The Home Machinist!

Geezer wrote: ↑Thu Oct 11, 2018 5:47 pm Our son , designed and printed over 100 pieces
for this assembly of the Santa Maria last year.
Using wood filament , very solid.


Santa Maria.jpg

His printer is Anet A8 kit , Cheapy from China

There is no reason this should be a dead stop for you Steve. Wish we could help and a good enthusiast forum surely could help. In my case, I lowered my expectations of 3D printing so much that I'm impressed with what I'm getting. It is not impressive but functional. At the very least, you should have that too...

Geezer wrote: ↑Thu Oct 11, 2018 5:47 pm Our son , designed and printed over 100 pieces
for this assembly of the Santa Maria last year.

Very impressive! What is the scale?

I have a prussa i3 printer that I assembled about 3 years ago.
My lathe is a sieg sc8 (not a mini lathe) and has a metric leadscrew. In order to do some imperial threads I determined that I would need to swop out one of the gears in the drive train to a 33 tooth. I designed and printed it on my 3D printer.
The gear held up well for this task (although I expect it will fail at some point)

If I can create a plastic gear that holds up to lathe work I am sure an enclosure will be fine. In fact I have printed many electronic enclosures.

Use ABS not PLA and use a high nozzle heat to ensure layers bond to each other well.

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I lowered my expectations of 3D printing so much that I'm impressed with what I'm getting.

I think that is key. Reminds me of a story my grandfather told. He was a judge in Eastern Kentucky. A man he knew came up to him on the street and complained that he couldn't find a wife. My grandfather told him to lower his expectations. Some time later, the man approached him again with a woman on his arm, and he introduced her as his wife. My grandfather said, "See what I told you?"

I believe Cura is the program that refuses to see the printer. I haven't been fooling with it because it's a low priority. I put it together with a friend's 7-year-old, and he is upset that nothing has happened. He calls his older brother "Prancey the Unicorn," and he is eager to start printing unicorns.

Steve whats the problem exactly? Did you load the firmware up yet? Is it a connection problem when trying to do so??

I can't tell you "exactly," because I don't remember, but basically, the software refuses to see the printer.

Which software??
Most of these printer kits require you to upload the firmware to the controller. Have you done that??
If not I'd start looking for the firmware and also download the arduino ide. There may also be a driver out there to get your computer to recognize the printer.

Just looked it up, your driver is on the sd card supplied with the printer. Need to install that on your computer so it recognizes the printer.

I am not familiar with the A6 and I have not tried connecting a PC directly to my printer. I watched an RCLifeON youtube review of the A6 and the illustrated process and interface looks exactly the same as mine.

Cura "slices" the STL design file and writes gcode to SD card, and then I carry the SD card to the printer and use the printer's LCD/interface to print from SD. I had to enter some printer parameters into Cura - settings based on the CR-10 where I just changed the print volume and saved that as a custom printer. I'd expect the printer to already have firmware installed on its controller.

I would feel lost if I no longer had access to my Prusa i3 Mk2.5 with Bear upgrade. It is a valuable tool for unlimited things.