I never expected this to happen. It's great to see Anet abiding by the Marlin license and enabling thermal runaway protection at last. Your new tolerance test looks great, looking forward to giving it a try.
Thanks Angus! I normally would not advocate a review of a non-Creality printer but it was just important to show Chinese companies that there's an upside to fixing serious safety issues.
I loved my old A8. Lots of upgrades though. It got me hooked on 3d printing and gave me a lot of knowledge on building and how 3d printers work. It's used for spare parts now. I honestly thing creality are the market leaders for the hobbyist.
A cheap Anet A8 started me out on the addictive 3D printing world 18 months ago. Steep learning curve but well worth the journey, think it gave me the drive to get the knowledge and move forward. I still have it but love my Creality printers too.
Yup same, I'll give it that the original A8 got me into 3D printing and learned a lot from it. Also now spare parts. Guess what two stepper motors from the A8 are doing now? Driving my telescope mount for astro photography! Back to this review, Nah. Seems like they are just playing catch-up.
Yes! Still have my anet of about 3 years. I love how upgraded they all are, it's like seeing someone's old commodore 64 or Apple 2 or Tandy with tons of custom chips and mods. The Anet got the not-rich tinkerer-enthusiasts involved right when FDM was starting to get good. Now it's all enders in that scene. And it should be :)
I bought one of this Anet A8 Plus as kit and it's working good without any issue at all. It was shipped very fast from EU warehouse to Portugal. And I just payed ~160€.
My highly upgraded A8 that I bought almost 4 years ago off of GearBest is currently running in the lab right now! I've put over 8000m of filament through it and have 1000 hours of print time on the original bed, original steppers, original couplers and z-rods. I still level the bed and x carriage by hand with a digital caliper and I feed it gcode via an OctoPi. It sits on a plastic AV cart on rubber casters, padded with playpen foam blocks. My wiring is all custom, with a divorced stock mainboard, high output MOSFETs, soldered heat bed with strain relief, fusing for the bed, hotend and control board and it's all powered (except for yhe Pi) off of an Astron 30A linear power supply (not switching). The Pi is powered by a 5v 2.5A wall wart for an old cellphone and everything is connected to an APC 1500VA BBU at the bottom of the cart, in case of power loss. It will run a PLA print for 5.5 hours before bbu exhaustion. I've been shopping for a bigger build volume and metal construction for awhile and this might be the way I go. I'll probably get some extra aluminium and box out the frame, put a duet and a touch screen on it and put better steppers in and put my mosfet setup on it. I can probably bulletproof it for the same price as a CR10 pro.
Very nice Anet. Well done on all counts! Thank you also to Naomi for continuing to champion Open-Source and safety. Thank you too you for being open and honest about your opinions. (Hope the summer allergies are better this year. 👍 Susi x )
WOW! Hi Angus, I didn't know why you'd never done a review of the Anet A8 before. I had actually searched your channel for one. Agreed, the stock A8 is a fire risk, but doing a review where you discuss it would have informed your audience about the risks of that machine and other low-end 3D printer kits. My own machine, my starter machine, is the Anet A8. I bought it knowing about the fire risks and the many limitations with the machine, but I also saw the online community of A8 users who were achieving incredible results with this machine. The machine never runs unattended, and I am careful to avoid having fuel nearby. Knowing the limitations, I love the machine. The Anet A8 Plus looks really nice, and as someone who has built an A8 (and dealt with screws that missed having the heads properly embossed - and what are they made of, they're not magnetic!) and put dozens of kilograms of PLA and PETG filament through that machine, I am convinced that my mechanical and electrical aptitude and experience is compatible with the skills required to properly build and operate a high quality 3D printer. My CAD skills still suck, but OpenSCAD is usually open on my desktop. :) So now, it might be time for me to look into something better. What would you consider to be good mid-range 3D printers? My goal is to reproduce otherwise unobtainable parts for antique radios and cars. Obviously, flexibility with filament materials will be a key factor. And I would prefer to spend money with a company which has actively supported the 3D printing community and the open source community.
I have just finished assembling mine which I bought after seeing this review. I am old enough to have cut my teeth on Meccano and have been assembling PCs for a very long time so the build went smoothly. - I put Igus bushings in directly on X and Y axis, I am very pleased I did, the supplied ones are very noisy - cables are much longer in my kit - no ptfe tube in the kit - several (3 or 4) errors in the printed manual but watching the assembly video clears things up. Some photos in the manual are too small to be of any use - the biggest pain is cable management The quality of the finished printer is satisfactory for 155€ delivered. Now I just need to learn how to 3D print... =;) Once I am up and running this seems to be a good base printer for upgrades like BL Touch, 32 bit MB with WiFi and a quality hot end/extruder.
I picked one of these up at MRRF along with Chuck Hellebuycks last 2 spools of PLA filament for my Grandson in-law and it works great however, we did have to replace the X and Y linear bearings after only a couple of prints. We ordered an Igus Drylin bearing kit for the Anet A8 off of Amazon and now what was a good print is an excellent print.
Table top gaming is what I got into printing for. After almost a year I'm finally getting pretty good results on my printer for minis. I enjoy your video channel.
Anet A8 Plus is awesome 3D printer. I have printed over 350 hours with it and i can not say any bad words about it. It can print flex even with retraction and everything goes how it should.
I soldered the cables for the hotend and bed directly to the board, so the main reason why many A8's catches fire is eliminated and my board stays almost cool while printing. Also I changed the old psu for a computer psu and my printer stays in a server cabinet which is made out of metal. I think my A8 is very safe now.
Still not too good for the entry unless you know what you're getting into, I've had power wiring swapped for 2.5mm², soldered the bed on with 2mm² wires, and installed external MOSFETs to prevent fires. Then me pushing its limits a few times literally cracked the frame.
wow, I'm really impressed. Anet has come a long way. You can get one of these shipped from the united states for less than $200. That's incredible value for a printer this size even with all the issues.
Thanks Angus I will be replacing my original a8 and crossing all my upgraded mosfet and diode boards over to this new larger print surface as well as putting the e3d head on it making it comparable with flex filaments. Friday I should have it and and will be enjoying tinkinering with it.
Bought an A8 a few years back. Printed exactly 4 things on it... Now I have a Prusa MK3 and a CR-10s that I use all the time. It was a good education, but now it sits more like a museum piece.
@@tonycstech In Germany you can buy shirts with prints that looks like semen from far away and up close they are parrots. My collegue is wearing that shirt quite often, alongside his carrot and poodle socks.
This is a good 'first look' review, but I feel that people need to know a little more about the extruder type, temperature limits etc as I'm finding I need more than just PLA for my projects these days. When I first bought my CR-10 I didn't know bowdens didn't like flexible filament for example.
Direct drive extruder so capable for flexibles. I do'nt like the extruder that much though because it has a steep learning curve to get the filament in and it seems to be 'hit and miss' a lot of times.
@@elvinhaak I cut my teeth on an A8, and getting the filament fed was THE MOST annoying thing over. Just utterly terrible! I switched up to the Ender 3 and realised life could get instantly better when you make smart design choices.
