First build, are these parts worth it?

[curious aardvark]

wanhao d9 400 mark 1

Looks like a decent machine and wanhao are known for quality machines.

If it doesn;t work then it's most likely the board or screen that's gone - both easy and cheap to replace.

I wouldn't bid more than $200.


As far as components for building an i3 of your own.
I'm mostly with autowiz (but he has much deeper pockets than I do). So always go for a new board. At the moment you can pick up the skr 1.4 turbo with touch screen and silent steppers for a small amount of money.

I've seen no obvious benefit from 1.8 steppers over the usual 0.9 cousins.
Given that my sapphire pro still prints faster and cleaner than autowiz's mega beast, that might as well be made from gold bricks. I'm still waiting to see where he's gained any benefit at all over my $300 stock machine.

I mean there should be benefits from all that money/hardware - but so far, none have appeared to be obvious.

Thomas sanlederer has a couple videos where he builds an improved prusa mk2 - possibly also a mk3 as well - so I'd start there.

But as far as boards go - 32bit definitely.
Sockets for replaceable stepper drvers - definitely.
A rock solid frame - absolutely. You could drive a tank over my sapphire pro and it would just laugh at you. The base is 2.25 steel and the top is a solid sheet of 7mm aluminium. joined by 20x20 aluminium extrusion. Very simple design but absolutely rock solid.

The rest is kinda optional.
Although anytime you can replace roller guides with linear rails, I'd do so. You can get decent rails at a reasonable price.
Okay it's harder to .line the buggers up - but the benefits once done are well worth the hassle. Both for print speed and precision.

For an I3, having side support rails is essential and liner rails are better than the rods and linear bearings.

I can't really see what the wanhao machine has. But should be side support rods as they've built a lot of i3 machines over the years and tend to stick to the original prusa design fairly faithfully.

As far a smatching the printrbot metal - you might be surprised how hard that might prove to be.
Printrbot made really good machines and ALWAYS had more orders than stock.
I still don't know why the company folded, as they could sell anything and everything they could make.

That one was a total surprise.

Some of the startup companies you can see right from the start are going nowhere, but printrbot just looked like going nowhere but up.

Kinda like Mcor - now there was a company that just seemed to lack marketing. Fantastic macgine with sme of the best full colour prints I've ever seen and handled. But just never seemed to find the right market.
But printrbot had none of those issues. Total mystery why they went bust.

Given that prusa sells more printers to the us than any us based manufacturer and the machines are still as much printed as possible. I just don't see how printrbot failed with an all metal frame that still came in cheaper than the prusa equivalent.

I guess it goes to show that engineers don't generally make good business men. Josef prusa being an obvious exception.
Anyway your printrbot is a great little machine and if it's the model with linear rails - you'll be pushed to make something without them, that comes close.