Transcript:
It’s 2018 and you’re wanting to get into 3d printing, but every printer worth buying is gonna cost you a thousand dollars or more, right. I’m Zach and this is bite sized. I first learned about 3d printing back in 2010 and I’ve been following the development of Desktop 3d printing ever since then, but I’ve never been able to convince myself that as a hobbyist. The benefit of owning my own 3d printer is worth the price of the machine. Tom Sandland. Er, er, of Tom’s. 3d org has actually made a video about this topic and I’ll put a card here linking to that video. I’ve learned a ton about 3d printing from Tom’s channel. So thank you, Tom. In Tom’s video, He describes the different price tiers of 3d printing and why it’s probably worth it to spend a little bit more to buy a 3d printer from this video. I basically learned that any machine worth purchasing is probably gonna cost me $700 or more, which is more than I wanted to spend on a 3d printer. So what did I do after watching Tom’s video? I went out and bought a hundred and 60 dollar 3d printer called the a net a 8 I found a ton of Youtube videos and a large online community surrounding this super cheap 3d printer, one of the things. I really like about this. Printer is that it’s based on the open source hardware design of the Reprap 3d printer, which is considered the first general-purpose self-replicating 3d printer. A self-replicating 3d printer means that it can print parts or even upgrades for itself. In fact, when researching this printer, Most people agreed that this printer is so cheap that it works just well enough right out of the box to start 3d printing replacement and upgrade parts for itself. You can search. Youtube and people have basically made lists of the most essential upgrades that this printer can actually print for itself. That’s pretty cool. I purchased my printer on ebay from a US seller and it was delivered to my house in less than a week. I know that they go for less than 160 dollars if you have them shipped directly from China. The printer comes packaged in a million little parts. I found a flash drive in the box, which included pretty detailed instructions and software to get up and running. I also watched an assembly video on Youtube to supplement the instructions. The frame is made from laser-cut acrylic and fastened together using bolts and nuts. I started assembling the frame by attaching the top plate to the two side plates next. I attached the bottom plate to the assembly. Here you see me correcting my first of many mistakes. I accidentally attached the top plate upside down. This was super easy to fix, though one major complaint. I read from many people with this printer is that the frame is very flimsy once. I had finished installing all the pieces. I actually thought it was fine next. I took the back plate and attached. The Y-axi’s limits, which limit switches are often found on linear drive trains to let the controller know when a gantry has reached the end of motion, and the controller will turn off the motor, preventing the machine from ramming into itself. In this case, The limit switches also act as homing switches, which give the printer a known starting point next. I installed the Stepper motor for the Y-axis. Stepper Motors are often used in CNC applications like this. Where precise motion control is needed here. I’m attaching the back plate with the Y-axi’s Stepper Motor to the rest of the assembly. This is the front plate and it has a metal bearing in a minute. You’ll see me wrap a rubber belt around the Y-axi’s Stepper Motor in this bearing the Stepper, motor drives the belt and moves the build plate back and forth in the y-direction. One of the cost-cutting measures of this printer is found here threaded rod is used to form mechanical linkage in the y-direction. If you’ve seen any of my other videos, you’ll know that. I’m kind of an impatient person. I needed to thread several nuts to the center of the threaded rod, so I threw the rod into the Chuck of my cordless drill and spun it at top speed while holding the nut. This saved me a whopping 90 seconds in a six-hour build. Well worth it if you ask me, honestly. What are cordless drills? Even good for if not for things like this here, you can see how the two nuts. I just put on sandwich the bottom acrylic plate and become the joining structure to the front of the machine. I used a couple of adjustable wrenches to tighten these nuts to the frame Now that I have. The basic frame built it’s time to assemble the heated build plate. This is the actual surface where the 3d printer will print the object. I started this part by sliding the linear bearings onto the y-axis linear rods, the rods slide into two holes in the front and back of the machine. They are held into place by a lid that tightens in place with a screw next. I took the build plate bracket, which is shaped like an H and screwed on the belt. Tensioning brackets, The H shaped filled plate bracket gets secured to four linear bearings with 16 screws the first time around. I tightened all the screws right off the bat when I went to move the bracket back and forth, there was a lot of friction and it was difficult. I don’t show it here very clear, but I found the best way to assure. Smooth action was to tighten one screw in each quadrant, Just a little then moved the bracket back and forth once or twice, then I would tighten four more screws just a little before moving the bracket back and forth, I continued to tighten the screws little by little while intermittently moving the bracket back and forth when I had finished tightening all the screws. The bracket slid from end to end with little effort Next. I attached the Y-axi’s drive belt to the build plate bracket, using the two black brackets shown earlier the belt loops around the y-axi’s motor and opposite bearing while attaching to the build plate bracket in the middle. I really didn’t like this method of attaching the belt because there was really no way to add tension to the belt. This will probably be something. I fix in the future now. When the motor turns the belt, the Bilt plate bracket moves back and forth. Finally, I used four screws and springs to attach the heated bed to the build plate. Bracket one of the most important things to do when 3d printing is to make sure the build plate, which is sometimes called. The print bed is level. These screws and springs allow the user to adjust the height of the printhead on all four corners. I really didn’t like the results. I got with this approach and so I might modify this in the future. Okay, now that the y-axis and build plate are finished. I’m ready to start installing the z-axis. This is the axis that moves the filament extruder up and down. I started assembling the Z-axi’s Motor mounts. The design uses two motors on the left and right side of the machine to raise and lower the filament extruder next. I inserted the left and right Z-axis linear rods and lead screws into the X axis motor mounts to raise and lower the extruder, both Z-axi’s motor spin, the lead screws simultaneously moving the X Gantry and extruder up and down the lead screws are attached to the motors using a flexible