@@RitchieTheBrit first thing I did with my A8 was design a magnetic door for the extruder fan and an extruder button. Couple that with filament loading in firmware and it was a breeze to operate
I have an original A8. I did the upgrades. Its an awesome printer. I have ran it damn near nonstop for 3 years, and started a business with it and have produced 10k plus production parts on it. It has paid for itself so many times over. Bowden printers are inherently a PITA, and I won't buy one. They dont print flex filament either. Bout to pick up one of these as our third ANET in our business. Haters gonna hate but the open source platform, availability of parts and DIY upgrades, the ANET is open source 3d printing at its finest. the barrier to entry is so low and the information so available. They are pretty much the Honda Civics of 3d printers. Rock on ANET!
just as note, after 3 years of use, many upgrades, a fully ducted enclosure, im probably right about at $350 in on my A8. Alot of that has been consumables like heaters and hot ends and build plates. got an A6 too, but the horizontal gantry sucks and bed clearances too tight- tore it down and rebuilt it with new parts to be an enclosed box framed i3 with the vertical gantry style. so much better.
A lot of people have been replacing the bearings with delrin ones and it has solved a lot of print quality issues. Its so cheap you can do a lot of nice upgrades without breaking the bank. I'm considering one of.these
also got the printer , made some upgrades on it and prints like a charm , just the bed does need a lot of time to heat up . next is a marlin upgrade and octoprint on it ... keep up te nice videos .
@@MakersMuse The cause of the burned down A8's wasn't only due to the lack of thermal runaway protection. The Mosfetts and connecters weren't capable of handling the current and were prone to melting/heating. What control board does the new A8 have? If it's the same as the original A8 I would shy away from it.
@@GeertHeremans The new control board is fused and much better designed, a welcome addition and honestly I should mentioned it in the video, there's just so many aspects to cover in a parts kit review...
Same, though mine was a clone called the "Coocheer". I thought I was buying a CR-10 and the A8 clone arrived instead. I didn't know enough to really think the acrylic frame would matter and fight it....but hey it has a bigger build volume stock (220x270x230), and yeah with all the printed frame braces, filament guide, belt tensioners, etc...and after a stock thermistor wire was going flakey (causing prints to pause at any time because it would report 275c when it was really 190c if the wire bent the wrong way), replaced the hotend with a genuine E3D "sock and block" kit for like $25, and got a noticeable performance improvement when printing with bigger diameter nozzles like 0.8 and 1.0mm. Do I want something better now? Yes, but as someone who enjoys tinkering and learning how things work, I had much more fun with it than I would have a pre-assembled kit, and I can still print stuff well enough. But as a sidenote, I've never not been in the same room with it printing for more than like 10-15 minutes at a time. :P
Thank you so much! Just got one and haven’t assembled it yet except for new linear bearings but I guess I’m going to have to buy new rods too, thanks again for the review!
Hi Angus, nice to see you doing a review on Anet printer again. :) As to the strange pattern your getting , I believe it is down to the small diameter ( Linear Rail Bars ) and lead screws. They are still the same size diameter as of the smaller Anet A8 . You would of thought they would upgraded to at least 10 mm diameter for this larger machine Anyway what is happening is that the printer bars and lead screws are flexing upon movement. I had the same problem in another one of my machines So I upgraded to 10 mm, And now its perfect. if on a tight budget then the original lead screw can still be used, but when on larger models you may still get funny patterns starting around the 250mm height . 10 mm upgrade is a bit of a pain, as one need's to get larger fittings to be able to upgrade. Please note, Do check to see if your bars are straight and has no bend in them, as many people in the past has had bent bars.
I have a FLSUN C 3 0lus. Same print volume bought over a year ago. Came with autolevel and a beautiful MKS tft 3.8. Paid just over IS $300. Once I figured out I'd bought ABS by accident and replaced it with PLA, my prints were fantastic! And the Guy Fawkes Mask I printed (with no supports BTW), came out great!
I've had one since December. I couldn't get the bed to level because I could never get the rods straight. I replaced them with 20x20 extrusions and V rollers. It's nice and smooth now. The extruder constantly clogged. The heatsink is REALLY small. I replaced it with a Titan Aero. That upgrade means a firmware update is required. I wasn't able to make it happen. All the tutorials and files are for the old board. Since this is a new one, all flashing attempts failed, so I upgraded to a Duet Maestro board. Now that I'm in for another couple hundred dollars, it's a good printer, 6 months later. BTW, tie a rubber band around the wires that are drooping and hang it from the top. Increasing the jerk settings helped with the ringing.
@@stevedegeorge726 If this is your only printer, get it working enough to print some parts. I'll upload the STLs and a parts list to thingiverse and post a link. With this design, you lose some space in the z axis. The advantage is that the wheels ride directly on top and below the extrusion instead of clamping to the sides. It rolls Nice & smooth without the uneven wear. Keep in mind this is going to be a good bit of work. Extrusion mounts Roller brackets Raised motor mount Raised and improved belt tensioner
That texture reminds me of my old DIY printer where I used cheap linear bearings. Once I replaced them with decent bearings most of the texture dissapeared.
The old A8 had rods that floated in the laser cut hole retaining them. Perhaps these printed rod mounts don't constrain the rods fully and there is play. Shimming resolved most of that wavy texture for me. However, I still have some weird resonance during some motions that shows on the surface finish.
Yeah anet was selling them at mrrf cheap so I got it to upgrade. It printed okay for the money and I'd recommend it if you're the kind of person who knows how to upgrade it.
I have an Anet A8 since 2014,all i had to do so far was replace the LCD 2X,app. 12 nozzles,and 4 guide tubes,had lotsa fun with it,but like me,its showing its age,maybe time to replace,been looking at the Creality Ender 3 V2 Neo....the A8 is a great machine.
Regarding there being grooves in the rods, when I was putting mine together I noticed there was a big enough groove to actually have one or two balls in the bearings catch on to it and fall out.. After that I took some clear nailpolish on it to fill in the grooves and took some machinery oil my missus got for her sewing machines, it worked like a charm and reduced the noise quite a bit. However I was in no way cheap when applying the oil and every other or third run I take a fine brush, dip it in the oil and apply a bit new oil on it, mostly so that it won't run dry and cause the nailpolish to be removed from the rods by the friction. One of those "Try it at your own discretion" tips, but it worked great for me on my A8 Plus :)
That wavy pattern artifact means that somewhere there is a harmonic vibration happening when the axis moves probably from the belt teeth. I had this issue on the Y axis of my ender 3 when I tried to use the 3 point bed leveling plate you can buy. What was happening in my case, was the Y axis belt rolling across the smooth idler roller was creating a vibration, which was then being essentially amplified and transmitted into my part through the springs on the bed. Especially since the 3 point solution you can buy is kind of flawed in that it's a less stable mounting system, even if it is in theory more flat. The solution in my case was to replace the bed leveling springs with 4 solid silicone mounts since I use ABL anyway, and switch to toothed idler rollers. That got rid of the pattern entirely. If I had to guess, either your belts are causing it, or the bearings themselves. The bed springs might also benefit from being compressed more so vibrations don't transfer through them as much. If the wavy pattern is spaced the same or close to the tooth spacing on your belts, that's probably the source of the vibration. If the printer uses non-toothed idlers, swapping them to toothed will probably fix the problem, if that pattern is from what I think it is. Also switching to the plastic bushings might help as well. I'm suprised it's showing up on both axis though, I've only seen that pattern produced on the Y axis of an i3 design.
