How good is a sub ?100 3d printer ?

[curious aardvark]

not getting at you in any way - you're a blooming inspiration mate :-)

Where you get the energy from - I have no idea :-)
Not to mention how amazingly neat and tidy your work area always is.

But you tend to have standards the rest of us can only aspire to :-)

Weird thing is, I've never had heat creep. Not on the rep clones or the delta.
Clogs have been purely with flexibles and once you modify the extruder that goes away.

So anyway the beast is built. Couple of things to do today.
Going to drill the extruder shaft from input to drive gear to 3mm and insert teflon tube. Reason being it's really bloody hard to shove it manually through the existing 'shaft' and it did come with some teflon tubes - not sure why might take the nozzle off as well and see if there's one up there :-)

Actually came with a bunch of spare parts including 2 spare y axis motor mounts. Though I might change the original plywood one for a more substantial printed one anyway.

The other thing I need to do today is move the y stop about 10mm towards the front of the machine. As it stands at the moment, when both y and z are homed the extruder nozzle is about 3mm beyond the edge of the build plate. I've got plenty of leeway in the belt tensioner to take up the slack and I can move the whole assemblage forward with spare thread on the rods so i don't lose any build volume.

Despite the plastic belt gears and wobbly tensioner modules, everything moves smooth and cleanly.

Oh yeah my main issue is the firmware - it's truly bloody awful. No idea what it is, but it doesn't have a calibration option and you can only move the Z axis and extruder 1 mm at a time - real pita. The 10mm option only allows x and y movement.
It's just crap.
So thinking about installing marlin - as that way if i have a problem, I can hassle Roxy :-) (lol)

It's an atmega 26-something chip. Presumably it will take marlin.

I'll put some pics up later but meanwhile this is the build video.
I didn't take any in-build pics as this is exactly what i did. As you cans ee it's really well packaged and laid out. I got a dvd with written instructions which i glanced through - and promptly ignored. Also links to 2 youtube videos, the build one below:


Compared to the he3d k200 delta, where I got zero material of any kind with it. This is pretty good.

Apart from screw locking rings (which I don't think I need - unless they are what stops the top of the z-axis screws from wobbling) and whatever he adds to the smooth vertical guide rods - everything was present. That said the holes for the smooth vertical rods are a tight fit and I don't have an issue with that. The z axis screw rods on the other hand tend to wobble a bit, not sure what i can do about it - or if it's worth doing anything about it.

So without printing anything yet - my initial impressions are pretty favourable. The fact that all the major parts come pre-assembled is a real bonus and not something they needed to do.
It's very easy to put together. The lasercut plywood pieces lock together tightly. The tabs and holes all lined up clean and tight.
Plenty of spare bolts and nuts and washers, all the allen keys you need. The plywood looks fairly flimsy at first but once it's all locked together it's a very sturdy and rigid frame.

Right going to see about getting it to talk to simplify3d :-)