We have been thinking about getting a 3d printer of our own for some time now. We loved using the Makerspace at the library but it gets hard to print everything you want when you have to schedule a time in advance. Plus, the two hour time frame limits the what you can print and the quality you can print pretty quickly. We decided to buy an Anet A8 because it was cheap. We are well aware that with it being the low price option it may not be the best quality. We're thinking of it as an entry-level machine to test the waters and see how much we really even print on our own. If we use it a lot but find ourselves wishing we had more features or better quality then we'll upgrade but if not we haven't spent a ton on something we won't use.
Of course, it was a kit so we had to assemble everything ourselves. It actually went more smoothly than I expected. For one thing, my husband and I aren't great at building things together. I can't really put my finger on why but we irritate each other when we try it. The second thing that concerned me was that we both have a lack of experience with this particular sort of thing. However, after looking at some reviews and build videos I was fairly certain we could handle it.
We placed the order and everything arrived the Thursday before my birthday. We kicked my birthday off with brunch then came home and got started with the assembly. It took me most of the afternoon. Bear sat with me, and consulted when I had questions but mostly let me work alone. Around 5pm we turned everything on and it actually worked!
Well....turned on at least.
It was time to level the bed and do a test print. Once we loaded the file and hit print, nothing happened. The nozzle was preheated before we added filament, the screen had switched over to say it was printing, but nothing moved. After we waited for almost half an hour with no change we gave up, turned everything off and went to dinner. I did notice that the bed never heated up, it sat at 0 of 60 degrees the whole time.
Thus began my process of getting to know our 3d printer and learn how to use it. Nothing has made me feel as smart and simultaneously so dumb at the same time. Smart, because I built a complicated thing and it worked. Dumb, when I finally figured out that the only reason it wouldn't print was a loose connection. I am glad that I figured it out but the amount of time wasted fiddling with things for such a simple fix was a bit frustrating. Oh, but the excitement when it did start printing that test file.
And so, I printed a box. The corners are little off but after careful inspection, we think it has to do with the bed not being quite level.
Loading the filament is a little tricky and the button you have to hold down is not comfortable. For watching videos prior to the printers arrival, we knew we could print a replacement so that was high on our list. Problem was, we'd used the filament that came with the printer for the test run so we needed to change it before printing again. This is where we started to have real problems.... We had so much trouble trying to load the new filament that we finally ended up taking the fan parts off so we could see better, loading the filament, and putting things back together. It is not something I recommend, especially since the nozzle has to be hot to load filament. (There are several parts you can print that basically put a hinge here. I am looking into that but it seems that most of them alter the way the heat sink and fan connect so thing may not cool quite right. I don't want to rush into anything like that.)
After that, I decided to move the printer. We built it on the dining room table without really thinking it trough and I needed the table to cut our a sewing pattern. So the printer got picked up and moved to our living room hightop table. I knew since I moved it I should check the bed again to be sure it was level. However, there was one corner that was obviously too high but impossible to tighten down any further. Just sending the printer to the home position tore the tape on the bed.
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| It's kind of hard to see here but if you look right in the shadow you can see where the nozzle drug along the bed. |
After various fruitless attempts, I decided to start completely over. To level the bed you start by adjusting the limit switch and the fine tune the level using wing nuts under each corner of the bed. Prior to this I' just been trying to tighten the wingnuts. It turns out that moving it caused the limit switch to slip down so the entire bracket holding the nozzle was lower than it should have been. After fixing that everything leveled fairly quickly and it was time to try printing that button.
What I ended up with looked like this...
I stopped the print about 10 percent in because it was obvious something wasn't right. I had watched it a bit and it seemed like the temperature of the hot end fluctuated a LOT. Since I had the previous problem with a loose connection for the bed I checked this first. This particular cord was one that seemed stretched a bit too tight when we'd wrapped all the cords so I loosened the wrap a bit and tightened where it connects to the main board.
But the second attempt looked like this...
At first, it seemed to be doing better but as it got further in things went crazy. While it was set to print at 220 degrees it varied all the way down to 135. After a bit of research, we finally figured out the problem. Turns out the hot end cord has a small bit called a thermistor that fits into a hole next to the extruder. When we took everything apart to help load filament, we didn't get it back properly.
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| That small white wire is the thermistor. |
When we tried for the third time, we finally got a button. The top is a bit rough but still WAY more comfortable than the screw that functions as the button before.
Now that we have everything working relatively well we've tried printing more thing with varying degrees of success.
This orange peeler worked out pretty well.
This DnD figure? Not so much.
We are continuing to experiment and learn more about our printer and 3d printing in general. We have a hunch that this guy was printed with too high a heat setting so we'll make some adjustments and try again soon. There are also various upgrades to help with the safety and accuracy of the printer so we will most likely make some adjustments. We've already run it through a power strip with a switch so we can turn the power off without unplugging it but I found a tutorial for adding a real switch to the power supply. Once I can get the parts ordered I think that's at the top of the upgrades lists.
There are so many things we can print everything from minis for DnD, to cat toys, to small kitchen gadgets and everything in between. Bear is looking forward to printing dungeon tiles and terrain for games and I have ideas all over the place. I spent this afternoon looking at Christmas ornaments and tree toppers. Should we have a D20 topper? A light up star? Or maybe the triforce?
What should we print now?
