My original Anet A6 printer has been gathering dust since I replaced it with the SunLu. I decided that I was going to improve the printer, by eliminating some of the less desirable features.
The frame & chassis is constructed of laser-cut 8 mm acrylic, strong enough, but rather brittle. I'm going to replace as many of the parts with 3D printed parts on the SunLu.
The parts can be gleaned from the internet. So far I've printed these
These are the Z-axis parts - they will carry the X- axis rails & extruder head. They have to be pretty strong, so the infill has been increased. The red filament is PLA+, supposedly stronger than normal PLA. They're quite comlicated internally and each one took over 8 hours to print.
Bracket for the X-axis stepper motor - this has 75% infill for strength
One of the omissions of the original Anet was that there was no provision to easily tenson the drive belts - this will be part of the Y-axis belt tensioner.
There will be quite a few frame replacements or stiffeners, and a decent box for the mainboard. I'm going to add auto bed levelling, as far as possible. At the moment, apart from the minor cost of the filament, I haven't spent any money - but the BL touch sensor for bed level has cost me £8.16, and any further bits I'll source from China as needed..
I hope this will bring the Anet A6 up to be a much easier printer to use - I have toyed with the idea of fitting a more advanced mainboard, for faster printing, but this is a rather more expensive option, and the less pennies I spend on parts, the more I can spend on filament - which in the way of all things recently, has gone up in price from £10.99 at the beginning of the year to £13.99 for a 1kg spool last week!
Dave
The frame & chassis is constructed of laser-cut 8 mm acrylic, strong enough, but rather brittle. I'm going to replace as many of the parts with 3D printed parts on the SunLu.
The parts can be gleaned from the internet. So far I've printed these
These are the Z-axis parts - they will carry the X- axis rails & extruder head. They have to be pretty strong, so the infill has been increased. The red filament is PLA+, supposedly stronger than normal PLA. They're quite comlicated internally and each one took over 8 hours to print.
Bracket for the X-axis stepper motor - this has 75% infill for strength
One of the omissions of the original Anet was that there was no provision to easily tenson the drive belts - this will be part of the Y-axis belt tensioner.
There will be quite a few frame replacements or stiffeners, and a decent box for the mainboard. I'm going to add auto bed levelling, as far as possible. At the moment, apart from the minor cost of the filament, I haven't spent any money - but the BL touch sensor for bed level has cost me £8.16, and any further bits I'll source from China as needed..
I hope this will bring the Anet A6 up to be a much easier printer to use - I have toyed with the idea of fitting a more advanced mainboard, for faster printing, but this is a rather more expensive option, and the less pennies I spend on parts, the more I can spend on filament - which in the way of all things recently, has gone up in price from £10.99 at the beginning of the year to £13.99 for a 1kg spool last week!
Dave
