Hello guys,

While a ago I was here asking for advice to buy a DIY Printer Kit, and now that I already have it in hand and put all the peaces together I not only want to share with you my experience but also ask for help.

So the Printer took me 10 days to arrive from china (Yeah I know )

After it arrived I checked all the parts and prepare the table to build it, you can check the timelapse here (Link), after the full process of building I did all the welding and then start doing some troubleshooting on the movement part of the printer which involved belts, bearings, rods and etc. I will divide this in three parts

First Part
  • Buying the printer - This was very difficult but I ended choosing a model listed on Ali Express with more then 300 good reviews, still China though.
  • Receiving the Printer - The printer arrived through DHL in exactly 10 days and the pack was very well set
  • All parts come printed in very low resolution and probably PLA(not recommended for parts)
  • Preparing the room - Time to build the printer...this was tough here are my stats:
    • Frame(everything but welding) = 26 hours (You can see the sunrise and sun set in my timelapse)
      • As you may imagine, the manual was too Ikea (actually just photos with comments on it) divided in 6 steps
      • I installed the bed support wrong ;
      • I broke one of the 3d parts and needed to glue it with super glue and will print the replacement as soon as I can get it calibrated.

    • Welding = 3 hours
      • This was a slow process but I was able to do it flawlessly (At least until now)

    • Troubleshooting = 2 hours
      • Yeah I know what you guys will think ... the Carriage for the Hot End was move ok on my hand but making a lot of noise while trying to Auto Home
      • To Solve that I went back to the frame step and readjust the belt, bearings, rods and etc
      • Alignment everything again and it works


Second Part - calibration

What a pain to calibrate a printer for the first time!

  • Bed Calibration - This took me almost 2 hours to do it correctly. Just imagine that you install the endstop for the Z axis on a height you believe it is right but to calibrate the bed I will say you need a combination of the two!
  • Now I'm in the process of calibration prints
  • I will probably neeed to return to the bearings and do it all over again!


I will update some images as soon as I can !