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.

• 12v Power Supply – Amazon Link

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.

• 2 pack – Mosfet – Amazon Link

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)

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. 

• Printed mount I used (find the right one for you)
• Power Plug/Switch/Fuse Combo – Amazon Link

The wiring diagram is pretty simple.

Thats not what she says.. but once you hear it.. you can’t unhear it.

Alt title: I refuse to admit I found this song on the tiktoks.

A group of us are all headed to Costa Rica the first part of 2021.  Like Feb/March.  We’re still picking out specific dates.

Its less that we’re traveling together.  More that we’re all traveling to the same place during the same 1-2 week window.

If your interested in the details, reply to this post, and I’ll get ya invited to the planning document.

A little backstory…

I’m pretty sure it was in 2018 that godoloju got me an Anet A8 3D printer for my birthday/Xmas.  Nice guy huh!  It took roughly 8 hours to get it put together and printing my first print.  V1.0.

At the time, these were kinda known to start fires.  The connection on the bed would sometimes short, and on an even more rare occasion, throw a spark.  But it was a thing.

Not wanting to burn down my house, I quickly did some research into different solutions and went about getting them installed.  I printed cable chains, belt adjusters, and frame reinforcements. I bought mosfets, a higher quality power supply, and a plug/switch combo..  Just to make it a bit more, well.. more. (the volt meter is just for shits and giggles)  I once estimated it at roughly 200 hours worth of work, and pushing 1000 hours if you include all of the print time.

Then, there was the VR incident of 2019.

I had set my VR up before getting the printer.  The printer ended up in the ‘play zone’ for the VR.  Then, I was letting a particularly long friend experience VR for the first time.  While violently throwing a robots head at another robot, my friend managed to hook and throw my 3D printer across the room. 

The acrylic frame exploded.  

I couldn’t look at it for a while.  

About 6 months ago, I set about adding the metal frame, or the AM8 conversion.  Same printer, but extruded aluminum frame.  I used as many parts from the V1.0 as possible, but I did replace the thread rods and the X guide rods. 

The original bearings from the Anet A8 kit had been wearing grooves into the guide rods.  After a bit of research, many we’re recommending these plastic ‘sliders’ (not sure what else to call them).  I’ll update this sometime in the future and give some type of review of them.  But after 50ish hours with them installed, they seem to be working great.

Manual leveling is just tedious enough that it was pissing me off.  It seemed to fluctuate some between every print.  I do remember at one point I went like 8 prints without needing to re-do the leveling.  So, one of the other goals at this point was to get auto bed leveling working.  I had purchased a capacitive and inductive sensors, and had planned on using the capacitive as it was supposed to work with glass.  However, I was finding information on several different ways that it needed to be connected. One of which required a daughter board.  I ended going with the inductive because it’s setup was basically plug and play.

Well… there isn’t a ton of configuration you have to do for the sensor itself. You do have to enable and configure auto bed leveling in the firmware and get the sensor mounted in just the right spot.  There are guide out there suggesting a ‘correct way’ of getting your hotend and sensor aligned properly.  I started this way, but ended up making a type of jig.  Allowing me to put the tip of the hotend in the correct place, and then set the jig under the sensor, and then tightening it up.  I’ve used this method twice now, with success.

• AM8 Build Guide
• AM8 Frame
• AM8 Thingiverse Link
• Anet A8 Build Instructions
• Inline Voltmeter
• Power Supply
• Mosfets
• Plug & Power Switch
• Level Sensor

Site went down a couple of days ago.  Since I had to get it up, I figured I’d update it.  OS update, package update, wp update, and theme update.   Fully responsive, and mobile friendly.  Fresh new free cert for SSL.

There were 6k+ spam comments, so I installed something to deal with those.

The syntax highlighter couldn’t be saved.  I found another one, so far I like it better.

If any of you can tell me what style is controlling the white around the ‘sessions’ on the graph (bottom right), I’d appreciate it.  

Is it too much to ask during the goddamn work day for 2 separate sessions of 80 uninterrupted minutes each of quality dump time?

Pam

Some fun stuff in here. Get it here.