Harmonic vibration it has. Most of it went away when I took it off the table and put it on the floor. But yes there is a smooth idler on Y so thanks very much for that tip I'll replace it with something better.
All of the smooth rods in my kit were deeply scored along their long axes and the linear bearings were noisy and were badly inconsistent. I replaced the bearings with Delrin aftermarket bearings. The belt tensioners also leave something to be desired. Prints so far are so-so, settings need tweaking. The threaded holes for the bed rods were out of alignment. I replaced the rod mounts with some I found on Thingiverse.
Steve Schowiak It only took a few weeks for my Y-axis bearings to fill with metal dust from gouging the rods. They started binding and the Y-axis would lose steps. I got a set of 12 plastic bearings for $12.95 on Amazon. Replacing the four Y-axis bearings fixed the binding.
I got my self a anet A8 back in june 2017 its been a fun project printer for upgrading(A better psu, Heated bed external mosfet ,bltouch,titan extruder,e3d v6 ,MKS GEN 1.4(running latest marlin 1.1.9) , etc) its a AM8 now and soon will upgraded to use MGN12H rails! sooo its not a a8 anymore the stuff left from the a8 still used is the rods,stepper motor ,and heated bed. If i had the space i would probably get the Anet A8 plus to upgrade too.
I have an Anet A8. After installing Marlin (with thermal runaway protection enabled) and printing every single upgrade to increase frame rigidity, also printing cable management, fan shroud upgrades, and adding automatic bed levelling... it STILL exhibits a fair amount of ghosting if I run it too fast. It looks pretty much like your examples. I'm coming to the conclusion that the root cause is those 8mm rods and linear bearings that the bed runs on. If I grab the bed and give it a tweak I can feel some movement, and fast changes in direction cause it to shudder... hence the ghosting. No, fixing the bed hard to the carrier frame isn't going to fix it because it's the bearings bolted to the carrier frame slopping around on the rails that is the problem. I'm at the point where I need a larger printer (printing stringed musical instruments and just about to start designing my own) and the A8+ looks like it will fit my meager budget, however I think this needs a DIY solution for the bed rails before I will pull the trigger - upgraded rails and bearings that do a better job. I'm open to suggestions for better drop-in replacements. I've always recommended the A8. The things that make it great are the affordability and that anyone capable of getting it working successfully learns a heck of lot about 3D printers. The important proviso is that with an Anet what you are really getting for your very few dollars is a box of cheap Chineseum parts and a set of instructions to create a 3D printer. To make it work successfully, safely, and make it look good takes patience and a bit of creativity.
the `notorious' A8 is Great ,with the right improvements . like mosfets and retermination/replacement of Heatbed power connector ,this A8 PLUS should also prove a winner
I got mine for $180 on ebay from the anet store. Came partially assembled. Stock cooler sucks, upgrade definitely required. On a flat surface, the heatbed still seems to be unstable despite manual calibration. My bed or Y-holding bracket might be warped/bent. Either requires replacing and/or a digital bed-leveling sensor. The bearings are OK, but not great. I will be replacing these. It's good to know that the rods are not re-enforced steel. I will be avoiding ball-bearing bushings for this reason and go with LM8UU's. Other than that, because the frame is largely aluminum and rock solid, you don't need to do all the printer mods that the original A8 required. However, there are still some people making some minor improvements here and there on the tension belts, filament guides and spool holders. The A8 also comes with fuses built into the mainboard and power supply, which was a manual upgrade you had to do on the A8 in order to protect your components better. They really have improved this over the original A8, and I'm fairly impressed for this price point. I'll also be upgrading mine with an E3D hotend and Btech BMG extruder. The stock extruder performs very well, but in order to get the best prints and work with higher-temp materials, the hot end (at the very least) needs to upgraded. Also you can buy thermal insulator pads and apply them underneath the heat-bed to improve efficiency and resolve long heat-times for the heat bed if you are not running your bed on an external mosfet.
I have an A8, and once you put marlin on it it's essentially safe, only other thing I can recommend is soldering the power for bed heating to the bed as thr connector is quite poor
Just came to make the same comment. I had a thermistor wire break and it popped a warning and full shutdown within 10 seconds. I also second either replacing the bed connector or soldering to the bed
i have the original anet a8 running in a hot shed here in aus. i did put in a proper power switch and fuse and also upgraded the firmware after i found octopi warning me of it. also have octoprint now controlling the power and light through relays on the gpio. for a hobby kit under $200 it was well worth it for me. just do not run it unsupervised :D
As a ex user of anet a8 i have to say that they did good job here but it would be awesome if they include longer cables and cable chains and finally add option to attach external stepper drivers cuz these printers are loud and users should have option to upgrade it without replacing mainboard
The Y axis was not wired wrong Angus, you mounted the motor to the wrong side of the plate, so it's spinning in the opposite direction of how it was intended to work.
I do know how old this is, but... Mine came the other day, after spending a day playing around with the hot end/direct drive? (it just would not feed) I got it working, and working quite well. Don't be afraid of having to "tinker" on this machine, it is so basic and not to hard to figure out with the manual. Noisy? Yes, but it just screams to be upgraded. It prints quite well in stock form, but will benefit greatly from mods/upgrades you willing to do. The key is how cheap it is from the start, mine was $183 from Anet's own website, and for that, you just can't get this size of working printer.
Im the happy owner of both the original a8 and a8 plus and flashing Marlin on the plus greatly improves the print quality and sound volume (I should flash a newer version of marlin on my older a8 too)
Very interesting. Right away on my original A8 I reprinted some stock parts, printed frame braces, and loaded a standard marlin with runaway protection. Doing this improved quality, but it made the same artifacts yours does out of the box. Vase mode, however, rivals a prusa for some reason. That thing is a vase mode machine. These days it has a titan w/pancake which makes less wobble.
Also these things will seemingly always be hit and miss. Anet gets supplier problems, and they change designs mid production all the time. But once the things are a year or two old most of that's been ironed out. Read the reviews and check when they were posted.
I like a lot about this kit except for the X and Y rods. They are longer and would exacerbate the noise, etc. issues that I found with the rods on my Prusa clone which has since been donated to a newbie. I would still look toward a non-rod printer in this size class and pay a little more unless your budget does not allow for it and you want the print size. But as Angus mentioned, for all printers built to a price, you will be spending some time (and money) on improvements to increase the print quality and usability anyway.
I do quite like my A6 but lordy that thing took a lot of work to get together and upgrade for safety. The T-slot rails by default tho... That is a thing of beauty.
This is a project printer guys and gals. Have no illusions about that. But price for the size is the best on the market at the moment. I received mine 2 days ago and it is my 4th printer.
Nice, I have an A8, but I don't use it often because I planned to replace many of its stock parts (and the first one I got had a bad board) I may just grab this then over time upgrade the more questionable parts.
