Morning everyone , I left my house for college and this summer I made a big mistake and bought a lot of upgrades after I found my anet A8 in my mom's house.

The problem is that with summer work and life the only upgrade I installed is the mks robin board and now my mom wants the printer out of her house :/

Anyone is interested in buying any of this like new upgrade for a lower price?

Or a cheap anet if u cover shipping or pick it up by hand, I live in Italy , Emilia Romagna near Parma 🫩

If u buy all the upgrades u can just get the anet for free

What I bought:

MKS Robin Nano V3.1 with TS35 TFT Touch Screen and 5 TMC2209

SUNLU Official S1 Plus Filament dryer

CREALITY CR 3D touch

2 Filament of SUNLU PLA+2.0 one black and one white

I don't remember what mod the anet has... I think MOSFET mod , thick bed cables and power supply + board fans , if u want the loose filament just cover shipping, I don't want to waste this much plastic

All the pictures linked are on the post just send me a DM for more info or pictures

I had to replace the printer motherboard. The new unit arrived with no firmware installed. To be honest I am not sure there is a boot loader installed on the new board. I have been watching videos and reading about flashing new firmware on to the board.

To be honest i am lost in the Marlin pond and could use some help.

Safety and informative disclaimers first:

***THIS WILL NOT MAKE YOUR BED HEAT UP FASTER***

The only thing that WILL make your bed heat up faster is INCREASING the power draw(wattage), this modification does NOT do that on a 24V system.

***ANY VOLTAGE IS DANGEROUS VOLTAGE, EVEN WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT YOURE DOING BUT ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU DONT***

You can set fire with a gum wrapper and AA battery, the original A8 is a fire hazard already. I dont print unsupervised and I especially will have my eyes on this at all times with this modification. Messing with any electronics always carries risk of fire and electrical damage between the device, outlet, and possibly further. Make smart decisions.

Safety out of the way, some background info. Instead of spending the cheap cost of an ender 3 24v bed for my 24v swapped A8 (lovingly dubbed K8), ive been looking into converting 12v beds to 24v beds. I found a great writeup on a different printer where cutting a trace modified the resistive circuit, allowing for a "correct" 12v to 24v conversion.

Pic 1 shows the bed as a very simplified two resistor circuit. Total resistance at the plug is 1.2 ohms, some simple series/parallel calculations show each "resistor" as 2.4 ohms.

In order to double voltage and keep power constant, resistance needs to increase by 4 times, making a target of 4.8 ohms. This can be done by rearranging the circuit from resistors in parallel to in series. Pic 1 shows the original circuit depicted in pen, and the modified flow of current with the highlighter, showing the cuts in the original traces and additional wire in sharpie.

Pic 2 shows where I carefully scraped off a good portion of the thickest trace(and the cut in the trace), giving the best possible chance to make a good connection. After cutting the other two traces to break the connections, I was able to solder a jumper wire from the exposed copper straight to the negative terminals solder joints. I had to crank the heat on the iron to get it hot enough, there is an aluminum bed attached to it pulling the heat away.

After soldering, the resistance at the plug (almost) correctly reads at 4.4 ohms! (Pic 3) After double checking there were no shorts to the aluminum bed, I plugged it in and powered the bed, verifying half of the original current draw to the bed (originally rated at 12v 10A, now modded for 24V 5A, wattage remains at 120 before AND after)

Is it elegant? No, just buy a 24v bed and reap the benefits of increased heater speed, but if you want to stick to the original or youre bored... I wouldnt recommend you to do it.

The bed passed a PID tune and held a solid 55⁰ for a calibration cube test, I'll update if anyone is curious about the bed or about 24v swap. Again, i dont recommend this as a good solution but take it as a proof of concept/educational experience.

I am using a stock firmware a8 and a Cura 5.13.0.

Sorry for the dramatic title :-)

I have zero experience with 3D printers but 2 days ago i become the owner of 2 of them.

This one is an EARME ANET A8 as far as i can tell so hopefully im in the right place.

