I need your advice, recommendations or opinion please.
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Folks, I'd appreciate some advice, opinions and/or recommendations here.
Background: In early 2017 I bought my first printer, an "Anycubic Prusa i3"
which is an acrylic framed i3 clone (200x200x180). Over time it's been
altered and modified (as one does) and now sports a D3D Maestro, a Titan
Aero, 24v power (was 12v) amongst the mods. This printer is a workhorse
and has several hundred hours of printing on it.In late 2017 I bought my 2nd printer a "Flsun Cube" a 2020 framed printer
(260x260x350) which has also been heavily modified and now sports a Maestro,
Titan extruder, E3D V6, two independent Y motors and a 24v power supply
plus other mods.The problem: As I've modified and improved each printer, the quality of
the prints from the Cube has improved more and more and has reached the
point where I am absolutely delighted with it. Unfortunately the same
cannot be said of the Anycubic, the quality seems to have reached a
plateau and doesn't compare to that of the cube. Don't get me wrong, it
still produces good, strong prints but I'd really like better. I feel
that the core of the problem lies with the Acrylic frame compounded by
simple wear and tear.So, I need to do something with the Anycubic, and I see a few options:
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Sell it on Ebay as is. I don't think this is realistic as I won't see
even a tiny proportion of my investment back. -
Return it to stock and sell it on ebay. I don't think this would be
worth the effort as it'd be a full day's work (if I can find all the
original parts) but I would keep the Maestro, Titan Aero and the 24v
supply. -
Scrap it, harvest all the usable parts and bin the frame then:
3a. Build a new frame, preferably from a kit as I don't have the
resources to work to the necessary accuracy cutting extrusion etc.
Most of the frame kits I've found seem to be based on converting a
specific printer (A8->AM8 / Prusa I3->Prusa Bear) or are very bare
bones (extrusion and fasteners only).3b. Buy a cheap printer kit with a good frame from Amazon or Ebay and
start "improving" it with the parts recovered from the Anycubic. Perhaps
another Cube or similar. This option seems wasteful as I'd be buying
another controller, display, motors, extruder etc. most of which
woudn't be used.Proviso: I wouldn't particularly want another printer with the bed moving in Y, I
suspect this also is a factor limiting the quality of this printer.Whatever I do, it must be done on a budget so if anyone has any advice
or suggestions for me, I'm listening. -
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@mudcruzr said in I need your advice, recommendations or opinion please.:
Anycubic Prusa i3
The I3 is very similar to the A8.
So you could do the AM8 conversion if you account for the different rod lengths and get extrusions matching the length.
Or go a step further and replace the rods as well with linear rails for higher accuracy.
See BLV mgn12 3D Printer mod for Anet A8 / AM8 / Prusa I3 clone on Thingiverse -
I have an FlSun as well, really impressive quality prints!
I would just build a copy of the FlSun frame and use the electronics etc from the anycubic. Aliexpress is a good source for all the parts except the alu extrusions and linear guides (never by chinese linear rails/guides). If you are in europe I recommend this company for extrusions, they are beautiful (German) quality and cheap https://www.motedis.de
If you go for linear rails I recommend these guys http://www.chieftek.com in europe they are here http://www.cpc-europa.de/en/contact.html and USA https://www.motionusa.com/cpc-|-chieftek-precision
They are fantastic quality and much cheaper than HiWin.
Good luck and have fun! -
I started with an I3 that was pure and simple, crap. I made it work, and got it to produce "acceptable" prints, that is prints that could do what they were intended for.
Ultimately, I bought something else, (My MakerBot clone) then used that to re-build my I3 into something else. Or at least that was the plan. There's so little left of the original I3 that I might as well not have bothered to keep it, though I did go through a few iteratons in things like motion testing that used the I3 parts more effectively. I'll probably end up using those parts for something, though right now, it's questionable as to what, exactly. Probably not for a 3D printer.
Mine is entirely self designed, because I did have access to tools to do precision cuts, even though I am using acrylic, mine is braced more than well enough to avoid most of the problems that acrylic brings with it.
If it were me, I'd likely go with 3b. Since you're happy with your cube, it kind of makes sense to go with something similar. Starting with a similar starting point, you have the electronics and the 24V parts to upgrade it pretty much off the start, so it should give you a second printer with similar capabilities to the one that you're very happy with, so you can run simultaneous prints.
Of course if you want something that your good printer CAN'T do... you may want larger, or smaller but faster. Or higher accuracy/resolution to print machine parts (Screw threads printed straight into your model, for example.) I'm re-purposing my MakerBot clone to use a larger nozzle, and handle faster print speeds for more rapid prototyping and for lower resolution needs, such as parts that won't be visible. Now is a good time to determine what you might want a different printer to be able to do.
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@veti It is very similar, I've made a few parts from Thingiverse for it that were designed for the A8 (also a few designed for genuine Prusa i3s that fit the Anycubic perfectly). That AM8 build on Thingiverse looks really interesting but doesn't get me away from the bed moving in Y which is something I really want to do.
Thanks for the pointer though.
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@splathammer said in I need your advice, recommendations or opinion please.:
I have an FlSun as well, really impressive quality prints!
I would just build a copy of the FlSun frame and use the electronics etc from the anycubic. Aliexpress is a good source for all the parts except the alu extrusions and linear guides (never by chinese linear rails/guides). If you are in europe I recommend this company for extrusions, they are beautiful (German) quality and cheap https://www.motedis.de
If you go for linear rails I recommend these guys http://www.chieftek.com in europe they are here http://www.cpc-europa.de/en/contact.html and USA https://www.motionusa.com/cpc-|-chieftek-precision
They are fantastic quality and much cheaper than HiWin.
Good luck and have fun!Now this is a good idea! As I have the Flsun in front of me, I can measure everything to make a BOM to order all I need and then I'd have it there as a template for building the new printer! It would also allow me to make a few alterations along the way (e.g. replacing some parts of the frame with 2040 instead of 2020).
This could be my solution.
I am in the UK, so I'll better get a move on if I'm ordering stuff from Germany (before March 29th lol!)
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Y movement bed machines are easy to build and use, however, compared to a Z movement bed, you can't get the same amount of speed or accuracy out of the former.
That said the CR10 did a great job- IF you printed slow and smooth.
Try using a toothed idler on the Y axis, it should make a noticeable improvement.
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@wyvern said in I need your advice, recommendations or opinion please.:
Y movement bed machines are easy to build and use, however, compared to a Z movement bed, you can't get the same amount of speed or accuracy out of the former.
That said the CR10 did a great job- IF you printed slow and smooth.
Try using a toothed idler on the Y axis, it should make a noticeable improvement.
That's weird! I just replaced both the X & Y smooth idlers with toothed ones yesterday, the first significant print since they were changed is still printing, I'll let you know how it looks.
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@wyvern Well, I'm impressed, that print was really nice. Funny thing is that I didn't change the idlers to improve quality, I just changed them because one had started squeaking a little and the only spares I had were toothed.
I'm going to look for something I printed on the i3 recently and print it again to do a proper before/after comparison but it looks like a definite improvement.
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Cool, yeah, you wouldn't think it would do anything, but little tweaks make all the difference.
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the prusa mk2 and mk3 still have a moving bed but produce very high quality prints.
However you could look into the Hypercube Evolution or if money is no constraint the Railcore II.
