Hi - new member with an Anet A2

[guymark]

Hi.

Thought I would say hi as I have just bought and assembled an Anet A2 and had a little go to see what it will do. A dinky little test print (still took abuot 20 minutes) was encouraging when printed with PLA. Yet to play with ABS, though that is the material of choice as it is stronger and, as not so dense as PLA, you "get more for your money" both in terms of greater volume for kg and ABS would SEEM to be cheaper too.

The Hat very kindly offered to design and send me the STL file for an adapter to allow me to print from 3" paper rolls even though my spindle is fitted with 2" roll inserts. All in all worked quite well and I learned quite a lot along the way, (dodgy start as bed not quite level etc).

If you look at post six here you can see the two roll adapters made. :-

https://www.printerknowledge.com/th...e-i-can-buy-a-couple.12321/page-2#post-106870

Huge thanks to The Hat as I have not even STARTED to look at designing things, just managed to press the PRINT button and keep various things crossed

If anyone is building the Anet A2 and would like a few minor suggestions, I am more than happy to share a few things I "learned the hard way" during assembly with less than crystal clear instructions.

Nothing that caused damage or couldn'r be "undone and re-done", but I suspect I could have shave around an hour off the build time if a couple of things were not wrong in the assembly illustrations. It seems the A2 is a generic beast made by various people, so perhaps some assembly guides are better than others.

If however it suggests using 12mm M5 screws to attach corner brackets to the aluminium cross section, you will find unless you washer the screws, they will "bottom out" and not allow you to tighten the T nuts properly.

My kit came with washers but not mention of them - so it took a while for the penny to drop, meanwhile I had switched to some M5 10mm screws I had in stock and carried on.

Anyway, sorry for a rather verbose into!

A new toy to learn!

Mark

 

[Nifty]

Hi Mark, great to have you here and learning about your experience with the Anet A2!

Glad @The Hat 's STL helped!

Looking forward to learning more!

 

[The Hat]

@guymark, it’s always good to have another new printer model on the forum and I really welcome you offing to help others with their setup if they encounter problems too.

I have not even STARTED to look at designing things, just managed to press the PRINT button and keep various things crossed

The same goes for you if you get stuck when you start into designing your own projects, there are lots of free Apps out there for the student designer.

Next question, when are you getting your second 3D printer...

 

[FryingSaucer]

Hi Mark,

Welcome. I have an Anet A8, also built from a kit. I've been really pleased with it. I just googled Anet A8 vs A2 and came across this extremely negative post about all things Anet. Yes, I have made some mods, but that was part of the fun. There are some safety problems with power, but they're easily fixed. The mods I did cost nothing like what the guy said (not unless you include my time). I've had good quality prints and a lot of fun.

Enjoy

 

[guymark]

I think the Anet printers offer astounding value for money, yes you have to assemble them yourself - but that also means you know pretty much EXACTLY how to repair one if and when it fails. Much better than buying a box closed in on 5 sides out of six that is not meant for end user repair or upgrade.

You are right about the PSU of course - and the iffy joints on the main board. I will replace the 20A PSU with a 40A (only pennies dearer than the 30A) and then use the old one as another lead-acid battery charger (most are adjustable to around 14.5v).

Anyone who reckons the Anets printers deserve an unduly negative review either had a very poor experience with a bad box shifter selling a poorly thrown together kit OR didn't read the directions properly. As an example, if the little white plastic bearing wheels are done too tightly, the carriages "sort of slide" bu with great resistance - as such with the A2, you can get a lopsided first few layers as the Z axis only moves on one side AND also can result in quite a stepped finish. Adjust properly and it works "right out of the box".

I also agree that time should not be factored in - unless you are buying a pre-assembled "ready to go" kit for professional use. If you are buying a home users DIY 3D printer kit, then costing for time is as daft as it would be if you had to attach a value for time spent relaxing, time spent practicing golf or drinking beer.

On of the mods I am going to make shortly is the Y axis belt tensioner. I have not made it yet though as I want to print it with ABS and I need to make a little enclosure first I think (thought might try my luck anyway). I don't want to print in PLA for that part as once the printer DOES have an enclosure, if I keep it at 60c or so for printing ABS, it may make the tensioner a bit on the "flexible side".

Watching the spindle adapters that The Hat had designed for me, start to take shape was awesome, I was like a kid in a sweet shop (or candy store on the other side of the pond) as the bits I needed start to appear in front of me.