It might catch fire actually. Got mine last month, 24v printer but came with a 12v heating cartridge. While trying to dial in PIDs we figured it out. Due to the incorrect voltage it was putting out around 160w of heat instead of the expected 40w. If your heat is hitting 260+ on the way to 210, you might want to check the resistance on the cartridge. It can still print and you can configure around it but I don't know what the cycle looks like on the cartridge. If they messed up one kit, the may have messed up a whole batch.
I think I have an idea about the texture. I got the A8 PLUS as my third printer (first big boy) and I agree the instructions were actually reasonable, however it was a bit of a pain to set up as I’m still kinda new, I actually messed up the board somehow and needed to get a replacement, but once I got everything level and tinkered it has been running pretty much perfectly… except for one issue is the surface quality. It’s not BAD (especially when you consider the price) but I wouldn’t expect any super high quality models to come out perfectly. I did some tests and compared to my other printers and my conclusion was that the surface quality is due to a combination of direct drive & low quality drivers. The low quality drivers result in quite jerky “steps” - this is most noticeable from the extruder motor as you can see each “step” translates into a “pulse” of filament, resulting in a wavy/pulsing extrusion, instead of a smooth continuous extrusion. A Bowden setup normally hides this as the filament builds up pressure in the tube that dampens the individual steps. But on a machine with a direct drive like this combined with the cheap drivers, I think every “step” of the extruder motor results in a pulse of filament that results in wavy extrusions and a bumpy surface texture. I’m going to attempt to fix it with a Bowden to see if the tube pressure will smooth the extrusion. Hope someone finds this helpful.
Good video I also have the anet a8 plus the rods had grooves in them after 3 prints also was hard for me to get the bed level the flimsy y plate kept putting the bearings in a bind not a smooth slide so I upgraded to the solid plate and much better
If You're Still Looking At The weird surface on The Anet A8 Plus, Look No Further Then The Y-Axis Belt Guide In The Front, It Shifts Up To 0.6mm When It Changes Direction, And The Gantry Also Sways Back And Forth If You Print Any Faster Then 40mm/s, Adding Another 0.3mm Error To The Y-axis. It's Been Mucking Up Many Of My High Speed Prints. Also getting A Lot Of Chattering With The X-Axis Linear Rods, Finding The Preassembled Models Were Not Completely Tightened.
upgraded it to an e3d v6 extruder. apparently the fuse on the extruder was 12V, so that had to go. got some motor silencers. got rid of the glass bed and installed and Ender 3 magnetic mat (gained 2 mm :)) )
as someone who own a few printers myself i have a anet a8 that has never had a single problem !!!! i have had way more problems out of ender 3 than i have ny cheap pos anet a8 i hope this anet machine is even better!!!!! nothing better than a direct drive extruder!!!!!! plus it cost a 1/8 of a pursa for almost the same damn machine !!!!!
I've got an A8. An early one I think as it's a version 1.0 board. It was self built. I see these a little bit like a kit car. You build it. Follow the instructions CAREFULLY. DOUBLE checking everything as you go. Then. As you use it. You check it over before a print. You service a car occasionally. No reason why a 3D printer shouldn't be treated the same.
Yep. I'll be honest. I don't use my A8 much. But it is my intention to upgrade the firmware to include thermal runaway protection and if possible auto bed leveling and a filament runout sensor.
I had this one but I could get the bed level. It was a bend bed, and 3mm glass at this size didn't do anything other than bending as well. My nozzle was also broken, about 1mm and not round. So QC is pretty bad.
I have this same printer. I am upgrading the printer controller with the BTT SKR v1.4 Turbo as the original has a faulty controller chip for the extruder. One of my other findings is that the reported build area of 300x300x350 is really not that. I have found that I am short 30mm within the area of the clips that hold the glass to the print bed, and on the Z axis, I am nowhere near the 350 limit, I bottom out at the top of the printer way before getting to the 350mm mark. On the X axis, I can only get 295 from either edge of the print bed before the nozzle is over the edge. I am curious of what your findings are.
Anyone who finds the Y axis motor reversed has mounted the belt under the bed on the wrong side. The two belt mounting screws need to be on the right hand side so it draws to the back of the printer when homing, if you attach the screws to the left hand mount holes it will send the bed to the front of the printer when homing. Flip the belt and mounting screws for an easy fix :)
I have had this printer for about 4 months now as far as the factory electronics I can not vouch for the I have a extra skr v1.1 and some extra lerdge mosfets and so on. But I have had great luck with it and will have some upgrade files out here soon for it.
The first thing I did when I got my original A8 was to install the latest Marlin firmware. And it DOES have thermal runaway protection. and that was in 2016
I never expected this to happen. It's great to see Anet abiding by the Marlin license and enabling thermal runaway protection at last. Your new tolerance test looks great, looking forward to giving it a try.
Thanks Angus! I normally would not advocate a review of a non-Creality printer but it was just important to show Chinese companies that there's an upside to fixing serious safety issues.
I know it's pretty randomly asking but do anyone know a good site to watch new movies online ?
@@emiliokasen4553
Try Google.
@@emiliokasen4553 "hAhA tRy FliXpOrTaL"
I loved my old A8. Lots of upgrades though. It got me hooked on 3d printing and gave me a lot of knowledge on building and how 3d printers work. It's used for spare parts now. I honestly thing creality are the market leaders for the hobbyist.
I still have 2.
A cheap Anet A8 started me out on the addictive 3D printing world 18 months ago. Steep learning curve but well worth the journey, think it gave me the drive to get the knowledge and move forward. I still have it but love my Creality printers too.
Yup same, I'll give it that the original A8 got me into 3D printing and learned a lot from it.
Also now spare parts. Guess what two stepper motors from the A8 are doing now? Driving my telescope mount for astro photography!
Back to this review, Nah. Seems like they are just playing catch-up.
Yes! Still have my anet of about 3 years. I love how upgraded they all are, it's like seeing someone's old commodore 64 or Apple 2 or Tandy with tons of custom chips and mods. The Anet got the not-rich tinkerer-enthusiasts involved right when FDM was starting to get good. Now it's all enders in that scene. And it should be :)
my A8 is what started me in 3D printing as well. converted mine to an AM8 with upgrades but I loved it.
I still got the original Anet A8 and it's still going strong!
I bought one of this Anet A8 Plus as kit and it's working good without any issue at all. It was shipped very fast from EU warehouse to Portugal. And I just payed ~160€.
how does it compare to ender ?
My highly upgraded A8 that I bought almost 4 years ago off of GearBest is currently running in the lab right now! I've put over 8000m of filament through it and have 1000 hours of print time on the original bed, original steppers, original couplers and z-rods. I still level the bed and x carriage by hand with a digital caliper and I feed it gcode via an OctoPi. It sits on a plastic AV cart on rubber casters, padded with playpen foam blocks. My wiring is all custom, with a divorced stock mainboard, high output MOSFETs, soldered heat bed with strain relief, fusing for the bed, hotend and control board and it's all powered (except for yhe Pi) off of an Astron 30A linear power supply (not switching). The Pi is powered by a 5v 2.5A wall wart for an old cellphone and everything is connected to an APC 1500VA BBU at the bottom of the cart, in case of power loss. It will run a PLA print for 5.5 hours before bbu exhaustion.
