Bear frame experience so far. Some issues, mostly just a story.  

Bear frame experience so far. Some issues, mostly just a story.

Backstory: Over the course of the lockdown, I found a few people selling off i3 clones. (One well used RepRap guru, one labeled ‘Prusa Mendel’ that was only half built, and a geeetech pro something, that was newly built, but the guy couldn’t make it work.) Across the 3, average price came to maybe $34-40 each.

I already had a MK3S, but I figured for new motors and other parts, etc, it was worth it. Didn’t do much with them until recently. Fast forward…

Bought a bear frame, and built a ‘new’ printer over the holidays. It’s mostly done. Most of it was existing parts, but I did buy a mk52 heated bed, a Rambo board, and 24V power supply. Future plans for a 12V printer, but for now just going with what I know.

I’m having headaches with step motor cables. Stock Prusa doesn’t have the connector plugs, but the cables as they arrived, the pin out swaps between the motor-end connector, and the board-end connector. I’m getting that figured out.

Also, now that the motors are moving as they should, I’m having calibration issues, even with Bear firmware.

All in all it’s been fun. I had a few quirks with the build, submitted comments on the Bear assembly guides. Good response from Greg, he seems very professional, very responsive.

Had to modify a printed part or two, to accomodate the boards, etc that I have. (The geeetech display is slightly different, so I needed to clear a couple of components.)  But I’ve had to research parts of the printer I’d never had to think about before, and troubleshooting things has kept me on my toes.

Will update as I go. Original point of the build was to learn more about the printer. So far, so fun.