Hi there,

I recently bought a Monoprice i3 clone of a clone (based on the Wanhao i3) as my first foray into the world of 3d printing. I had seen powder bed 3d printing at design school, but have never been hands on with the CNC process only modeling in CAD and seeing the results. I am of course very excited about my new machine. It seems to print up to if not exceeding my expectations out of the box. The Monoprice i3 v2 model has some issues however, and I have all my noob misconceptions about 3d FDM printing to dispel. Hopefully you all can help me modify the cheap out of this cheap printer and improve my prints :o)

I have some machining experience, and a machinist square thankfully! So I was able to find the things the assembly line for Monoprice did wrong after only a short time. The Y Belt was all out of alignment, they installed a Nyloc nut between the brace and the roller guide as well as installed the toothed gear on the step motor backwards. Measuring from the left side frame I evened that all out, spun the bearing shafts a tiny bit, and loosened and squared the front belt bracket which was attached out of alignment. The motor bracket was slightly bent inwards maybe from running the thing with the belt out of alignment so I shimmed the motor against the back frame to bring the shaft square. The firmware had the acceleration maxed causing bad vibration waves on direction changes while printing, I set the y axis accel to 700 and x to 800 so far in tuning that, it has helped the y axis wave patterns at the start of corners a bit, with more tuning needed. I have ghosting on holes in vertical walls and am tuning for that as well.

I've had the machine 4 days, could not be happier with it even though it needs a disassembly and alignment out of the box, which I did not know when I opened the box. I guess I didn't really know much of anything about what I was getting into when I ordered it but this thing is making me smile. Currently printing Z braces and other random stuff while I establish some profiles for the machine for different types of parts (structural load bearing, best surface detail, etc).

Thanks for the forum, thanks for the posts, have a nice day!