ANET A8 Plus gets a new extruder - Can a modded 37 Euro kit make a difference ?

[@DaneSaysStuff]

Interesting to come across this series of yours. I've done extensive work with the A8 Plus since it's release to make it better machine. In stock trim it's pretty terrible. Just finished up my last round of custom designed parts and am getting ready for a final build. Keep up the good work!

[@rodrigotapiazapote8263]

Great job... looks great

[@gerthalberg9735]

Nice upgrade Dirk. Perhaps contemplate a remix of the normal clip on shroud for a V6 so you can cool the whole heatsink - use the bolts in the mounting plate to attach the part cooling and make a duct to cool parts from both sides.

[@dherrendoerfer]

I'm looking into that - right now the temps of the cooling block are so good that i may just leave it the way it is .... I'm not a fan of the clips (lol - there's a joke in there) they tend to vibrate towards the nozzle. This way tall motors are firmly connected to the mounting plate.

[@ДмитрийФролов-з4ю]

Nice work, man =)

[@dherrendoerfer]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@flamy111]

An alternative way making this upgrade, would be to replace the axis and extruder with bear upgrade X-axis and Bear exxa, but that would be a much bigger project. Another significant improvement you can do with a little effort -- replacing brass nuts that hold X axis, with either "silent nuts" off aliexpres or just printing them yourself. This would get rid of layer shifts on Z axis.

[@dherrendoerfer]

I'm personally not a big fan of glide bearings, I packed the ones on the printer with grease, that's a dirty but very effective way of making them free of slack and backlash. I don't know about the nuts holding the axis, but I think the A8 Plus is pretty well sorted regarding that. Cheers!, Dirk

[@matthewaston7817]

Have you got the stl for the adaptor plate you made?

[@dherrendoerfer]

This one ? drive.google.com/file/d/1FOqgT4FUPJWSTS5HMjqzY3ct0FBWRn6B/view?usp=drive_link

[@valterslacis614]

The old extruder is junk. The springs within it get twisted and in the end mine even would feed. Replaced mine with cheap metal one and added a heat sink. Next upgrade in line is 32 but board that would unlock all marlin 2.0 features and make the thing more silent.

[@dherrendoerfer]

Yeah ... it's just not good.

[@SianaGearz]

I'm thinking you WERE overextruding. This happens when the extruder has backslippage issues, that exacerbate themselves at higher extrusion rates. When you calibrate extrusion, you run much higher feed speed than your print consumes, you consume 10cm within a few seconds, while in a real print, a minute may pass. Normally you're supposed to remove the nozzle or hotend to calibrate extrusion flow to eliminate back slippage. Stock extruder often has issues. Weak spring with way too little preload, which also relaxes with time and loses preload. Extrusion gear wear. Quality of extrusion gear machining. I think it should be a steel piece with fine teeth, but instead most of these printers ship with a piece of brass pinion wire, which clearly isn't made for this use. Of course you can just buy a different extrusion gear for almost nothing and the classic the cheapest extruder you can get, the MK8 one usually in yellow anodised aluminium, has the necessary feature to adjust idler spring preload. If you have a plastic idler lever, well you have the problem that if you add spring preload, you're going to break it. One can maybe print one in PETG or HIPS and maybe keep an extra around - the lever i printed in PLA with preload adjustment exploded after a year. Or just buy an aluminium extruder, since it's so dirt cheap :D Or buy something actually good like this fake Titan, that works too i guess :D There is of course a lot more finesse to extruder-hotend combo but the other design issues tend to cause more situational drawbacks.

[@dherrendoerfer]

You're probably right with that assumption, I think there were many things wrong with the old extruder. The main issue was the throat getting way too hot, leading to that popcorning of the filament on the outer lines while underextruding the support and infill. I updated the firmware and the feed settings and both were well-calibrated, with no load on the extruder motor, and in operation extruding at different rates. I'm currently thinking about a spider or mosquito upgrade. But the printer itself has aged quite a bit becoming soft and loose on the rods and bearings.