Transcript:
[music] pray well! Hello, there, fellow maker. Welcome down to the shop. I’m Bill. This is prop 3d and we are continuing our journey with the amen, 8:8 3d printer, trying to make a super cheap printer print Something really, really cool course. In the last video, we did a bunch of upgrades to make this printer quite a bit safer and today. I’ll run you through all the upgrades that I’ve added to make it print better again. I’m trying to pull all of this off as low budget as possible, but I did end up spending a tiny bit more money more on that later, most of the upgrades I did are all done with 3d printed parts. Those were found on Thingiverse and they were printed on the a8 itself. Of course, any of those upgrade files will be linked down below, And, of course, before I get started on these upgrades. I printed out a little bench E to use, of course, as a benchmark to show any improvement that we make beyond this. And, of course, the quality on the print initially wasn’t all that great, so there’s nowhere to go, but up, all right, that’s enough chatter. Let’s get to the upgrades first. I finished building the drag chain. These weren’t really necessary for improving the quality, but getting all of those wires tidied up made for much smoother operations. The small linked parts were printed out four at a time. The y-axis required 20 of these links once they were all printed. I popped them all together and work. The hinges a bit to smooth out their motion. Then I slowly fed the wires through and tucked everything away. The piece that connects this chain to the frame was a bit of a pain to install requiring that. I unscrew some of the fitting. In fact, I ended up moving the washer behind the printed piece to get the chain to tilt away from the frame as it was actually running into it. Otherwise, the X-axis requires 28 of those tiny little pieces and to avoid similar issues. I assembled it with magic, also not necessarily a quality upgrade, But I did print out some filament guides these work pretty well, but I think I need to come up with a better solution, and I don’t want to hang the spool on the top of the printer frame. It is acrylic as bendy enough, and I don’t want to put any more stress on it. Another little addition. I noticed that the Z-axi’s screws sounded like this [Music] so I used some all-purpose oil to lube them up, And then they sounded like this. I have no idea if that makes it print any better. But it did make the machine more bearable to be around an easy and common upgrade. Are these t brackets that help stiffen up the frame? I printed out a couple of them, and while they weren’t the prettiest of thing, they did attach to the frames quite easily. It’s hard to tell if these did much to improve the performance. The acrylic frame is still quite flexible something. I heard from a bunch of commenters. Was that a better replacement fan novel would improve the print quality dramatically. I did some research to find out the best one and printed that guy out, of course, on the a8 swapping it out with a piece of cake, but after doing another. Ben, t-test print. It was really hard to see if any of the upgrades so far had made any difference in the print quality. Something else I was encouraged to do was to add some brackets and bearings to secure the top of the Z-axi’s screws. I happen to have some of the bearings on hand, so I printed out those little brackets and installed them on the frame. It definitely did a lot to lock down those screw tips, but I have a hunch. This really will only help for taller prints, so it didn’t hurt anything to add it. I also got a ton of comments about adding the supports to the front and back of the frame due to the tension of the y-axis belts. These parts of the frame actually flex quite a bit again. I found the parts that I needed on Thingiverse and printed them out on the a8 These were actually some of the largest prints. I had done on the machine so far and it did handle it quite well. The one larger part did require just a tiny bit of cleanup to get it to fit snug on the frame that probably could have been avoided If I had printed with some support after I got those two pieces installed on the frame. I did another 3d Benji Test print and I’ll be honest. I was kind of just made to see that everything up to this point. I’ve made little difference in the printer quality on a tip from my pal. Joel, the 3d printing nerd. I checked the novel to see if it was fouled in some way, it was hard to, because it’s so tiny, but it did look like it wasn’t quite perfect and I happen to have a point. Four millimeter drill bit on hand, So I use that to make sure that the orifice was nice and round. I also flattened the end of the nozzle with a needle file. It definitely looked a lot better, but the change in seemed to impact the great quality at all, so it was finally time to spend a little bit of money on some new parts, the linear bearings that came with this machine, especially on the X Axis. We’re just a little bit wobbly. So it sprung for a