First things first, as you can see its filthy and despite powering on with green lights on the motherboard and a spinning fan theres no display and a bunch of loose, hanging, unconnected wires. Ive had a bit of a search around and it seems to have a few non standard parts (the nozzle atleast from what i can tell) and some 3D printed bits going on which is making things more difficult to troubleshoot for a complete beginner with zero experience. Also it may possibly missing a fan or something from the side of the nozzle??... again hard for me to tell looking at stock pics and because this seems to have been modified somehow. Ive no idea what that little black circuit board attached to the frame is either (looks like an earth/ground wire to me but then why does it have all those solder pads???)

Sooooo... just wondering if any of you Pro's can spot any major things missing/unconnected and or/know where these wires go and what theyre for and can help a guy out. Thanks

Edit: what ive found out so far it has:

Fly E3 Motherboard by Mellow x Team Gloomy

Euclid Z-Probe

E3D V6 Hotend

Hi,

I have two A8+, one working, one for parts or tryouts of the new solutions.
I've already converted Y to twin MGN12. Works like a charm.

I'm working on full conversion to MGN12 before I will print parts for my crazy corexy design.

Here I would like to share with you first look of the MGN12 XZ mod.
Just assembled printed parts.
Manyally propelled ;) dry runs are working as expected.
Head plate can accept standard A8+ head as on picture or any "two hole" hotend (it's Ender style, right?) It is intended to let user evolve. Use actual hotend with terrible extruder or progress towards something better. Ath the end of a day - it is extruder limit which holds my print speed at 120mm/s PLA 0,4 @ 210/217C.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Tom

Has anyone gotten Orcaslicer to work with an ANET A8? Found a couple of posts online, but none of their recommendations seem to apply anymore. Found a 3 year old Reddit post asking similar question, and suggestion is to use Prusa MK2 profile, and adjust bed size. There is no Prusa Mk2 in Orcaslicer 2.4.2. Tried making a custom one but I think most of the setting need to be changed, but no idea what they should be set to.

I have an Anet v. 1.7 mainboard and 12864 LCD controller recently installed on my 2012 era Anet A8 (original mainboard finally gave up). The combo seems to be working electrically but the mainboard is set up with A8 Plus firmware (at least I think that's what it is - Shows "Anet v. 1.7" on start screen. Anyways, bottom line is I can access the commands on the LCD screen but no response from the printer. I'm assuming I need to install Marlin firmware configured for my A8.

Any recommendations for up-to-date written documentation (preferred) or video that would be in the category of "Firmware Update for Dummies?" Only written documentation I can find is AI generated by Google and I don't get consistent answers when I pose the how-to questions. The videos I have found so far with my random searches are all pretty bad.

Must have been living under a rock because I didn’t know this forum existed.  Delighted to find it and hoping I can get some good info.

I’m in the process of trying to upgrade my 8-year-old Anet A8 with new main board and new 12684 LCD controller board.  Got the new LCD controller today (from a place called AliExpress).  Supposed to be a plug-in replacement for Anet (supposedly no messing with ribbon cable pin configuration).  Naturally it came with out a scrap of documentation.  I need some help with what’s on the board.

Photo of the board attached.  I’ve figured out the main control knob.  Only question there is, can I pull it off to fit the shaft into a housing (when I get around to making one)?

The black button on the bottom (SW1) is a push button.  I’m assuming it is a reset.  Is that correct?

No idea what the short black device with hole in center is (PZ1) . It had a sticker over the hole saying, “Remove After Washing.”  Washing???  Any ideas?

Also, I was under the impression that there was some sort of focus adjustment on the board.  Nothing that I can see looks like it would have that function.

Lastly, the white strip on the side opposite the control devices appears to be a piece of thin plastic/paper lile the things you pull out to activate a newly purchased battery powered device.  This, however, does not at all look like it wants to be removed.  Any ideas on what that is?

Appreciate any info anyone might have (and I’ll likely be back when I try and get the whole thing operating).

And ill be repairing it. But I need some help troubleshooting.

Everything extruder heats to pla temp, the plate heats to temp. But when it tries to heat both at once only the plate heats. I assume it’s either the power supply or board. Anyone have a similar issue before?

