My 3D Printer Journey

12/30/2017

For some time now I’ve toyed with the idea of building a 3D printer but my mechanical fabrication skills are not that great and the cost of the parts seemed prohibitive. Furthermore I questioned just exactly what I would use a 3D printer for other than printing little dodads that other people designed.

Then I learned about the many option for printer kits under $300.
Finally when I found an ad for one that cost only $150 I decided to add it to my Christmas wish list.
At that price point, even if it didn’t work the parts alone would be worth it and if it did work I wouldn’t feel so bad if it ended up just sitting on a shelf unused.

The kit I chose was the Anet A8 which was recommended to me by a friend. He also recommended the
GearBest.com site to purchase it from. See: https://www.gearbest.com/Anet-A8-3d-Printer-kit-_gear/

Although the assembly of this kit took several (long) evenings the instructions were fairly understandable and there’s a ton of informative guides and videos online to help you out.
The frame is mostly made up from laser cut Lucite parts and just removing the protective paper covering on these parts took nearly 2 hours.

For anyone considering building this kit here’s my advice (you’ll hear lots of similar advice online as well)

1. While waiting for the kit to be delivered you can download the assembly guide and watch the videos run through them a couple times if you have the time.

If you have access to another 3D printer (at your local library for instance) you can also get some experience by downloading and printing some of the popular upgrade parts before the kit arrives.

2. Prepare a good size space (table or workbench) dedicated to the printer assembly task.
Assume some glitch will stop progress for a few days and you don’t want to have to keep moving the build around.

3. When the kit finally arrives, take your time, first inventory all the parts and make sure every nut & bolt is there.
Read each step carefully and have a computer handy to check the internet with if you get stuck or confused about a particular build step.

4. Keep everything tight (but not over tight) & straight.

5. Once the kit is complete and you’re ready for your first print pay heed to the calibration advice. Especially getting the bed level and the Z axis adjusted correctly.

It took me four attempts to print one of the sample files that came on the SD card provided with the kit. Mostly because the extruder was not close enough to the print bed.

As mentioned above, there’s a bunch of upgrades available to download and print once the printer is running. Most popular are the extruder fan duct, bed leveling modifications and various braces to reinforce the frame.
You’ll want to print a few of these out right away, then one or more test 20mm calibration cubes.

There is an Anet A8 facebook group supporting a very active community that provides a host of great advice and tips.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1068531466501015/

Thingiverse

I can’t say enough about the Thingiverse site. https://www.thingiverse.com

You can spend hours browsing through all the wonderful things other folks have designed and shared all available for you to download and print. I’m quite fond of the Beer Opener (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16589)

It prints rather quickly and is useful to boot! Be aware that many of these excellent designs can take several hours to print and your results from your $150 Anet A8 may not always match what others have done with their $2000 machines.

3D Design Software CAD

Another reason I was reluctant to get a 3D printer was learning to use CAD software.

Everyone recommends TinkerCad but it’s a web based system and not open source. I didn’t want to invest the time learning to use a tool only to have it become unavailable or changed unexpectedly. I also didn’t want to be tied to a WiFi connection.
After a little online research I decided on FreeCAD https://www.freecadweb.org/

The jury’s still out on whether this was the correct choice but I’m struggling with using this so far with some success.
With the help of one of the tutorials available on the FreeCAD site I was able to design a simple “L” bracket. When printed the size and shape were correct and as expected and the holes were in the right place and the correct size. Hooray!! With a little more practice I was able to design an upgrade part myself and shared it on Thingiverse.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2759530

The process to add text to an object in FreeCAD is just ridiculous. It asks you to point the system at a font file but offers no suggestion on where to find them. On windows it’s in a system directory that FreeCAD may not have access to so you really need to first copy the files somewhere else and point FreeCAD at one of those.
I found lots of quirks in this software but it’s open source so I’m hoping it will get better.
One of the annoying quirks is when exporting to the STL file you will need to supply to another piece of software. You need to select objects correctly or your part may be missing the holes or have extra material.

Slicing Software

The SD Card that comes with the printer contains an older but customized version of Ultimaker’s Cura software. https://ultimaker.com/en/products/ultimaker-cura-software

Commonly referred to as “slicing”, this tool will take the .STL file that holds your design and convert it into the .GCODE that the printer needs to read. This is the point where a number of printer parameters come into play like layer thickness, bed and extruder temperatures printer speeds, fan speeds and a huge selection of other parameters.
Start with the settings recommended by the instructions and modify them as you become more experienced with the printer. This software will also duplicate your parts so if you need 4 brackets of the same design you can print them all at the same time. Plug-ins are available to allow you to add instructions to pause the print at a particular layer, to change to a different color filament for example. Other plug-ins let you adjust parameters (like temperatures) at a particular layer or thickness. Still lots to learn about this process. Plenty of online tutorials.