How good is a sub ?100 3d printer ?

[curious aardvark]

well it's been a while.
Main reason being the x-axis endstop has ceased to work, and the z-axis endstop is so frigging awkward to adjust, I've been waiting till I've got the incentive to sort things out properly.

So As the firmware is so bloody awful and the screen and buttons are barely functional - I'm going for a major (from my parsimonius point of view) upgrade.
I'll make an easily adjustable z endstop, and change the board to an mks sbase 1.3 that's been hanging around my workshop for a couple of years. Also comes with a 3.2inch colour touchscreen with a full size sdcard slot.
I've even got a wifi module for the screen - but that can be played with at a later date. For now I just need it properly functional.
I think the screen can do the whole restart after power outage bit as well.

I've tracked down the smoothieware configuration file that lets you use the second extruder motor as a second z-motor.
Looks like a few wires mirrored from the actual z acis connector and I should be good to go :-)

I've got to the point now where I need a larger print volume and this is the best candidate for the job. Plus it's actually faster than the delta, and hopefully with the new board and stepper controllers - should be as good a quality as well.

More as I go.

Now given that all parts were paid for a good while ago and were for an entirely different project - I'm not counting cost ;-)
Cheating - probably, but it's all about what it costs ME - not someone else :-)

I'm sticking with smoothieware - it's just so easy to adjust things on and the only marlin I've seen is the one already on this machine and it's just truly bloody awful.

Updating smoothieware and the config is as simple as putting the files on the sdcard and booting up.
None of this messing around with horrible 3rd party software nonsense :-)

Plus the configuration file I found was already set up for my screen.

Right - off to try and work out what pins I need to mirror and work out how to do it :-)