Zonestar D810B from AliExpress

I succumbed to my "need" for a larger printer, and decided to try a Delta. I found what looked to be a very good deal on AliExpress... Auto Leveling Delta 3d Printer Large Printing Size Reprap Kossel Delta 3d Printer DIY Kit with HotBed 8GB SD Card Free shipping for US$225.12 (at the time, now $258). I thought I'd share my experiences, in case anyone else is considering going down this track. Conversely, if someone else has been here before, I'd welcome your comments and suggestions.

The printer is described as 200mm diameter by 300mm tall build volume. It includes an LCD display with an SD card slot, and a filament supporter (free gift). The main structure is 2020 aluminium extrusions, with acrylic for the top and bottom platforms, and a couple of other small bits. Controller is a ZRIB V2.0 board, which essentially combines a RAMPS 1.4 with an Arduino into a single board (think PrintrBoard). There are screw terminals for the 12V supply and heaters, the rest are plugs. Hot end claims to be an E3D V6, but I'm sure it's some kind of Chinese copy. There's a fan and shroud to clip to the heatsink, and another fan and shroud for filament cooling. All the electronics and motors are in the top of the printer, except for the heated bed and its controller, which is completely separate. There are two 12V power supply bricks, one for the heated bed and one for the rest of the printer. Documentation is provided by downloading PDFs... these are a series images describing assembly, wiring, etc. Anyone who has assembled flat-pack furniture will be familiar with them.

The best thing I can say about this printer is that it is cheap. The quality of design and manufacture and instructions are all average at best. I think that, as supplied, this kit would result in a very poor 3D printer.

• The 3D printed parts are poor quality & weak. One of the motor mounts broke when attempting to attach the motor, another broke when I was tensioning the belt. These appear to be printed with 10-20% infill, and are about 4mm thick. I've epoxyed them together for now, but that part needs to be redesigned and remade. I had to scrape away overhanging lips and so on to allow the aluminium extrusions to fit against the 3D printed parts.
• Some of the screws absolutely *cannot* be done up. This is just poor design, probably combined with saving a few cents on Philips-head screws as opposed to socket-cap. The screws to attach the motors are Philips head M3x8mm. They are placed inside each top triangle piece, where there is *no* way to get a screwdriver to one them. The others are very difficult (i.e. you can't get a screwdriver straight onto them). Obviously, no-one at Zonestar has actually assembled one of these printers. Fortunately, I had a supply of M3 socket cap screws that I could use instead.
• Bad screw selection. The M3x8mm screws supplied were all countersunk heads, whereas the holes were not countersunk. Or maybe that's bad design of the plastic parts again.
• Some required screws are missing. I needed 6 M3x20mm screws to attach the diagonal arms to the carriages. None were supplied. I think this was porobably a mistake to due to changed design of the arms.
• The instructions don't match the hardware. The arms are shown in the instructions as having screws attached, What I got was ball socket ends on the rods, which required screws to attach them to the effector and carriages. In some cases the instructions say to use M3 screws to attach to M5 nuts, or vice versa.
• Some instruction images are black on black... i.e. difficult (even impossible) to understand.
• The heated bed has a separate controller. This is not mentioned in the sales pitch at all, and is potentially a major nuisance, becase at the end of a print, there's no way for the controller to turn the heated bed off. That will be a manual process, or maybe a fixed timer, or an external SSR.
• No housing/mount/buttons for heated bed controller. The heated bed is controlled by a separate controller, with its own little PCB, 7-seg LED display, and 3 buttons. This PCB is just dangling on the end of the wires from the heated bed. The buttons are little micro pushbuttons on the PCB itself. Very obviously an afterthought.
• No insulation for heated bed. Theheated bed is a 3mm aluminium plate, with a heating element on the underside. There's absolutely no insulation on the heating element, so half the heat will be wasted. Worse yet, it will be heating the top of the table or whatever the printer is sitting on.
• Heated bed wires held in place by tape. The power wires to the heated bed are soldered on, and the thermistor appears to be in a cartridge similar to a heater cartridge. The only mechanical attachment of thermistor to bed is what appears to be ordinary electrical insulation tape.
• The LCD screen is not attached to the printer. The LCD screen is provided with a couple of acrylic legs to sit on, but not mechanically attached to the printer at all. It sits on the top of the printer. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to foresee this falling off.
• There's no belt tensioning mechanism. The belts go round the motor pulleys at the top, around pulleys at the bottom, and the ends are attached to the carriages. There is no mechanism for tensioning them. Given the continual motion to and fro of all 3 motors during Delta printing, slack in the belts will result in poor print quality. Again, thoughtless design. I'm thinking about a simple belt tensioner design.
• There's nothing (apart from tension) to stop the belts from wiggling out of their slots in the carriages. I guess I'll need to put a cover over the belt ends. Fortunately, there's holes in the carriages that this could be screwed into.
• The "boat nuts" need to be held in place somehow. "Boat nuts" fit in a slot in the aluminium extrusion, allowing a plastic part to be tightened against the extrusion. When at right angles to the extrusion, they hold. Turning the nut through 90 degrees allows it to come out of the slot. There's no way to stop the boat nuts from rotating, and no way to see the orientation of the boat nuts once the plastic is in place. This makes for a never-ending nightmare of placing the nuts, putting the plastic in place, and then hoping that all of the nuts stay in place while tightening screws into them. If one nut turns at any point, you have to take them all out and start again. A little thought in the design of the 3D printed parts could have prevented the rotation. In the end, I hot-glued my boat nuts in place.
• The motors are small. This is conveniently skipped over in the sales blurb. Small motors means that they have low torque, which in turn limits the acceleration and speed of printing. And fast(er) printing is one of the benefits of a Delta design. I expect I'll want to upgrade these some time in the future.
• The fans are small (20mm) and axial... i.e. they won't blow much air. I don't have a lot of confidence in their likely cooling effectiveness. A too-small fan on the heatsink might lead to clogs and jams in the hot end. A too-small filament cooling fan might lead to poor print detail, and/or warping. I expect I'll want to replace these with 40mm fans or blower (radial) fans in the future.
• The auto-levelling is done by a microswitch on the effector. I'm not sure how effective this is going to be, or how it works.
• The Bowden attachment for the extruder had been thread-stripped. The Bowden attachment screws into an acrylic piece on the extruder... it just won't stay in. It comes pre-assembled, so whoever put that together over-tightened it, I guess.
• The documentation doesn't mention the mechanical side of the wiring at all... for a long life, it is important that wires should be solidly anchored at the effector and control board ends, so that all flexing is done in the bundle. A handful of zipties and a long length of spiral-wrap is provided.

