Its a clone, so what about spare parts?

just a question really about spare parts, I go this [www.ebay.co.uk] its a clone of the Prusa I3 printer as far as I can make out, I thought it would be a good entry level printer to start learning with and so far after a lot of trouble shooting and set up its producing prints, I think I need a bit more tuition in some aspects of this as I am not always getting good results but anyway seeing as this is a clone on the Prusa and the seller is in China (Printer was shipped from London) where am I going to get parts for this! lets say the mother board blows or a motor goes pop? or the LCD packs up....would I be able to pull a genuine Prusa part from say E-bay? or other Vendor and swap the part out....

I can only assume that the folks in China used readily available parts used in most licensed printers to make these clones?..... but what about the software and things like that, I just don't want something physical or its ''zeros and ones'' to go bad on me without be able to replace it as I can also only assume its using Marlin or.....a copy of this Marlin??

Basically if its software went ''bad'' or something went ''pop'' what would you seasoned people do to fix it?

advice?

Did you actually read that ebay advert? its absolute gibberish!


If it dies, you throw it out.

for eg motherboard is custom.
If you like a challenge you may be able to retrofit a more standard controller and get it working again.

No thermistor details details are given, so if one dies or you just want to upgrade the firmware.. forget it.

mechanics and linear look mostly normal... but unlikly to fail

power supply is common.

frame looks to be the infamous acrylic, will scratch and shatter. and you cant get replacement parts. (unless you have a mate with a laser cutter)

Printed parts, custom, and they probably don’t provide file to print your own.

Go to any STL storage page and pick whichever Prusa I3 files you like the most, print them and replace the parts that came with your printer, on the board and thermistors go to Aliexpress and get a ramps/Mega some A4988's and some known thermistors, the rest just replace as needed, Prusa frames you can get the cheap plywood frame for about 20 dollars or the aluminum ones from 60.

One thing you need to do right away is to replace that plastic extruder, it will go to hell pretty quick, Aliexpress have some decent aluminum ones for about 14 bucks.

Have fun

Some useful information there many thanks, the more I can learn about its components the better I can take care of it and replace anything that may go bang!

the frame on this one is already a laser cut ply and quite strong, I can however see room for improvement and will soon upgrade that frame to make it stronger and more ridged, the printed parts on it seem ok I have taken the values of it geometry and it all seems 'square' and true... the extruder on this one is brass I think the coupler plate on this is metal as well the only plastic part is the mount fixed to the travel rods on the x axis.... they look identical to the Prusa I3 parts so may print a set off and see if they fit..

the M8 rods have got to go and be replaced as they have about 2 MM worth of wobble in the middle and I think this will end up translating along the whole X axis the higher it gets making for a misaligned print....


any ideas regarding the motherboard I could use as a back up in the event of a meltdown?...the LCD display and its readout looks exactly like the Marlin software ( I think) would one of their pre programed boards work, would it need installing so to speak?

It will be made of generic clone components. Any part is replaceable from AliExpress, except maybe the frame.

I didn't see anywhere that it says the frame is plywood, so it's probably acrylic? But that's probably repairable.

Even if the controller board is custom, you would be able to replace it with e.g. an Arduino/RAMPS combination. You might need to change the connectors on the wires to steppers, heaters, thermistors, endstops, etc. Whatever firmware you put on that will function just fine.

The webpage says it handles .X3G files. That's pretty unusual nowadays... If that's all it handles, then it's not Marlin, or any other modern firmware. You won't find many .X3G files to download and print. But there is a Gcode to X3G converter here.

It costs 159GBP, so I expect you'll have about 700GBP worth of learning/tweaking/fiddling to do to make it work right. At about 1GBP/hr.

On picture 8/11 from right to left you have: fan, heatsink, black plastic cube on top of hotend mount, stepper motor. That black plastic piece is your extruder, it doesn't have an idler tensioner so the idler is fix inside the plastic box (old makerbot extruder) the filament will get stuck if not perfect 1.75mm. Unless they supply you with something different than what is shown on the picture.

If it reads X3g files your board is an old mighty board from makerbot, you can buy them on Aliexpress but way too expensive for such an old technology.

You can download makerbot desktop an see if connect to the printer, you will have to download sailfish firmware and do all the modifications so the slicer understand the way your printer moves.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2017 12:29AM by ggherbaz.

Yes I just look at the photos in the description and it is a mighty board, be careful with what you replace, it is 24 volts not the usual 12.

Really appreciate all the feedback so far I am taking all this down as notes just in case anything does go bad on it and I know now in the future that the knowledge on here can get me back up and running if anything does go wrong.
As it is for now everything works just fine and I am getting some decent prints out of it.. really not a bad way to start learning about printing for £159... I am using Cura at the moment and models from Thingiverse... its endless with the amount of things that can be printed, I have be able to get it printing at a 70Fr @ 205 degrees and it seems to be ok with that, I want to push it a bit more and see what the max comfort zone is, but having real issues getting that first layer down...I need to get the bed honed in more and get everything lined up on it....

Update
I found the board

[www.geeetech.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2017 04:40AM by Silverstalker.