Anet A8/AM8 Power Modifications
Power Supply
While I was out reading about the things people believe caused the fires, it sounded like the power supply was in question. I read something along the lines of “its the cheapest version of this power supply” more than once. At the link below, is the power supply I ended up going with. It was recommended by someone else and had decent reviews. I’ve been running it off/on for a year now and had no issues with it.
Below is the wiring diagram from the Anet A8 assembly instructions. Its very similar to the power supply I purchased.
Mosfets
One of the other major concerns when it came to starting fires, was the wiring between the board and the hotbed and hotend. I saw pictures of burn marks where the connector plugs into the bed and on the board. These connectors on the board are not attached very well, and at one point I even ended up gluing and soldering them into place during the AM8 conversion.
I have yet to solider the bed connection directly to the bed. This connector is one of the possible failure points. But because of the cable chains I printed, and the way it holds the wires, I’m not very concerned with this wiggling free and allowing a short.
I’m not going to pretend I fully understand how the mosfets work, but I can tell you what I know. The mosfet allows the higher voltage power, to route around the board, while allowing the board to still control the flow. The ones I bought were once again, recommended by another post.
The concern with fires is around the wiring on the bed, most people do not also install a mosfet on their hotend. However, they were so cheap, and it was easy to do, so I did.
These wiring diagrams are basically the same thing. When wiring the hotend mosfet, you would put the hotend where the hotbed is.. right? My hot end has 2 positive and 2 negative wires, just stack them together.
(if this doesn’t make sense to you, go get some adult supervision)
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Plug / Switch Combo
This plug/switch/fuse combo is just a nice addition to the printer. Without it your wiring a cut power cable directly to the power supply. Not super portable, and less safe in my opinion. Plus these are cheep!
I did have to print something to mount this to, but there are several versions on thingiverse. I printed mine before the VR Incident, so I modified it to work for the AM8 conversion.
The wiring diagram is pretty simple.
