Thought on kit assembly
So this is going to be rather long, and are some of my thoughts and tips on assembling the kit.
TLDR version:
- Took me 14.5 hours
- Some parts were very hard to do
- Never would have got the extruder together without a set of needle files to fix imperfections in printed parts.
Long version:
Lets start with my skill set. I have zero 3d printing experience, like ive never owned one or seen one in person. I do have a electronics background, i am very good working with board design and board assembly down to rather small boards sub 2cm in size. I can solder even down to SMT size parts by hand. I also have alot of mechanical knowledge which came into play with this build, as it allowed me to guess how alot of the frame and rods fit and worked together. That said i took my time, double checked each and every step, and if the instructions were not clear i made sure to read the comments and do enough research to figure it out without rushing anything, this is part of why it took me so long.
So that said the first parts were brain dead easy.. The orange 3dprinted parts were of good quality, and i had very little problems getting any orange parts to fit and work together. One tip i did use a carpenters square to ensure frame aluminum extensions front and back was exactly square to the upright, which is guess paid off in the end because the wizard said my whole printer was perpendicular. It took me extra time to use the square to square everything and lots of adjustments to get it just right, lots of undoing bolts and redoing bolts. But end result was a perfect squared printer.
Then the hard part, id say i spent easy 6-8 hours just on the extruder. Not sure if i just got parts from the bum printer on the farm but my god the quality of the black 3d printed parts was horrid. Luckily i had a set of needle files on hand, i can say with 100% confidence had i not had that file set, i would have never been able to assemble this printer. So many parts where it tell you to put a bolt through and the hole was just not big enough, and im not talking just stringing which is easily cleared but blobs or oozing plastic in the holes making the bolts/screws not fit without being essentially reamed out. Sure you could use a dremel or drill for this but id be very hesitant to use power tools on plastic parts so small, i was much more confident with hand files, even though it took alot of time. And the pockets for the square and hex nuts, OMG!!! so may pockets with blobs in them preventing the nuts from being inserted or would only insert at such an angle the bolts would not grab the threads, and again im not talking about just small strings that most people seem to mention in assembly videos but actual blobs of solid plastic in the way. I easily spent 3-4 hours filing the parts, so much back and forth, file for a bit test fit, nope not happy, file more test fit etc. I could have spent less time on this, and not had them fit as good, but having no experience i was not sure how well these needed to fit so i made them as perfect as i could. Some were not even drilled deep enough by several mm and i had to spend time deepening the whole nut pocket to get bolt from other end to fit properly. Having no frame of reference to call upon for this chapter also did no help to me and im sure explained some of the added time.
The PSU and LCD were pretty straightforward. One thing ill mention is the routing for the LCD cables.... because my LCD is broken the right 25% of the screen does not display at all so printer is usable but hard to use as cant see some of the screen. The manual instructs you to run the LCD cables through the aluminum extrusions. I could not fit the cables inside this extrusion without bending them. Coming from a computer background i know full well thats a bad idea to bend these ribbon cables but the manual told me to get them in there and the only way that was happening was to bend them into a "v" shape then insert them into the extrusions, which is what i did but i fear this has broken a cable. When i replace them im just going to run them along the inside of the extrusion and not inside it, ill just glue/tape them to the side.
Installing the heatbed was a bit of a pain, again i used a square and a level to ensure the heatbed was totally and 100% flat. I accepted no deviation on this, i spent hours getting it perfect, had to file down some of those metal spacers, and add washers to others to get it perfectly flat. But i did accomplish getting it flat down to the .05mm which i think is all anyone can ask for with these parts.
Had i not been so OCD about the squarness of the frame and heatbed i could have likely saved several hours of assembly time. But i feel this extra time will help me later on and show in my prints, and at the least eliminate many possibilities for errors i run into later on saving me time down the road on diagnostic time.
I have completed three prints so far with the included filament. one benchy that is ok but with some stringing, its from the downloaded software i didnt slice it myself. And two other prints i sliced myself. one was a rather large and long 14.5 hour print. Both the ones i sliced myself turned out better than the benchy, no/little stringing stringing also better layer adhesion.
I am happy with the printer, but i really think they should do better quality control on some of the printed parts. I know 3d printing them is great for marketing, and allows faster revisions to be implemented, but i really feel that had they gone the injection molded parts route this would have been way way easier to assemble, like orders of magnitude easier.