I’m brand new here. And I’m a complete newbie to 3d printing. I was recently given this printer and I know nothing about it. I don’t even know if it works. Our friend, that is a recent widow, gave it to me and she unfortunately doesn’t know anything about it either. It looks to be a DIY kit of some kind that her late husband built. I don’t see any brand names or any info on it anywhere. Anybody got any ideas? And maybe you can point me towards a manual or something to try and figure it out?
That’s one of the many clones of the “i3” design, and the brand doesn’t matter significantly. I see a raspberry pi in there, which might have been used to control it.
There’s a reasonable chance it can be made to work, but it will print slowly relative to modern printers.
Plug it in and turn it on and take pictures of the screen at the top while it starts. That will help us give you advice on how to get started. I’d take things off the bed of the printer while you turn it on in case it moves the bed automatically.
Please feel free to post pictures of the wiring with any questions as you go. Slow and steady avoids releasing the magic smoke that makes electronics work!
You already know that the silver box on the right is the power supply and it is usually us used to convert 120VAC(US) power into either 12V DC power or 24V DC power which is the higher power(unlike 5V DC used in many low power devices) used and distributed by the controller board( on the left side ) for heating the build surface(heat bed), the hotend/nozzle and to power the 3 motors to move things(X axis=hotend attached to it, Y axis=heatbed attached to it, and Z axis=the entire X axis is attached to it and has 2 motors connected together usually).
So there will be a couple of larger wires going from the power supply 12V or 24V output over to a connector on the controller board. There might be a 5VDC output on the power supply which also goes over to the controller board and it would provide the power to run the electronics on the controller board which figures out how to move things. But, often there is just a 5V converter on the controller board which takes some of the 12V or 24V power and convert it to 5V right on the controller and in this case, the only wires from the power supply are the 12V/24VDC wires.
Any extra wires coming from the power supply might have been for other things like LED lights or a fan or something.
It looks like a nicely built machine and as Michael said, it won’t be as fast as new models it can still make nice parts when functioning properly.
The Raspberry Pi computer on the bed with all the other accessories which came with the machine might have been used for any number of things but it is probably best to start with getting the machine to boot up and do it’s initial “homing” sequence and then get software called Slicer software onto a computer so you can have it send commands to the 3D printer over a USB cable and start testing and calibrating the machine.
Wow, thanks so much for all that! I’ll dig into it more today and send some more photos. I certainly don’t want to let the smoke out. And yes the power supply on the right side is 12V-20A. The two sets of loose wires both come from the board on the left side. I’ll send detailed photos later today.
Oh. You referenced the “raspberry Pi computer on the bed.” Which item in that photo are you referring to? I took that photo at my friend’s house and later when she brought me the printer, I didn’t get all the things sitting on the bed in the photo. There was an iPhone and an external hard drive and a couple other things in the photo that I didn’t get.
it’s the thing under the iPhone in the photo. Google “Raspberry Pi” and you can learn all about what that thing is in the event you actually got it with the 3D printer. It’s a little computer which has been used in robotics, 3D printing and many other things.
That left board has a V+ and V- wire (the speaker wire going down out of the picture) and the right board has a V+ and V- wire (black and white going down out of the picture).
The plug receptacle is wired to those two left pins as well as an on/off switch. The two wires on pin 4 and 7 are +/- that are hooked up to a third board on the left side with a fan.
The larger board with the fan on it, above the two smaller boards, has many wires running all over the place. It has at least 12-15 plugs, each with multiple wires running all over the place.
Ok, the board with lots of wires is the control board. The two other boards control heaters, one in the bed and the other for the nozzle. (They are called MOSFET boards because the primary component on them is a MOSFET, an electronic switch.)
You can probably turn it on and see what the screen displays.
I’ll have to try tomorrow. I gotta go through my huge pile of old cables and find a power cable for this thing. It’s missing. I don’t throw cables away. I’m sure I have one in the garage. Haha
I verified that the power supply is outputting 12v. And 12v is getting to the main board. The fan power cable has been cut, but I measured 12v on the cut wires, so I will repair the cut and see if the fan works. I should be able to get the Raspberry Pi from my wife’s friend in a few days.
On power up, nothing happens really. There’s no movement. As I stated before, those two smaller boards are not connected to power. But I think those are just heaters, correct? There is a tiny fan on the print head that is super loud. Sounds like bad bearings.
In the menu, I went into “position” and hit “home all” and all three axis moved, so that’s good. “Home all” sets the print head all the way down and forward in the front left corner and the bed goes all the way back.
So whats my next step? I need the Raspberry Pi I guess?
You definitely don’t want to print with that without updating the firmware.
They came out of the box with thermal runway detection disabled, and became famous for catching fire as a result.
Marlin firmware comes with Anet A8 configuration in it that doesn’t disable that protection against catching fire. You should be able to download Marlin 2 and you’ll get lots of upgrades; not only will it have protection against catching fire, but also the ability to do resonance compensation and print more quickly and with fewer artifacts.
Wow, that shows most of the machine is working and that’s great.
There might be a setting in the menu for changing/lowering the speed of the fan on the hot end but tough to say for sure. There are usually 2 fans on the hotend. One is to keep the plastic cool before it enters the heated chamber of the hotend and the other fan is to blow air on the plastic as it exits the nozzle so to help cool it.
But you now know your controller is working(menu works) and your motors are all working along with their end-stop switches.
Getting close and no, you do not need the raspberry Pi. You’lll need a slicer program on your computer and a USB cable between your computer and the 3D printer.
