During my first coop, I was given a broken old anet A8 3d printer that was no longer used as it kept clogging up and was unreliable for professional use.
This was the first time I had encountered a 3d printer and ever used any CNC machine so it was a long project for me to get it to work and work reliably.
I started by learning all about how 3d printers work and what they need to work physically. I learnt about all their defects. This was particularly difficult as I had no working printers around to know what was wrong. Overall there were a lot of mistakes made in the project but I learnt a lot from each one.
My first steps putting it back together as I had to dismantle it without instructions for transport. After that I began to evaluate all the parts that were functioning. I determined that the mainboard was partially functioning and was able to move the stepper motors. It was also able to heat the hot end but was not able to extrude. This was the first challenge I had to overcome.
I found out that it was a combination of a clogged nozzle and too much clamping pressure at the extruder motor that kept repeatedly failing to extrude and then ate through the filament and would no longer function at all.
I fixed this by replacing the nozzle with a cheap chinese one and reduced the clamping force to allow the extruder to work somehwat reliably.
Next, I had to ensure that the axes could home properly. After a few crashes on the Y axis, I found out that the home switch was loose and the belts were also too loose. I designed a temporary mount for the switch and rewired it to ensure it was working enough to start functioning and tightened up the belts on both the axis to ensure that the they were able to move.
I then moved on to the z axis and found out that the lead screws were bent. I havent bothereed to replace them to this day but it works good enough so Ive left it. I lubricated it to make it run smoother tho.
Once I determined that all the physical components worked, I tried to run gcode on it but found out that the SD card slot was burnt. I then proceeded to try and run octoprint but found that my Pi Zero was too slow to do anything meaningful.
I then found out about klipper and installed Mainsail on my raspberry pi to ensure it works properly. I had to compile a custom klipper firmware file for my particular board as it was previously customized with modifications.
After all this came time for the first print. A benchy.
As soon as I hit the button, the hot end crashed into the bed and ruined it. This is when I learnt about the importance of Z leveling.
I proceeded to stumble through online resources and try and connect them to my printer and figure out how to do what they do on my setup.
I replaced the probe I had with a BL-Touch probe to get it working and measured the reliablility of the probe to ensure it was within tolerence for the task.
After everything was done and working, I wanted to improve print speed. After critically analyzing each individual component, I noticed that the first thing to fail at high speeds was the x axis belts which slipped. To prevent this, I converted a the hot-end setup to a bowden tube setup to reduce the moving weight on the print head and allow faster acceleration and speeds.
This was a huge success and allowed a 30% improvement in print speeds. The next thing that failed was the Y axis belts in the bed slinger setup.
This is where the project is in the current state.
Goals for the future: Reduce the weight of the hot bed while maintaining strength. Improve the leveling mechanism. Design a new frame for the printer and move away from Acrylic. Possibly a 3d printed frame. Replace the mainboard to get newer stepper motor drivers to reduce noise and increase efficiency. Convert to a core-xy system to remove the bedslinger setup.