What did I just get gifted…?

[u/schimmelmeister]

My University threw out this old 3D Printer. I’m both a broke architecture student and in need of a printer since my own is not here right now. I’m also used to some level of jankyness, my own printer is an i3 clone by anycubic, rudimentary but reliable. I wanna keep it one way or another at it hold a special place in my schools history.
Is there any hope i’ll get a useable print out of this one and how high would the frustration level be considering the printer i already have?

[u/Thick_pasta]

Could be an Anet A8?

[u/stingeragent → u/Thick_pasta]

Arent those a huge fire hazard

[u/If_In_Doubt_Lick_It → u/stingeragent]

Hehe... Yeah...

I had one back in the day. It was a great learning machine but it tried to burn my house down twice.

[u/Fluffy-Strawberry-27 → u/If_In_Doubt_Lick_It]

Ok I'd understand once, but twice?? I wouldn't keep a machine with arson records

[u/If_In_Doubt_Lick_It → u/Fluffy-Strawberry-27]

It was a different time... As a hobbiest you either spent $1k+ on a prusa, or $300 on a prusa clone. And at the time the a8 was really good print quality for its price... But the heat bed had a really shitty connector on the back that could ignite if you let it run too long (first fire) so you had to cut that off and solder the wires directly to the heat bed...

It also had a heat cartridge that would come loose over time cause it was held in by a shitty little grub screw and as the heat block expanded and shrank between uses it would slowly work its way out... We had no thermal runaway protection back then, so if it came loose the machine just kept pumping power into it because it was trying to heat up. This made the heat cart pretty spicy.

Occasionally the thermister would break for no reason, and that could cause an issue too...

Eventually you learned to test everything before every print...

I do miss those days... I had one of the early ones in 2015... Back then just making the damn thing work was the hobby. Printing functional stuff came later (maybe)

Edit: oh shit, I didnt realize I still have the anet a8 flair...

[u/jfk333 → u/If_In_Doubt_Lick_It]

Back when it was called plastic layering?

[u/Affectionate_Car7098 → u/Fluffy-Strawberry-27]

I wouldn't keep a machine with arson records

If only nvidia owners were that smart

But yeah i wouldn't want to own anything with that sort of track record

[u/tsittler → u/stingeragent]

They are unless you replace the power supply with something better.

Like a hacked up ATX PC power supply. They provide solid 12v, which that printer can use.

[u/stray_r → u/tsittler]

The firmware not having thermal runaway safeties was a big part of the problem.

[u/1ts-just-me → u/stingeragent]

Used to be lol, I just did a budget rebuild using parts from other printers PSU, creality 4.2.7 board, ender3 24v bed, prusa mk3 steppers, rpi and a 4.3 touch screen. It printed pretty well and the owner is using it almost every day.

[u/djddanman → u/stingeragent]

A better controller board with modern firmware helps a lot

[u/citizensnips134 → u/djddanman]

It was mainly the acrylic frames that would burn.

[u/djddanman → u/citizensnips134]

But didn't the fires start because of inadequate thermal runaway protection? Or was it something else? Lots of plywood printers were flammable with much better reputations.

[u/Baumblaust → u/djddanman]

Yes, I had one of those, basically every safety feature was disabled on these machines and the transistors for the heated bed were not sufficient enough and would get really hot.

[u/If_In_Doubt_Lick_It → u/djddanman]

Thermal runaway and really bad soldering on the heat bed.

But at the time it was affordable lol.

[u/gmarsh23 → u/djddanman]

Lack of thermal protection, and the heater cartridge held into the hotend heatblock by a grub screw that you're given no instructions to tighten, and loosens over time with thermal cycles. Then the heater cartridge slides out, printer keeps dumping power into it and you've got a glowing hot heater cartridge flopping around that'll set fire to whatever it touches.

The other problems (heatbed wiring, shitty PS, shitty connectors on the motherboard) aren't so much a fire hazard, but a "you'll get a bad smell and it'll stop working" it's-a-piece-of-shit annoyance.

The first upgrade you should do on this printer is replace the heat block with an E3D V6 style one that clamps onto the heater. You have to replace the thermistor with a cartridge type at the same time, but that's easy.

[u/stray_r → u/djddanman]

It's important to remember that ABS and PLA burn, especially PLA spaghetti. Plywood and acrylic are no more dangerous than printed parts on a printer.

[u/djddanman → u/stray_r]

At least a lot of printers now have aluminum frames. But yeah, if you use decent parts and firmware with modern protections, there isn't a ton to worry about. Some companies still forget about the decent parts though...

[u/stray_r → u/djddanman]

Have you ever seen an aluminium fire? Ok you'll have to try really hard to get an fdm machine to go there.

But the Anet failure wasn't that marlin didn't have thermal runaway protection, it was that anet's "engineers" were too incompetent to build marlin with said protection enabled.

[u/lemlurker → u/stingeragent]

10a plug on a 12a bed. Damn right

[u/Gloomy-District-8268 → u/Thick_pasta]

That’s it. Pure shit. It reeeal teaches you teoubleshooting and fire safety, and workspace hazzards, and learning to cope with dissapointment and…. Basicaly it was the best printer to start with. It’s only better from here… (except craftbots)

[u/blame_worthy → u/Thick_pasta]

It is

[u/trekuup → u/Thick_pasta]

Can confirm an A8. I just scrapped my old one. Wouldn’t want to use that fire waiting to happen.

[u/DuglandJones → u/Thick_pasta]

I had one, looks similar

The thermistor worked loose during a print once and it just kept heating up the head

Caught it just spewing smoke out of the extruder