I've been shopping for a bigger build volume and metal construction for awhile and this might be the way I go. I'll probably get some extra aluminium and box out the frame, put a duet and a touch screen on it and put better steppers in and put my mosfet setup on it. I can probably bulletproof it for the same price as a CR10 pro.
Very nice Anet. Well done on all counts! Thank you also to Naomi for continuing to champion Open-Source and safety.
Thank you too you for being open and honest about your opinions.
(Hope the summer allergies are better this year. 👍 Susi x )
I just ordered one of these its nice to see a video from you pop up in the first result with a pretty positive review.
WOW! Hi Angus, I didn't know why you'd never done a review of the Anet A8 before. I had actually searched your channel for one.
Agreed, the stock A8 is a fire risk, but doing a review where you discuss it would have informed your audience about the risks of that machine and other low-end 3D printer kits.
My own machine, my starter machine, is the Anet A8. I bought it knowing about the fire risks and the many limitations with the machine, but I also saw the online community of A8 users who were achieving incredible results with this machine. The machine never runs unattended, and I am careful to avoid having fuel nearby. Knowing the limitations, I love the machine.
The Anet A8 Plus looks really nice, and as someone who has built an A8 (and dealt with screws that missed having the heads properly embossed - and what are they made of, they're not magnetic!) and put dozens of kilograms of PLA and PETG filament through that machine, I am convinced that my mechanical and electrical aptitude and experience is compatible with the skills required to properly build and operate a high quality 3D printer. My CAD skills still suck, but OpenSCAD is usually open on my desktop. :)
So now, it might be time for me to look into something better. What would you consider to be good mid-range 3D printers? My goal is to reproduce otherwise unobtainable parts for antique radios and cars. Obviously, flexibility with filament materials will be a key factor.
And I would prefer to spend money with a company which has actively supported the 3D printing community and the open source community.
I have just finished assembling mine which I bought after seeing this review. I am old enough to have cut my teeth on Meccano and have been assembling PCs for a very long time so the build went smoothly.
- I put Igus bushings in directly on X and Y axis, I am very pleased I did, the supplied ones are very noisy
- cables are much longer in my kit
- no ptfe tube in the kit
- several (3 or 4) errors in the printed manual but watching the assembly video clears things up. Some photos in the manual are too small to be of any use
- the biggest pain is cable management
The quality of the finished printer is satisfactory for 155€ delivered. Now I just need to learn how to 3D print... =;) Once I am up and running this seems to be a good base printer for upgrades like BL Touch, 32 bit MB with WiFi and a quality hot end/extruder.
I picked one of these up at MRRF along with Chuck Hellebuycks last 2 spools of PLA filament for my Grandson in-law and it works great however, we did have to replace the X and Y linear bearings after only a couple of prints. We ordered an Igus Drylin bearing kit for the Anet A8 off of Amazon and now what was a good print is an excellent print.
Table top gaming is what I got into printing for. After almost a year I'm finally getting pretty good results on my printer for minis. I enjoy your video channel.
A pleasant surprise, thanks again for your honest and comprehensive reviews of what we are all curious about, cheers!
Anet A8 Plus is awesome 3D printer. I have printed over 350 hours with it and i can not say any bad words about it. It can print flex even with retraction and everything goes how it should.
Love my A8, hasn’t burned the house down yet
I soldered the cables for the hotend and bed directly to the board, so the main reason why many A8's catches fire is eliminated and my board stays almost cool while printing. Also I changed the old psu for a computer psu and my printer stays in a server cabinet which is made out of metal. I think my A8 is very safe now.
Still not too good for the entry unless you know what you're getting into, I've had power wiring swapped for 2.5mm², soldered the bed on with 2mm² wires, and installed external MOSFETs to prevent fires. Then me pushing its limits a few times literally cracked the frame.
I put a bl touch on it
Same, been using mine for years and it works great
Yet.
wow, I'm really impressed. Anet has come a long way. You can get one of these shipped from the united states for less than $200. That's incredible value for a printer this size even with all the issues.
Thanks for the shout out :-)
Keep up the awesome work! Love the designs.
Thanks Angus I will be replacing my original a8 and crossing all my upgraded mosfet and diode boards over to this new larger print surface as well as putting the e3d head on it making it comparable with flex filaments. Friday I should have it and and will be enjoying tinkinering with it.
Love your work Angus, now when are we going to see a painted version of that scenery? You sew, now do you paint? And what is your D&D character?
A great honest review as always
Bought an A8 a few years back. Printed exactly 4 things on it... Now I have a Prusa MK3 and a CR-10s that I use all the time. It was a good education, but now it sits more like a museum piece.
Great review as usual! I have an old Cube 3D and will be referencing you when I get ready to buy a printer! Thanks for all the insight!
Where do you even buy that kind of shirts
In Australia, duh.
Maybe he prints them xD
@@tonycstech In Germany you can buy shirts with prints that looks like semen from far away and up close they are parrots. My collegue is wearing that shirt quite often, alongside his carrot and poodle socks.
you get them from the Hipstore
My first question also. lol
This is a good 'first look' review, but I feel that people need to know a little more about the extruder type, temperature limits etc as I'm finding I need more than just PLA for my projects these days. When I first bought my CR-10 I didn't know bowdens didn't like flexible filament for example.
Direct drive extruder so capable for flexibles. I do'nt like the extruder that much though because it has a steep learning curve to get the filament in and it seems to be 'hit and miss' a lot of times.
I think they oil the inside of the bowden.
@@elvinhaak I cut my teeth on an A8, and getting the filament fed was THE MOST annoying thing over. Just utterly terrible! I switched up to the Ender 3 and realised life could get instantly better when you make smart design choices.
@@RitchieTheBrit first thing I did with my A8 was design a magnetic door for the extruder fan and an extruder button. Couple that with filament loading in firmware and it was a breeze to operate
For flexible, yuo need to change the extruder, there many in thinguiverse for ender 3 and cr10 and many others that use bowden system
my anet a8 heatcatridge actually came loose one day... BUT it did NOT catch fire suprisingly.
only my PEI sheet has a lot of grooves now
I haven't used my A8 in a while but after installing custom firmware on it when I first got it, I've never had any issues
I have an original A8. I did the upgrades. Its an awesome printer. I have ran it damn near nonstop for 3 years, and started a business with it and have produced 10k plus production parts on it. It has paid for itself so many times over. Bowden printers are inherently a PITA, and I won't buy one. They dont print flex filament either. Bout to pick up one of these as our third ANET in our business. Haters gonna hate but the open source platform, availability of parts and DIY upgrades, the ANET is open source 3d printing at its finest. the barrier to entry is so low and the information so available. They are pretty much the Honda Civics of 3d printers. Rock on ANET!
just as note, after 3 years of use, many upgrades, a fully ducted enclosure, im probably right about at $350 in on my A8. Alot of that has been consumables like heaters and hot ends and build plates. got an A6 too, but the horizontal gantry sucks and bed clearances too tight- tore it down and rebuilt it with new parts to be an enclosed box framed i3 with the vertical gantry style. so much better.
