to clean the nozzle before you do your print .

 

[DAPPH]

I have been having some major issues with mine over the past few days...

It started when I noticed my bed needed levelling again, no matter what I tried I couldn't get it level.
I ended up completely stripping down the bed mechanism, tried various configurations to sort it, but what helped the most was widening the holes in the carriage plate to 4mm as the screws between the bed and carriage plate were binding.
Then I noticed that one corner of the frame at the front wasn't resting on the surface the printer is on. Naively I thought ' I'll just bolt it all down'... Big mistake!!! It knocked everything out! So I had a think after unbolting it and ended up shimming the whole printer wherever it needed ( All the support material I had saved came in very handy for this.).
I tried a print and it printed poorly, the part was complete but the amount of stringing and deformation was atrocious.

I had noticed a rattle when it was printing and set out to track it down... After a process of elimination I tracked it down to the 'Y' guide rods having up to approx 1mm movement in the holes where they slot into the frame. It seems shimming up the frame had removed all the tension in it and now the play in the rods is showing up.

This is where I am at atm, If I had a lathe I would just drill out the holes and turn up a bush. I think the easiest solution for me is to use some epoxy in the holes to take up the slack. As the bed shouldn't move in the Z apart from the usual amount caused by the machine moving I think epoxy will be up to the task, but, ofc I don't have any epoxy as its all been used by Mr Nobody again. I am gonna have to start charging the guy rent because he is costing me a fortune!!

Once I have got the above done I will spend a session re-calibrating it, especially the extruder because I think it is over extruding atm, although the roughness in the print might be down to the amount of play in the guide rods.

In my self build instructions it recommends that when building the machine you don't tighten the lower frame bolts /screws till you have pressed the fame down onto the table top in a checked flat place ( beware of raised rolled lips at the front of a work top )
I'm lucky, I built my man cupboard as an office with both benches to run round two walls & a corner each top is with two thicknesses of 40 mm work top glued & screwed on to 40 x 75 mm timber frame work ......it's all rock solid .
My first mounting platform was also a bit of a 40 mm thick piece of left over kitchen work top as that's about as flat & solid as I can get cheaply .

Tighten each bolt , screw on the base very lightly . When everything is in place , turn all of them 1/4 turn at a time in cross diagonal selection to keep things square/true and after each 1/4 turning re press the frame down to the platform, trying to keep the machine frame in the same place & orientation . That way not only will things be flat & true there should not be any twist or tension in the frame

I carefully marked the area it sat on with a fine point marker pen going down the side of a bit thin alu sheet placed next to the corners of the frame to make a series of L's ...one at each corner and also indicated where the front should be when doing the press down alignment test.
Do that and the frame will be reasonably flat for table top building . It also recommends having a similar thick flat mount under the machine when setting up for printing . Also to always check it does not rock on the platform whenever you move the machine off the platform or move the platform with the machine on it .. Always do a full bed leveling and printer head alignment set up after ever move even if it is on a thick platform like a bit of work top as humidity and temperature of the frame and the platform can put things out very slightly which will have a big impact on your printing ..

I suspect that may mean calibration / bed leveling & a test print may also apply every time a new reel of filament is put on the machine ..

 

[tflnemesis]

Well what a day!!!

It seems my big printing failure the other day caused more damage than I thought!

I have been struggling big time with 1st layer adhesion since it all went wrong. I have run first layer calibration prints over 30 times today trying to understand what was going wrong. When I finally thought I had cracked it I ran a print. It printed poorly but it did print and I was getting obvious signs of over extrusion in the side walls. So I ran my extruder calibration and that seemed ok but I was still struggling to get 1st layer adhesion properly and getting signs of over extrusion.
What I could see happening in the 1st layer was the filament being extruded was wide enough to push the previous lines off the build plate, even when I turned down my line width to half it was still doing it.
So i double checked my extruder temp and my bed temp, they were fine. I then thought I need to investigate my nozzle, once taken off I could see that the nozzle was approx 1mm wide!

Fortunately I had bought a Bowden extruder that I haven't got around to fitting yet, swapped the nozzle from that into my printer and voila! All is good again.

Been a stressful few days trying to sort it but I am back in business, now I might be able to finish the stormtrooper rifle i started a week ago!!
I also ordered 10 new nozzles yesterday as a just in case scenario, glad I did now.

 

[PhillipM]

That may well be what caused the failure to start with - there's quite a lot of chinese clone nozzles just drilled out with standard tip angles on the drills (e3d's have sharper angles to give smoother flow changes) - which makes them very thin on the end, plenty of people have had the end of the tip crack pop off after a bit of wear and tear

 

[DAPPH]

That post tells me it might be a sensible idea for me to save up and buy one of the ruby nozzles or a stainless steel one at the very least .

 

[tflnemesis]

Unless you are going to be printing abrasive filaments a lot I don't think it will be worth it as you can get 22x nozzles from amazon for 8 quid. ranging from 0.2 up to 1.0 with half of them being the standard 0.4...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Printer-2x...&qid=1549139970&sr=8-17&keywords=0.4mm+nozzle

 

[tflnemesis]

This is the set I bought, not very many nozzles but I was more interested in the drills for clearing them than the nozzles at the time...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0787Y2DD1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also re the stainless nozzle, I am sure I read on one of the 3d printing forums that stainless is not as good for heat transfer so draw more power from the psu for relative temperatures than the brass ones.

