Sunhokey Prusa i3 Kit from ebay

Has anyone tried this Prusa I3 Full Kit from ebay :

[www.ebay.com]

They are offering free shipping with two rolls of filament and an sd card of 8GB , your help is needed which one to choose.

Acrylic frames are rubbish. Otherwise, there's good and bad about this kit. Good : hotend, leadscrews, belt tensioning. Bad : acrylic frame and parts, extruder, bearings.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

Thank you Zavashier for the clarifications but which Prusa i3 is the best at this price.Need to order a printer in the coming days.

If none ,i will try to upgrade the frame to MDF with my laser cutter.

if you own a laser cutter, buy parts only, and select good ones at each step. Follow a BOM, don't buy a kit.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

I bought this printer. Its a good starting point for getting into the world of 3d printer ownership. Immediately started printing parts to improve the machine! Lots of good design, but lots to be desired...

I bought this exact kit and assembled it quickly. The frame is weak in some areas but overall worth the money. The filament mine came with was one roll of each PLA and ABS so that was definitely a pro. The firmware and documentation was some half cocked version of Marlin, so I recompiled my own custom version and tweaked a little and got it printing.

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Zavashier
Acrylic frames are rubbish. Otherwise, there's good and bad about this kit. Good : hotend, leadscrews, belt tensioning. Bad : acrylic frame and parts, extruder, bearings.

I've got an acrylic frame and while I'm sure it's not perfect it's not bad at all. In fact its one of the few things with my printer about which I have no complaints. :-) I plan on adding some supports to increase stiffness but when I print a 20mm calibration cube with just the stock frame I get measured dimensions that are within .05 to .45 mm. And that's without really trying to optimize anything. The .45 variance was because my extruder screwed up one layer so I would guess I can get that much closer to spec too.

Why do you dislike them so much?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2015 07:36PM by Vanbot.

hey, I recently "messed" up my firmware when I was changing something inside the firmware to accept my e3d LITE6. I connected my printer, shows up on port with name as "COM6" in arduino I make my adjustments to the code and verified it, uploaded, next thing I know my printer isn't working. Haven't got it to work since then, any chance you have that working configuration.h file?

I did the same thing and have loaded another merlin config file. It works but the setting are not correct. I too need to original and can't find any info on the internet

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ffneil
I did the same thing and have loaded another merlin config file. It works but the setting are not correct. I too need to original and can't find any info on the internet

wait, so you uploaded a different marlin config and it works now as in axis moving, LCD works etc.? because the company sent me the configuration file as well as the main marlin files and I tried uploading the files to the printer but have not gotten any form of luck in terms of restoring it to how it previously was. Would really appreciate if someone could help.

Yes I have it working, but the steppers are not going ok the correct distance, and the LCD is ok but not the way it was when I first turned it on. Can you share the files you have and/or point me in the direction to get the files from the company? Thanks
P.S. Attached is Merlin config that work but needs lots of tuning.

OK I don't like acrylic frames anymore. At least not acrylic bed frames. Mine broke with a minor impact.

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Vanbot
OK I don't like acrylic frames anymore. At least not acrylic bed frames. Mine broke with a minor impact.

well I cant exactly say im a fan of acrylic frames. I will say however they look cool. But I guess if the purpose of a printer was to look cool rather serve any use than mine is doing a hell of a job, considering I haven't been able to get the firmware to work again.

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ffneil
Yes I have it working, but the steppers are not going ok the correct distance, and the LCD is ok but not the way it was when I first turned it on. Can you share the files you have and/or point me in the direction to get the files from the company? Thanks
P.S. Attached is Merlin config that work but needs lots of tuning.

I have the files, they sent me them so ill share it here should anybody ever find themselves needing it. Ill post the modified one that I tried making changes to in order to get my e3d lite 6 to work with it (just incase somebody can help me out with that) and the non modified version from sunhokey (PLEASE NOTE, THE MODIFED E3D AND STOCK FILE MAY OR NOT WORK, SHOULD SOMETHING GO WRONG IN THE PROCESS I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY MISTAKES MADE, THESE FILES WERE GIVEN TO ME DIRECTLY FROM SUNHOKEY, USE AT YOUR DISCRETION)

Try changing the baud rate. #define BAUDRATE 250000

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ffneil
Try changing the baud rate. #define BAUDRATE 250000

I honestly think Im doing something wrong [imgur.com], I changed the baudrate, verified, uploaded, blue LEDs flashed from the mks board and still nothing

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ffneil
Try changing the baud rate. #define BAUDRATE 250000

this link mentions something about a ICSP pin being used to program it with new firmware, but I have not been able to find anything [reprap.org]

I also have a sunhokey, had it since January and going great.

I tried flashing the firmware through the 6pin icsp header - doesn't work. Did mess the board up and needed to flash a new boot loader through the icsp to get the board to take a new sketch from arduino.

The standard marlin works fine with a few tweaks on this machine which need to be fine tuned through calibrating. I'm now running an induction sensor for auto bed levelling, had to change the bed to metal.

We're getting off topic. Z couldn't be more wrong. These cheap little printers are awesome. Complete pain to get built with the crappy instructions but for the price and some reading "here" you can print beautiful parts. Perfect 3d printing learning tool. Order one today!

I don't have the Sunhokey but rather one of the other EBay Acrylic Frame specials that look just like the Sunhokey. Mine has the MKS Base V1.1 controller and as mentioned above lacked in the instructions department but otherwise isn't bad at all for the money. I did find a video showing the assembly in pretty good detail. It has worked flawless for about 9 months now and the only issue I had to figure out to get decent prints was lowering the XY Jerk value from 20 to 10 in the Configuration.h file. I emailed the merchant that I purchased it from on the bay and he quickly sent me a copy of the original firmware so I could make changes as needed without having to try and figure out all of the original settings. Out of the box the test print was within 0.1 mm and for my purpose that was good enough. I've since made mods to it but it was certainly worth what I paid, especially for a first machine to learn on.

The actual printer I wound up with is this one Acrylic Prusa I3 from EBay

I'm also a fan - it's not 'the best 3d printer in the world', but I paid $315 for it, shipped, with 2 rolls of filament and an 8gb SD card. At that price, there's not much that can touch it.

Yes, the acrylic frame is a little fragile (take care of your toys!)
Yes, the Merlin iteration they ship with it is a little meh

But... the acrylic frame is dead accurate, easy to assemble and you can go from nothing to printing in 4-8 hours, if you know what you are doing. PLUS - they give you lots of spare bolts, nuts, washers, etc. - which is more than I can say about the first kitset printer I bought.

If you want to, you can buy a laser-cut ply frame and replace it - it will still be a cheap printer.

It also makes a decent donor for your next one - the electrics, the steppers, the endstops, bearings, slides, etc. are all decent enough items.

Because I had a bunch of parts hanging around, I upgraded mine to DRV8825s, BondTech extruder, GT2 belts, 15-tooth sprockets, optical endstops.

I've been lucky enough to win a SmoothieBoard 5X, so I might throw that at it as well.

Overall, you don't get much better for the money.

Added a Picture of a print from my cheap acrylic from the Bay.
This is a link to my printer with one exception, mine has the Z-Steppers with the solid shaft lead screws, no coupler required, Straight as an arrow.Cheap Acrylic I3 from the Bay This is the same guy I got mine from, not sure why they quit using the steppers with the lead screws made to the shaft. Maybe too expensive.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2015 09:31AM by Jezmo.