A lot of people have been replacing the bearings with delrin ones and it has solved a lot of print quality issues. Its so cheap you can do a lot of nice upgrades without breaking the bank. I'm considering one of.these
I selling one .
also got the printer , made some upgrades on it and prints like a charm , just the bed does need a lot of time to heat up . next is a marlin upgrade and octoprint on it ... keep up te nice videos .
won't catch fire? challenge accepted!
I DID consider adding an asterisk and saying your mileage may vary haha
In 3 years I never melted down my original a8 though not for lack of it trying a few times with thermal runaway.
@@MakersMuse The cause of the burned down A8's wasn't only due to the lack of thermal runaway protection. The Mosfetts and connecters weren't capable of handling the current and were prone to melting/heating. What control board does the new A8 have? If it's the same as the original A8 I would shy away from it.
@@GeertHeremans V. 1.7 and having other parts and even a fuse on board.
The original v 1.0 boards did have poorer parts and no fuse.
@@GeertHeremans The new control board is fused and much better designed, a welcome addition and honestly I should mentioned it in the video, there's just so many aspects to cover in a parts kit review...
Awesome!!! This looks like a good possibility for a parts donor on a HyperCube or CoreXY I want to build this winter!
iv been running the original a8 forr years with no issues
Same, though mine was a clone called the "Coocheer". I thought I was buying a CR-10 and the A8 clone arrived instead. I didn't know enough to really think the acrylic frame would matter and fight it....but hey it has a bigger build volume stock (220x270x230), and yeah with all the printed frame braces, filament guide, belt tensioners, etc...and after a stock thermistor wire was going flakey (causing prints to pause at any time because it would report 275c when it was really 190c if the wire bent the wrong way), replaced the hotend with a genuine E3D "sock and block" kit for like $25, and got a noticeable performance improvement when printing with bigger diameter nozzles like 0.8 and 1.0mm.
Do I want something better now? Yes, but as someone who enjoys tinkering and learning how things work, I had much more fun with it than I would have a pre-assembled kit, and I can still print stuff well enough. But as a sidenote, I've never not been in the same room with it printing for more than like 10-15 minutes at a time. :P
Thx! Decent looking prints, and appears to be the largest build volume for the money out there at the moment, even if 'some assembly required'.
Thank you so much! Just got one and haven’t assembled it yet except for new linear bearings but I guess I’m going to have to buy new rods too, thanks again for the review!
Hi Angus, nice to see you doing a review on Anet printer again. :)
As to the strange pattern your getting , I believe it is down to the small diameter ( Linear Rail Bars ) and lead screws.
They are still the same size diameter as of the smaller Anet A8 .
You would of thought they would upgraded to at least 10 mm diameter for this larger machine
Anyway what is happening is that the printer bars and lead screws are flexing upon movement.
I had the same problem in another one of my machines
So I upgraded to 10 mm, And now its perfect.
if on a tight budget then the original lead screw can still be used, but when on larger models you may still get funny patterns starting around the 250mm height .
10 mm upgrade is a bit of a pain, as one need's to get larger fittings to be able to upgrade.
Please note, Do check to see if your bars are straight and has no bend in them, as many people in the past has had bent bars.
I have a FLSUN C 3 0lus. Same print volume bought over a year ago. Came with autolevel and a beautiful MKS tft 3.8. Paid just over IS $300. Once I figured out I'd bought ABS by accident and replaced it with PLA, my prints were fantastic! And the Guy Fawkes Mask I printed (with no supports BTW), came out great!
I've had one since December. I couldn't get the bed to level because I could never get the rods straight. I replaced them with 20x20 extrusions and V rollers. It's nice and smooth now.
The extruder constantly clogged. The heatsink is REALLY small. I replaced it with a Titan Aero. That upgrade means a firmware update is required. I wasn't able to make it happen. All the tutorials and files are for the old board. Since this is a new one, all flashing attempts failed, so I upgraded to a Duet Maestro board. Now that I'm in for another couple hundred dollars, it's a good printer, 6 months later.
BTW, tie a rubber band around the wires that are drooping and hang it from the top.
Increasing the jerk settings helped with the ringing.
Got mine a few days ago and same thing. Cannot get the bed to level. Any instruction on the 20x20 and the V rollers?
@@stevedegeorge726 If this is your only printer, get it working enough to print some parts. I'll upload the STLs and a parts list to thingiverse and post a link. With this design, you lose some space in the z axis. The advantage is that the wheels ride directly on top and below the extrusion instead of clamping to the sides. It rolls Nice & smooth without the uneven wear.
Keep in mind this is going to be a good bit of work.
Extrusion mounts
Roller brackets
Raised motor mount
Raised and improved belt tensioner
@@stevedegeorge726 www.thingiverse.com/thing:3898179
That texture reminds me of my old DIY printer where I used cheap linear bearings. Once I replaced them with decent bearings most of the texture dissapeared.
Which brand/type do you recommend?
@@larce4158 I think I brought them from E3D
The old A8 had rods that floated in the laser cut hole retaining them. Perhaps these printed rod mounts don't constrain the rods fully and there is play. Shimming resolved most of that wavy texture for me. However, I still have some weird resonance during some motions that shows on the surface finish.
The texture reminds me of my makerbot replicator 2...
Yeah anet was selling them at mrrf cheap so I got it to upgrade. It printed okay for the money and I'd recommend it if you're the kind of person who knows how to upgrade it.
I have an Anet A8 since 2014,all i had to do so far was replace the LCD 2X,app. 12 nozzles,and 4 guide tubes,had lotsa fun with it,but like me,its showing its age,maybe time to replace,been looking at the Creality Ender 3 V2 Neo....the A8 is a great machine.
Regarding there being grooves in the rods, when I was putting mine together I noticed there was a big enough groove to actually have one or two balls in the bearings catch on to it and fall out.. After that I took some clear nailpolish on it to fill in the grooves and took some machinery oil my missus got for her sewing machines, it worked like a charm and reduced the noise quite a bit. However I was in no way cheap when applying the oil and every other or third run I take a fine brush, dip it in the oil and apply a bit new oil on it, mostly so that it won't run dry and cause the nailpolish to be removed from the rods by the friction.
One of those "Try it at your own discretion" tips, but it worked great for me on my A8 Plus :)
Still have my Anet A8 since May 2017 still printing fine not problems with it
I just bought one for $167 off eBay. Looking forward to doing some upgrades and printing big.
I currently have an Anet A8 and will probably buy the A8+ too. I might even buy a resin printer later, probably an Elegoo Mars and a cureing station.
My a8 plus is making a cnc at the moment I love it
That wavy pattern artifact means that somewhere there is a harmonic vibration happening when the axis moves probably from the belt teeth. I had this issue on the Y axis of my ender 3 when I tried to use the 3 point bed leveling plate you can buy. What was happening in my case, was the Y axis belt rolling across the smooth idler roller was creating a vibration, which was then being essentially amplified and transmitted into my part through the springs on the bed. Especially since the 3 point solution you can buy is kind of flawed in that it's a less stable mounting system, even if it is in theory more flat. The solution in my case was to replace the bed leveling springs with 4 solid silicone mounts since I use ABL anyway, and switch to toothed idler rollers. That got rid of the pattern entirely.