new set that came highly recommended from the community. I also had to buy these special pliers that are used to pull out the retaining clips that hold the bearings inside their little housing, taking apart, most of the prayer, pulling out the stock bearings, putting in the new bearings and putting the printer Back together. Took me about a good half hour or so, and while I couldn’t speak for the print quality right away, The carriage definitely felt like it was fighting much easier. The other thing I needed to buy was some more belts. I wanted to add printed belt tensioners but I had cut the supplied belt during the assembly and it wasn’t long enough, so I picked up some top-quality fiberglass reinforced outs for about 15 bucks. The tensioner pieces were then printed out And I got on to the assembly at this point. I ran out of these applied m3 hardware, so I had to go buy some more. Not the bolt loads doesn’t carry anything smaller than m4 so I bought some of those and did a little bit of modification with my rotary tool. The Y-axis tensioner holds the belt in place. And then you add tension by turning the large printed screw. This did a great job. Oh, super impressed to see how much tension you could add. That felt the X-axi’s tensioner works in a similar manner, except that there are two bolts that push the end of the x-axis rods. And you screw them in pulling the belt. Tighter in the process, also at this point. I upgraded the firmware on the machine to Skynet. I’ll link to a video. It’s got instructions on how to do that. One particular note with this firmware is that you should home the machine before starting a print. Otherwise it might start printing in midair. This happened to me a couple times that last batch of upgrades has a definite impact on the quality of the next bench Eprint. And I got to tell you I was pretty happy to see a change because up until that point, I was getting pretty frustrated that my efforts hadn’t yielded any results. Now back when I bought my MOSFET for the heated bed, It came in his 2-pack, so I took the time to attach the second one to the novel out of a separate video showing how that was done. This probably didn’t make the a net print any better, but it’s probably a little bit safer. The last little thing I did was deal with some vibration noise in the display area. It done it a little bit like this. I made a little shim from a piece of styrene plastic and jammed it between the frame and the display, thus fixing the noise. And there you go guys all of the upgrades. I’ve done so far to the a net 8 3d printer, and it is definitely printing a lot better. I think it’s finally time to start printing my helmet. In fact, I’ve already started and here’s a piece ready. That’s what I get. You have any idea what you think that might be make it guess down in the comments. Hey, gang, thank you so much. For the upgrade suggestions it’s been quite a lot of work but also pretty rewarding putting this thing together. There are, of course, many other things. I could do to upgrade this machine, but I’m going to call it good right there. There are things. I can do like, adding an auto leveler or putting a piece of glass on the bed down here. I can also replace the entire extruder. I can even go so far as replacing the entire frame, but let’s be honest. At that point. This machine would kind of cease being the a8 and become something else entirely, also between the tools and components that have purchased to upgrade this thing. My budget’s going over 250 bucks plus. I spent a good 10 or 15 hours making all of these changes, and I’ve decided that’s how much investment I’m willing to put into this machine and I really want to get started making some cool stuff on a quick side. Note to some of the commenters were worried that the electronics would be getting kind of hot, don’t worry. I did some tests with my laser thermometer, and the electronics are getting no hotter than my own body temperature. So I think we’re going to be OK there. Hey, thank you so much for checking out our videos. Hopefully, if you’re working on your own low budget 3d printer project. This series has been helpful for you. Of course, if you have any questions yourself, drop them in the comments down below, and I’ll try real hard to get back to. I’m beginning super-excited about printing my big helmet project. In fact, I’ve already printed like half the parts for it, and I’m so excited to reveal it to you guys next week. So if you’re new to the channel, make sure you hit that subscribe button, so you don’t miss that coming out super soon plus a whole bunch of other prop and costume, making goodness made for your eyeballs as always all the tools and parts that I use in this build will be linked down below. Those are Amazon affiliate links by the way. So if you use them to make purchases helps the channel out a little bit, That’s all I have for you today. Thank you again so much for watching. I need to get this machine back to work. I’ll see you in the next build and happy [Music] [Music]. Hmm.