This part of the site is now the Primary. The original site is still available for reference at - caggius.wordpress.com
October 2019 – Over the 2019/20 winter I decided to give the ANet A8 3D printer a major upgrade primarily aimed at reducing the noise level so as not to disturb the rest of the household when I am printing!
The major elements of this upgrade are:
BigTreeTech SKR V1.3 32-bit ARM Motherboard
( I have subsequently also bought an SKR Turbo 1.4 and TMC 2209s to play with)
BigTreeTech 2.4″ TFT Display
I am running this in 12864 Emulation Mode as I prefer to debug only 1 piece of software at a time and Marlin is painful enough!
Trinamix TMC2208 Silent Stepper Drivers
Marlin 2.0 Firmware
My initial port in 2019 which I am still running was to move to 2.0 Gold on the SKR 1.3
I have also completed the configuration changes for 2.0.5 with the SKR 1.4 board.
Jul 20 - I have completed a Marlin rebuild on 2.0.6 but I have not installed it on my machine - jump to the bottom for details
Hot bed MOSFET (not because the SKR’s need it it, but just because it has been sitting in my parts box for 12 months!)
Unbelievably within a few months the external MOSFET failed and I went back to using the SKR 1.3's onboard MOSFET.
This is not a trivial exercise for the beginner, and has required some detailed research to understand the hardware and firmware. I have documented this on these pages and in GitHub.
In all of this I have stuck to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), one step at a time. Get the Compiler working on the provided sample code before making configuration changes. Get the basic simple/hardware working before adding extended features. The difficulty of debugging a new machine is raised exponentially by the number of feature changes that you make at the same time; as you never have a good known starting point to refer back to.
Now a word of warning to the beginner, read this page before you start the upgrade.
….How-to-kill-a-3D-Printer Motherboard
Finally the essential elements of the build are documented here
Setting up the Marlin Build on my Macbook
Setting up the Marlin Build on Windows
Marlin Configuration changes. What where and why ?
Together with my latest Configuration files which are fully commented.
Initial Testing and basic Calibration of the updated printer
The non essential elements are documented here
ANet Hardware
Nema 17’s Specification
Before and After – Stepper Motor and Driver Temperatures
Print Bed Specification
Thermistors Specification, Pull-ups and Shorts
Zonestar 2004 Display
TMC Steppers Myths, Configuration and Vref Calculations