If I had to guess, either your belts are causing it, or the bearings themselves. The bed springs might also benefit from being compressed more so vibrations don't transfer through them as much. If the wavy pattern is spaced the same or close to the tooth spacing on your belts, that's probably the source of the vibration. If the printer uses non-toothed idlers, swapping them to toothed will probably fix the problem, if that pattern is from what I think it is. Also switching to the plastic bushings might help as well. I'm suprised it's showing up on both axis though, I've only seen that pattern produced on the Y axis of an i3 design.
Harmonic vibration it has. Most of it went away when I took it off the table and put it on the floor. But yes there is a smooth idler on Y so thanks very much for that tip I'll replace it with something better.
Thanks Angus for the review, going to have to take a good look at the hardware for this one.
I have an anet a8 and an anet a6, I've never had any fire saftey issue. As long as you have the new Marlin software and use a good slicer Cura.
Tabletop scenery for the win!! the strange magnetic control panel is indeed strange. but overall looks pretty decent!
All of the smooth rods in my kit were deeply scored along their long axes and the linear bearings were noisy and were badly inconsistent. I replaced the bearings with Delrin aftermarket bearings. The belt tensioners also leave something to be desired. Prints so far are so-so, settings need tweaking. The threaded holes for the bed rods were out of alignment. I replaced the rod mounts with some I found on Thingiverse.
Steve Schowiak It only took a few weeks for my Y-axis bearings to fill with metal dust from gouging the rods. They started binding and the Y-axis would lose steps. I got a set of 12 plastic bearings for $12.95 on Amazon. Replacing the four Y-axis bearings fixed the binding.
I got my self a anet A8 back in june 2017 its been a fun project printer for upgrading(A better psu, Heated bed external mosfet ,bltouch,titan extruder,e3d v6 ,MKS GEN 1.4(running latest marlin 1.1.9) , etc) its a AM8 now and soon will upgraded to use MGN12H rails! sooo its not a a8 anymore the stuff left from the a8 still used is the rods,stepper motor ,and heated bed. If i had the space i would probably get the Anet A8 plus to upgrade too.
I have an Anet A8. After installing Marlin (with thermal runaway protection enabled) and printing every single upgrade to increase frame rigidity, also printing cable management, fan shroud upgrades, and adding automatic bed levelling... it STILL exhibits a fair amount of ghosting if I run it too fast. It looks pretty much like your examples. I'm coming to the conclusion that the root cause is those 8mm rods and linear bearings that the bed runs on. If I grab the bed and give it a tweak I can feel some movement, and fast changes in direction cause it to shudder... hence the ghosting. No, fixing the bed hard to the carrier frame isn't going to fix it because it's the bearings bolted to the carrier frame slopping around on the rails that is the problem.
I'm at the point where I need a larger printer (printing stringed musical instruments and just about to start designing my own) and the A8+ looks like it will fit my meager budget, however I think this needs a DIY solution for the bed rails before I will pull the trigger - upgraded rails and bearings that do a better job.
I'm open to suggestions for better drop-in replacements.
I've always recommended the A8. The things that make it great are the affordability and that anyone capable of getting it working successfully learns a heck of lot about 3D printers. The important proviso is that with an Anet what you are really getting for your very few dollars is a box of cheap Chineseum parts and a set of instructions to create a 3D printer. To make it work successfully, safely, and make it look good takes patience and a bit of creativity.
the `notorious' A8 is Great ,with the right improvements . like mosfets and retermination/replacement of Heatbed power connector ,this A8 PLUS should also prove a winner
I got mine for $180 on ebay from the anet store. Came partially assembled.
Stock cooler sucks, upgrade definitely required.
On a flat surface, the heatbed still seems to be unstable despite manual calibration. My bed or Y-holding bracket might be warped/bent. Either requires replacing and/or a digital bed-leveling sensor.
The bearings are OK, but not great. I will be replacing these. It's good to know that the rods are not re-enforced steel. I will be avoiding ball-bearing bushings for this reason and go with LM8UU's.
Other than that, because the frame is largely aluminum and rock solid, you don't need to do all the printer mods that the original A8 required. However, there are still some people making some minor improvements here and there on the tension belts, filament guides and spool holders. The A8 also comes with fuses built into the mainboard and power supply, which was a manual upgrade you had to do on the A8 in order to protect your components better.
They really have improved this over the original A8, and I'm fairly impressed for this price point. I'll also be upgrading mine with an E3D hotend and Btech BMG extruder. The stock extruder performs very well, but in order to get the best prints and work with higher-temp materials, the hot end (at the very least) needs to upgraded.
Also you can buy thermal insulator pads and apply them underneath the heat-bed to improve efficiency and resolve long heat-times for the heat bed if you are not running your bed on an external mosfet.
I have a anet a8-m and it is 3 years old and had that feature for thermal Runaway
I have an A8, and once you put marlin on it it's essentially safe, only other thing I can recommend is soldering the power for bed heating to the bed as thr connector is quite poor
Just came to make the same comment. I had a thermistor wire break and it popped a warning and full shutdown within 10 seconds. I also second either replacing the bed connector or soldering to the bed
Thank you finally 😂😂💯
i have the original anet a8 running in a hot shed here in aus. i did put in a proper power switch and fuse and also upgraded the firmware after i found octopi warning me of it. also have octoprint now controlling the power and light through relays on the gpio. for a hobby kit under $200 it was well worth it for me. just do not run it unsupervised :D
My Anet A8 has been running for 18 months now ( stock) without issue.
As a ex user of anet a8 i have to say that they did good job here but it would be awesome if they include longer cables and cable chains and finally add option to attach external stepper drivers cuz these printers are loud and users should have option to upgrade it without replacing mainboard
The Y axis was not wired wrong Angus, you mounted the motor to the wrong side of the plate, so it's spinning in the opposite direction of how it was intended to work.
Huh, you're actually right. I have no idea why I didn't notice that and no one else picked up on it! Glad it was user error then.
I do know how old this is, but... Mine came the other day, after spending a day playing around with the hot end/direct drive? (it just would not feed) I got it working, and working quite well. Don't be afraid of having to "tinker" on this machine, it is so basic and not to hard to figure out with the manual. Noisy? Yes, but it just screams to be upgraded. It prints quite well in stock form, but will benefit greatly from mods/upgrades you willing to do. The key is how cheap it is from the start, mine was $183 from Anet's own website, and for that, you just can't get this size of working printer.
Im the happy owner of both the original a8 and a8 plus and flashing Marlin on the plus greatly improves the print quality and sound volume (I should flash a newer version of marlin on my older a8 too)
Very interesting. Right away on my original A8 I reprinted some stock parts, printed frame braces, and loaded a standard marlin with runaway protection. Doing this improved quality, but it made the same artifacts yours does out of the box. Vase mode, however, rivals a prusa for some reason. That thing is a vase mode machine. These days it has a titan w/pancake which makes less wobble.
Also these things will seemingly always be hit and miss. Anet gets supplier problems, and they change designs mid production all the time. But once the things are a year or two old most of that's been ironed out. Read the reviews and check when they were posted.
