Hi folks. I have an Anet AM8 printer that I put together years ago and I don't do a lot of printing. For the most part, I only use it when I have some sort of project that needs a custom part that I can easily design in TinkerCAD. I have a handful of parts that I need to print for some projects I'm working on, and when I fired up the Anet AM8 for the first time in a couple years, it's dead. I'm pretty sure the main board is toast, so I'm wondering if it's worth upgrading to some newer parts or just buying another printer. Here's the printer...

anet am8.jpg

It's set up with a bowden extruder and I honestly can't remember what I'm using for the hotend. It also has a bltouch clone which has been fairly reliable, but I've had times where the bed leveling has been pretty frustrating. Heating up the bed has always been pretty slow, so I often considered a bigger power supply but never pulled the trigger on that one.

So here's where I'm at... Do I buy a handful of parts to update the AM8 to some newer technology or do I buy a new printer? If I buy parts, I definitely need a main board, an I'm considering a new hotend, extruder, power supply, and probably a touch screen display. If I do all of that, what hardware recommendations do you have? I've looked at the Titan E3D extruder / hotend and this board/touchscreen on Amazon, but I'm open to suggestions. I don't know if anyone even uses the AM8 any more because it looks like it hasn't been updated in a while, so I'm still looking for models to attach the bltouch clone and E3D parts to the AM8.

I'm open to suggestions, so fire away...