I'm not saying don't buy the stainless or ruby one I am just saying I will probably stick with the brass ones as they are so cheap.

 

[DAPPH]

Unless you are going to be printing abrasive filaments a lot I don't think it will be worth it as you can get 22x nozzles from amazon for 8 quid. ranging from 0.2 up to 1.0 with half of them being the standard 0.4...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Printer-2x...&qid=1549139970&sr=8-17&keywords=0.4mm+nozzle

Acupuncture needles ?
ebay item

153363018534
cheaper than chips , 100 off 0.3 mm x 60 mm long @ £5 other sizes available else where in the site

 

[HughF]

Bit of a thread drift coming up... I've got a few 3d printed items I want to get made, should I buy a printer (I'm not averse to this at all), or is it better to just farm my designs out to a service via eBay or whatever? The reason I'm thinking of the latter is I really don't know 'what to buy'.... Can anyone advise something that is decent, reliable and preferably has a chunk of open source electronics/firmware inside (I like open source)...

I'm looking to make some car interior clips (for modifying a parcel shelf), but mostly it's cordless tool battery converters...

 

[ukracer]

Bit of a thread drift coming up... I've got a few 3d printed items I want to get made, should I buy a printer (I'm not averse to this at all), or is it better to just farm my designs out to a service via eBay or whatever? The reason I'm thinking of the latter is I really don't know 'what to buy'.... Can anyone advise something that is decent, reliable and preferably has a chunk of open source electronics/firmware inside (I like open source)...

I'm looking to make some car interior clips (for modifying a parcel shelf), but mostly it's cordless tool battery converters...

Have you got the stl for the items you need printing? In my experience (limited) its not as simple as it looks. Takes some time getting your head round. Not like welding where someone can give you a complete set up and some bullet points and its then down to your skill and practice.

For example i have not printed since well before xmas and someone kindly designed some clips for me and i turned it all on and had a problem ....still dont know why but it seems to be SD card or corruption related. That was 2 days work to just get back to square 1.

If you have the STL send it to me via PM and i will send you a printed converter back so you can see an end result.

But if you like spending time as a hobby they ate great as they take up a lot of time..

 

[tflnemesis]

But if you like spending time as a hobby they ate great as they take up a lot of time..

Got to agree with this, I am surprised the amount of time it takes up, designing, slicing and actually printing takes up way more time than I would have thought.

Although there is something about designing a part from the bottom up and then having it in your hand a relatively short time later.
Sometimes it feels like an excersise in frustration, I spend so much time tweaking it just to get that perfect first layer (still haven't managed it yet ) and the times when you think everything is going well and 10 hours into a 13 hour print something goes drastically wrong .
Its still an amazing bit of kit though and if it was easy and worked all the time perfectly I am sure I would be bored with it now...

 

[tflnemesis]

They can do cool stuff like this too

 

[DAPPH]

You may find such a bracket as you need in Thingyverse.com that someone may print off for you , again you'll need a few hours to understand how the thinyverse works and do the actual search.


If you want an idea of how to do simple 3D drawing on your computer look on You tube for " Lars live " videos look as say number 3 Lars is using Fusion 360 . which can be a free for 3 years student version or Older " Makers " hobbyist type person .

Getting an overview from Fusions 360's own promotional videos can be a bit overawing for it shows just how versatile it can be when used in commercial environments having multiple users at desks all over the world .

It's taken me about 26 hrs so far & like the others I find there are a few challenges .

Mine appear to be mainly to do with places / points within my construction lines & permanent lines intersecting a plane I want to cut , remove or extend .


So far my PRUSA Original 3i D printer by Joseph Prusa

has cost me about £1,000 . It was im​

ported by me using their website from their factory in Prague as a kit and built by myself printer ..... this includes me building a bespoke enclosure for it using new 19 mm ply and two Perspex sheets .

I had to seek help three times from their help desk in Prague to get it up & running as it was stuck in a test sequence carried out in the factory on the main control unit . Also for help in working out why I got a poor first five layers that would not adhere to the heated bed good enough & for help in getting the printer nozzle cleaned of the resultant blob of plastic that resulted from the poor adhesion of the first five layers .

Happy to say it was excellent & is a live typed online chat in English or whichever language you choose to communicate in .​

Which gave me time to write references & page numbers etc.

 

[Luke]

I'm looking to make some car interior clips (for modifying a parcel shelf), but mostly it's cordless tool battery converters...

Have you seen Stealth Mounts?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/StealthMounts/

 

[HughF]

Have you seen Stealth Mounts?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/StealthMounts/

I have now, cheers.... Not quite what I need though. I need something to use the pile of lidl/parkside 12v batteries I have invested in... Found an adapter on thingyverse

 

[DAPPH]

I have now, cheers.... Not quite what I need though. I need something to use the pile of lidl/parkside 12v batteries I have invested in... Found an adapter on thingyverse

Care to share the numbers ...some of us may suddenly think YESSSSsssss ! I can use one or two of them .

Dave

 

[gerrymoore]

Just seen the Anet on gearbest for £120 ...is it worth a punt as a beginner??

 

[bigegg]

Just seen the Anet on gearbest for £120 ...is it worth a punt as a beginner??

yes

 

[Luke]

Another yes.