I like a lot about this kit except for the X and Y rods. They are longer and would exacerbate the noise, etc. issues that I found with the rods on my Prusa clone which has since been donated to a newbie. I would still look toward a non-rod printer in this size class and pay a little more unless your budget does not allow for it and you want the print size. But as Angus mentioned, for all printers built to a price, you will be spending some time (and money) on improvements to increase the print quality and usability anyway.
I do quite like my A6 but lordy that thing took a lot of work to get together and upgrade for safety.
The T-slot rails by default tho... That is a thing of beauty.
Thanks for sharing this new printer 😀👍
This is a project printer guys and gals. Have no illusions about that. But price for the size is the best on the market at the moment. I received mine 2 days ago and it is my 4th printer.
Nice, I have an A8, but I don't use it often because I planned to replace many of its stock parts (and the first one I got had a bad board)
I may just grab this then over time upgrade the more questionable parts.
at point 5:11 he talks about this problem he is correct to assume this, thanks Angus for the awesome videos thou !!
Just bought it! Comes thursday!!
angus: won´t catch fire
Anet: hold my direct extruder...
😆😆😆
Thanks for your review. I was waiting for it since you mentioned that you were going to to the review....
oooo, excited for that clearance test!
It might catch fire actually. Got mine last month, 24v printer but came with a 12v heating cartridge. While trying to dial in PIDs we figured it out. Due to the incorrect voltage it was putting out around 160w of heat instead of the expected 40w. If your heat is hitting 260+ on the way to 210, you might want to check the resistance on the cartridge. It can still print and you can configure around it but I don't know what the cycle looks like on the cartridge. If they messed up one kit, the may have messed up a whole batch.
My Anet A8 now has a metal Ratrig frame, clone bowden e3D, SKR 1.3 board, BLTouch 3.1 and a Trianglelab clone BMG (as of three days ago) 😃
I think I have an idea about the texture. I got the A8 PLUS as my third printer (first big boy) and I agree the instructions were actually reasonable, however it was a bit of a pain to set up as I’m still kinda new, I actually messed up the board somehow and needed to get a replacement, but once I got everything level and tinkered it has been running pretty much perfectly… except for one issue is the surface quality.
It’s not BAD (especially when you consider the price) but I wouldn’t expect any super high quality models to come out perfectly.
I did some tests and compared to my other printers and my conclusion was that the surface quality is due to a combination of direct drive & low quality drivers.
The low quality drivers result in quite jerky “steps” - this is most noticeable from the extruder motor as you can see each “step” translates into a “pulse” of filament, resulting in a wavy/pulsing extrusion, instead of a smooth continuous extrusion.
A Bowden setup normally hides this as the filament builds up pressure in the tube that dampens the individual steps.
But on a machine with a direct drive like this combined with the cheap drivers, I think every “step” of the extruder motor results in a pulse of filament that results in wavy extrusions and a bumpy surface texture.
I’m going to attempt to fix it with a Bowden to see if the tube pressure will smooth the extrusion.
Hope someone finds this helpful.
Good video I also have the anet a8 plus the rods had grooves in them after 3 prints also was hard for me to get the bed level the flimsy y plate kept putting the bearings in a bind not a smooth slide so I upgraded to the solid plate and much better
Can you link the bed you purchased? Thanks.
I have an anet a8 with lots of mods and skynet. Power supply, mosfets, power switch. Extra kill switch run by arduino.
About to make custom printer.
i just manage to snag it for 160 euro from aliexpres shiped from spain it is my third printer and second printer within the month. im exited
I have an Anet A8 with Dual Extruder and it has Thermal Runaway Protection
Dual extruder ... any details or videos? Very interested in upgrading my Anet A8 to dual extrusion.
Thanks for this video. Finally, I bought one!
Could you do a vidio of upgrading, building and tinkering
If You're Still Looking At The weird surface on The Anet A8 Plus, Look No Further Then The Y-Axis Belt Guide In The Front, It Shifts Up To 0.6mm When It Changes Direction, And The Gantry Also Sways Back And Forth If You Print Any Faster Then 40mm/s, Adding Another 0.3mm Error To The Y-axis. It's Been Mucking Up Many Of My High Speed Prints. Also getting A Lot Of Chattering With The X-Axis Linear Rods, Finding The Preassembled Models Were Not Completely Tightened.
upgraded it to an e3d v6 extruder. apparently the fuse on the extruder was 12V, so that had to go. got some motor silencers. got rid of the glass bed and installed and Ender 3 magnetic mat (gained 2 mm :)) )
5:10 the anet E10 has harden steel rods so i think that it was the supplier
Angus, that shirt is beautiful.
When 'not catching fire' is a feature, you can be sure Angus is not reviewing a Zortrax! :D
as someone who own a few printers myself i have a anet a8 that has never had a single problem !!!! i have had way more problems out of ender 3 than i have ny cheap pos anet a8 i hope this anet machine is even better!!!!! nothing better than a direct drive extruder!!!!!! plus it cost a 1/8 of a pursa for almost the same damn machine !!!!!
No problem... other than it Prints rather poorly without a lot of upgrade parts/$$ :-)
I've got an A8.
An early one I think as it's a version 1.0 board.
It was self built.
I see these a little bit like a kit car.
You build it.
Follow the instructions CAREFULLY.
DOUBLE checking everything as you go.
Then. As you use it. You check it over before a print.
You service a car occasionally.
No reason why a 3D printer shouldn't be treated the same.
Yep.
I'll be honest.
I don't use my A8 much.
But it is my intention to upgrade the firmware to include thermal runaway protection and if possible auto bed leveling and a filament runout sensor.
Great and clear review. But can i ask between this and the anet e16 wich i should be prefer?
I had this one but I could get the bed level.
It was a bend bed, and 3mm glass at this size didn't do anything other than bending as well.
My nozzle was also broken, about 1mm and not round. So QC is pretty bad.
these are some awesome printer reviews. Thanks bruh.
just received mine the rods are hardend in my case so thats good, the lcd cables are longer than yours
I have this same printer.
I am upgrading the printer controller with the BTT SKR v1.4 Turbo as the original has a faulty controller chip for the extruder.
One of my other findings is that the reported build area of 300x300x350 is really not that. I have found that I am short 30mm within the area of the clips that hold the glass to the print bed, and on the Z axis, I am nowhere near the 350 limit, I bottom out at the top of the printer way before getting to the 350mm mark. On the X axis, I can only get 295 from either edge of the print bed before the nozzle is over the edge.
I am curious of what your findings are.
Still rocking my a8 prusa clone. Rods are rooted, z axis is bent but still chugging along
Anyone who finds the Y axis motor reversed has mounted the belt under the bed on the wrong side. The two belt mounting screws need to be on the right hand side so it draws to the back of the printer when homing, if you attach the screws to the left hand mount holes it will send the bed to the front of the printer when homing. Flip the belt and mounting screws for an easy fix :)
I have had this printer for about 4 months now as far as the factory electronics I can not vouch for the I have a extra skr v1.1 and some extra lerdge mosfets and so on. But I have had great luck with it and will have some upgrade files out here soon for it.
I want this printer now. I have some pretty big things I need to print.
love youre chanle!
about to get my first 3d printer as well.
an advenrurer 3
The first thing I did when I got my original A8 was to install the latest Marlin firmware. And it DOES have thermal runaway protection. and that was in 2016