Need to learn how to use CURA now so I can design simple things for myself. I want to learn how to take a logo, make it 3D with a hollow middle so I can then print a white "lid" and backlight it. Also have a more fiddly project (a modified vacuum cleaner head) which will get fiddly as I need to learn how to make a "pipe inside the head" rather than leave it all open (too weak). I am sure really easy for some, but will be a little learning project for me. I am hoping that making letters, numbers and logos into 3D for backlighting should be easy enough though. (A project in mind for a small business run by a friend).

I think the A2 and the A8 are similar in many ways, I think the A8 has the advantage of twin Z motors (IIRC) wheras the A2 just has one (and not even belt driven second screw) BUT on the upside, it is mostly aluminium which makes it quite rigid. The great thing with BOTH printers though, is that there are mods available to both models to allow the best of all worlds if we want them.

Once I have a little more (ok, a lot more) experience of the A2, I am VERY tempted to see if I can mod it by simply giving it a longer Y axis. I don't think it is difficult to adjust ANY of the axis really from what I can see, but the option to be able to print "long thin things" - could be useful for me - even if I don't bother to widen the X or raise the Z axis.

It's an exciting new interest for me and I have already had £114 worth of fun in just assembling it, getting it to work and printing off my spindle adapters. Everything else is a bonus

 

[The Hat]

@guymark, When you start out with a 3D printer first, you tend to make the usual mistakes that everyone makes, but it’s a beautiful learning curve not to mention a fascinating one.

Try and use the PLA till you got the hang of most things, ABS works but it tends to suffer from absorbing the surrounding moisture and then doesn’t print that well.

My intension is to make a sealed box to hold and print my ABS reels from and then I except to get better results using ABS and the PETG filament too, will it work, I don’t know but it will be fun trying...

https://youtu.be/WEFtUKGAd7k
P.S. I got my new plastic box but now need a bag of the Silica gel, O’ and a Feckin printer to make up the parts...

 

[FryingSaucer]

I've made a lot of mods to my A8, some safety related (power supply, MOSFETs, better connection to the heat bed), braces to improve stabilisation, belt tensioners, improved filament spool holder and others. But although I thought these must all be good things to do, I couldn't necessarily see any difference in the prints I did, my house hadn't burned down before I upgraded the power supply arrangements....

The one mod I enjoy every day was attaching an old Raspberry Pi to the printer and installing an Octopi Server on it. Although the printer's only a few feet behind me from where I'm sitting at my PC, it's great to be able to control the printer from my PC without walking over to it, it's great to be able to upload files without transferring SD cards between printer and server (I refused to use a direct USB connection in case Microsoft rebooted my PC in the middle of a print), it's great to be able to see the temperature of the bed without turning round to look at the printer display, it's great to start a print from my PC and hear the printer leap into life behind me. I love Octopi

 

[The Hat]

The one mod I enjoy every day was attaching an old Raspberry Pi to the printer and installing an Octopi Server on it. Although the printer's only a few feet behind me from where I'm sitting at my PC, it's great to be able to control the printer from my PC without walking over to it, it's great to be able to upload files without transferring SD cards between printer and server (I refused to use a direct USB connection in case Microsoft rebooted my PC in the middle of a print), it's great to be able to see the temperature of the bed without turning round to look at the printer display, it's great to start a print from my PC and hear the printer leap into life behind me. I love Octopi

@FryingSaucer, you’re only saying this to make me jealous, because I still can’t Friggin print anything, heck I don’t mind the walk if I could just print something when I get there...

 

[RogerR]

ABS is hard to print with. When it cools, it shrinks a lot. Unless it's stuck down to the bed like crazy, it will pop off most parts that are longer than a few inches on the bed.

PLA is good to learn with. It's hard and rigid which is good for most parts. Probably the easiest thing to get to stick to the bed.

I like PETG. It prints hotter than PLA, about where ABS is. But the bed doesn't need to be nearly as hot since PETG doesn't shrink nearly as much as ABS. The resulting prints can flex a tiny bit, which is good for a lot of things. It's about as strong as ABS.

You can connect a laptop or computer directly to the printer and use Pronterface to control it.

RR

 

[FryingSaucer]

You can connect a laptop or computer directly to the printer and use Pronterface to control it.

The great thing about Octopi is it's running on the Raspberry Pi, which is a server. If your computer's connection to Octopi breaks, your PC goes to sleep or whatever, the print keeps going. It's the Pi that's sending the gcode to the printer, not the PC. If I understand Pronterface correctly you're dependent on the link between computer and printer remaining up. I've not used Pronterface though, so I might be wrong.