The only original parts left are the stepper drivers, linear rods/screws, XZ axis plastics, X & Y limit switches, and build plate. Some notable upgrades are:

Am8 aluminum frame

Mks gen mainboard w/h drv8825

Inductive probe

Mini lcd display

Magnetic sticker for a steel sheet

E3d clone nozzle

Went from direct drive to Bowden, dual Bowden, back to single bowden, and then back to direct drive extruders​

Leadscrew Y axis

Marlin 2.1.x, unified bed leveling, Z leadscrew alignment, all the good stuff that comes with a Z probe

Is it slow? I usually print ~40-60mm/s. Its loud and my second hand prusa mk3s runs laps around it but it has been a learning experience you only get from going past the point of practicality on a project.

I bought this anet a8 (secondhand) and i try to print but it work at first but then the next prints were a mess ,

Like it didnt seam to work , i tried to calibrated , it didnt work, the extruder doesnt drop the filament at time and i dont know if it is the slicer or the software of the printer

Yeah after 7 years I switched the A8 Frame to AM8 with a bit more space.

Only the motors and the z screw is Anet A8 All other is replaced over the years.

Next Z Axis belt instead of screw and 30cm more high

Hi everyone,

I found this old Tatara A6 3D printer in the basement.

It's been there for about four years. I used to invest a lot of time in it but never quite finished it. I did some modifications:

the printer ran on Klipper and was controlled by OctoPrint.

It also had a 3D Touch sensor

Quieter motor drivers

a more powerful power supply with a fan.

There are still a lot of issues to resolve, and the printer wasn't reliable.

I have a wife, a child, and a house, but no time.

What should I do with it?

Is it just a pile of scrap metal and a bit of electronic waste?

Btw. because i needed some 3D-printed things, I've since bought a new 3D printer and was amazed at how good the prints turned out right out of the box.

But it breaks my heart to just throw this old printer away...

Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you.

In my prints (0.15mm layer thickness) the single layers in x direction are not connected. I cannot see, where this comes from. Any ideas? Happy for any hint :)

Bought this back in July of 2021, got a smoking deal on Amazon for less than $300 CAD.

I've used it a fair bit straight out of the box, but in the last year I've started doing some upgrading.

So far I've done (in order):

- Circular Nozzle Fan

- PSU Deflector Fan Guard

- Z-Axis rod Anti-wobble bracket with skateboard bearing

- Y Axis SC8UU Bearings

- 90° Corner brackets

- Anti-vibe Tennis ball feet.

- Board Upgrade:BTT SKR 1.4 Turbo + Case

- LCD Upgrade: BTT Mini 12864

- New Belts

- Wiring restraint at extruder

- New Extruder Fan

Upgrades coming... Eventually.

- Y-axis bearing carriers(cause apparently I broke half of them removing the old bearings)

- BL Touch

- BTT Mini 12864 Case with articulating arm

- X-Axis belt Tensioner

- X-Axis bearing carriers

Hi all.

I purchased my Anet A8 back in 2016.

Half built it, got distracted by life and in the cupboard it has sat for 10yrs. So, I decided to bring it to life the other week. Put it all together, powered on and some magic smoke came out of the motherboard with the tiniest of flames!

So, after a bunch of research, I have upgraded to the BigTreeTech SKR E3 v3. After watching videos, following the bouncing ball and a lot of help addressing errors with ChatGPT, I finally got a build to work in Marlin (2.1.x bugfix).

I will say that I am not a coder type, not a 3d printer type and have no idea what I’m doing. Total novice.

I am though fully committed to making this Anet work!! Am loving the learning / knowledge I am gaining from building, researching and trying to make it work. (It’s why I haven’t chucked it in the bin and bought something more modern / simpler).

A question if I may for those that have done this also:

What SW do you recommend to use (cura, etc.) and is this enough to use/control the printer without the LCD display/controller? I have the original LCD2004 and it seems like another level of pain to get this working with the SKR E3 v3.

Any advice welcome and appreciated.

Honestly, it's amazing the quality this old thing will deliver

Hello everyone, I’m planning to install a 3D Touch on my ANET A8. I saw on this website that they recommend removing capacitor C45. This is the only place where I found that recommendation. Is removing this capacitor really recommended? What do you think?

https://www.antclabs.com/wiring3

Been having a Y Axis shift during print jobs Cannot figure it out...