coupler and left free on the other side. Now it’s time to start installing the x-axis and filament extruder the first step was to insert the X axis linear rods. I couldn’t get the rod to slide through the hole, so I brought out my hammer to try to persuade it after a couple of minutes of light tapping. I realized my mistake that’s a it’s amazing. How easy the rods slid into place once. I loosen the set screw. That was in the way. The top linear rod gets to linear bearings. I made sure to loosen the bottom set screw before attempting to insert the bottom linear rod. You know what they say? Fool me! Once shame on you fool me twice time to take away my hammer next. I secured the X-axi’s Stepper Motor with four bolts After that. I attached the extruder mounting bracket with 12 screws. I used the same method as the build plate bracket to make sure I had smooth motion back and forth on this axis. The two ends of the X Axis belt attached to two bolts on the back of the Extruder mounting bracket, the belt loops through the X Axis Stepper Motor and opposing bearing. When the Stepper motor drives this belt, the extruder moves left and right again With this method. There is no way to add or remove tension from the belt. This will be something that I upgrade in the future. The extruder motor itself gets a heatsink and cooling fan next. I installed the extruder hot end into its mounting bracket and tighten the screw to hold it in place finally. I installed a second cooling fan while the 3d printer is doing its thing. This fan cools the previous layer so that the new layer has a solid foundation at this point. All of the mechanical assembly is done. All that’s left to do is to install the power supply, the control board and the LCD display. Here’s where I ran into a problem. The included instructions told me to connect the brown wire to the live terminal, the blue wire to the neutral and the yellow to the Earth. However, I use the continuity function on my multimeter to determine that the blue wire was actually connected to the live prong and the Brown Wire was connected to the neutral prom in other words. The instructions provided with the printer. Were telling me to reverse the live and neutral wires now. I know what you’re thinking, come on. Zack, don’t you know that? Reversing the two wires in an AC signal won’t cause any problems and you’re right. In fact, the device will work Just fine if you reverse the live and neutral wires. But a dangerous problem arises if the live wire we’re to come loose and accidentally touch the metal chassis X. The whole point of an earth wire is to provide a safe path for the current to flow in this type of situation. If the wires are reversed, there’s no safe place for the current to flow and the chassis X becomes conductive with live voltages so rather than trust the sketchy Chinese instructions that came with the printer. I followed my electrical engineering instinct and I’d connected the blue wire to the live terminal and the brown wire to the neutral. I know I’m gonna hear about this in the comments. You’re welcome to do whatever you want with your printer. This is what? I felt safe doing with mine. After finishing the power supply, I installed the main control board to the frame using four screws. I finished connecting all the remaining motors as well as the build plate. I used some cable wrap to tidy up the mess of wires next. I installed the LCD display and button panel in the top plate of the machine. The display has all sorts of useful information like the temperature of the print bed and the extruder tip. The last step was to connect the motors limit, switches, thermistor’s, cooling fans and display to the main control board. Okay, it’s almost time to fire this thing up the first thing. I need to do, of course, is to home the machine I navigated through the menu until I found the homing command. This moves all the motors to their starting position as I mentioned earlier. It’s super important to make sure the print bed is level failure to do. This will guarantee a failed print. The trick is to slip a piece of paper under the extruder tip and raise the print bed until the paper slips out with a small amount of friction. Repeat this process for all four corners. The next most important thing with 3d printing is to make sure the extruded filament adheres to the build plate. Many people use blue painters, tape or glue sticks to accomplish this. Here’s my first print using blue painter’s tape as you can see. The first layer isn’t adhering to the build plate very well. This is likely a result of an unlevel bed. That’s too far away from the extruder. I tried several more test prints before deciding to just print directly on the build plate, Choosing which object I was going to print First may have been the most difficult step of this whole process. I settled on Benji the boat and copied it to an SD card. If you know anything about 3d printing, this boat should look familiar. It’s designed to put any 3d printer through its paces and benchmark. Its performance, it has several overhangs, which require the extruder to print layers without supporting layers beneath them as you can see my first. Bengie boat turned out like crap If I had tried to float this in a bathtub. It would have just synced straight to the bottom. You can also see the steam stack on top didn’t even print out correctly. I had really low expectations for my first print, so I wasn’t too disappointed. I changed some print settings and tried Benjy again this time. I got something a little better. [MUSIC] Since filming these first prints, I have used the printer to print some upgrades and modifications for the machine. The quality of the prints has massively improved. This is probably less likely to do with these modifications and more likely to do with the fact that I’ve learned more about 3d printing. I’ve learned how to use the machine and what to look for when I’m starting the print that being said I’m excited to show you in a future video, which modifications I did to make the machine work better now to answer the question. That’s on everybody’s mind. Is this printer really worth 160 dollar price tag? The answer, of course, depends on what kind of user you are. If you’re the type of user that wants to open the box plug in the Machine and start printing industrial quality prints. This is not the printer you want to get, however, if you’re like me, and you really enjoy the building and fine-tuning process just as much as actually using it then. I would definitely recommend getting this printer before building this printer. I had a small foundation of 3d printing knowledge, and this printer was perfect for me to expand that knowledge without breaking the bank so that wraps up this video. If you haven’t seen my video about the five dollar. Wi-fi smart switch. Click here or you can watch the video where I made the stranger things message while here, I have a lot of other cool project videos like this in the works. If that’s something, you’re into be sure to click this subscribe. Button and Youtube will start recommending. You more videos like this. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time [Music]!