A few months ago I got sucked back into 3D printing. I’ve been super happy with my Monoprice i3, but something happened that made me want to print a ton of stuff. I decided to buy a super cheap Anet A8 specifically because it’s quite shitty, I just wanted to see what I could do with it. So far it has been a blast…
The Anet was $144 from BangGood, though right out of the gate there are a few indispensable mods you need to do:
- A better power supply
- A switch for said power supply
- A glass bed
- Mosfet upgrade
- This is the most important upgrade. Why? Because the control board on the Anet is not quite rated for the power being fed to the heat bed. They’re prone to burning up and potentially causing fires. It’s absolutely worth upgrading for the heatbed. You might as well do the hotend too, it’s cheap!
So all told I was in maybe $170. Pretty awesome! I got the printer relatively quickly:
Fun
After ~5 hours on a Saturday I got it put together and got my first print out. I was pleasantly surprised…
-
- Even the first benchy was great!
Overall this thing is already exceeding my expectations. Okay…so what next? Lets try ABS:
Well that went shockingly well and even bridged well…
I have since installed a ton of mods:
- T Corner – https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1672959
- Extruder Button – https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2182276
- Belt tensioner – https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2149867
- Heatbed Cable Chain – https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1874802
- X Axis Cable Chain – https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1905344
- Cable chain guard – https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2221564
- Filament mount – https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1995043
- Fan shroud – https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2133328
- I have also printed a lot of misc things like spring cups and the PSU cover
In the current iteration it looks like this
This has been an incredibly fun project. Up next I have a few things:
- E3D V6 installation
- Flash to Marlin
- Auto leveling
- X Axis tensioner
- Spiralized printed linear bushings! https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2537701
I would highly recommend this printer if you’re looking for a project. You just have to put in the work.