OTOH, having made all these complaints, I have (so far) successfully assembled the printer, and have it mostly wired up. I expect that eventually I will be able to use it effectively as a 3D printer, but also expect that there is quite a bit of work ahead of me to make it into a good printer.

I'll post more information as I progress...

in my opinion its upside down top heavy

---

Check my rubbish blog for my prusa i3

up and running
[3dimetech.blogspot.co.uk]

I agree that putting all the motors on the top seems contrary to good sense and may make it top-heavy. Will see about that eventually...

Moving on...
Yesterday, after posting, I had a guilty and stupid feeling, because I hadn't actually viewed the construction videos, because I hadn't understood that the documentation was available on the supplied SD card. I looked at some of them last night; they consist of CAD animations, showing the parts moving into the right position. They're a bit better than the construction PDF document, but not much. Out of interest, I looked at the video showing how to add the last corner to the bottom triangle, because that was a bit problematic when I did it. The video shows the corner piece moving *through* the aluminium extrusion. (What worked for me was to assemble two corners to two extrusions, then separately the remaining corner to the remaining extrusion, then put those 2 assemblies together).

Some other things: The controller board (ZRIB V1.0) is apparently (based on) a Melzi board... there's a reference to that in the documents.

Plug the wires into the control board before fixing it to the top platform. You can't plug the power connector in afterwards, and you can't read the labels on the board. Similarly, plug the wires to the extruder motor in before mounting it.

Lower the effector all the way to make sure your wiring will have enough length. Attach the wires at the effector firmly... there's a convenient hole in the leveling probe microswitch PCB ). Make sure that there is *no* movement in the wires between the attachment point and their various terminations. Any movement of individual wires will lead to stress points in the wires and breakages. Similarly, attach the bundle of wires firmly to the top platform, spiral-wrap all the way from one attachment to the other, and attach the spiral wrap at each end.

The connectors on the LCD are labelled EXP1 & EXP2. The matching connectors on the controller board are labelled the same. There's no other way to know how to connect these two together (glossed over in the wiring instructions).

I'm not sure which fan is named what... the names aren't very clear. I've taken a guess and plugged them in... worst case, I'll just have to swap the connectors over.

The LCD instructions don't match the hardware... they describe an LCD display with 5 buttons, whereas what was supplied has a single rotary plus push-pull button.
Other than this, the wiring instructions are excellent and easy to follow.

The controller board itself has all the connectors needed to control the heated bed, but according to a note in the instructions, the code to do this has been removed from the firmware. Hopefully (a) the bed heater connection is good enough to run 10 amps, and (b) the code can be added back in.

Nevertheless, I've powered up the controller board, and that and the LCD seem to be perfectly functional.

Next step: check the motors & heaters.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2016 06:43PM by frankvdh.

Nozzle heater & thermistor & fans are good and work fine. All XYZ top limit switches are working correctly. Heated bed heater wire separated from the bed.

The biggest problem is that I can't get the X,Y,Z motors to move the carriages -- the motors just skip. I thought perhaps the wiring was screwed up to all 3 motors, but it's identical to the extruder motor wiring, and plugging the extruder motor into each of the X,Y,Z motor connectors in turn resulted in the extruder motor working reliably and predictably. I'll try the X,Y,Z motors without belts to confirm. But I think now that the real problem is that there is a great deal of resistance to the carriages rolling up and down.

And I've broken both arm attachment lugs off one of my carriages. I'm not sure how... I wouldn't have thought that there would be much force applied there. But, again, looks to be 10-20% infill, and maybe 1mm walls, so just not strong. Replacing these carriages would require a fair amount of disassembly, including removing the top or bottom platform. Epoxying the lugs back on.

Zonestar support has responded promptly to my requests and provided the source code for the firmware (Repetier Firmware) and the STL files for the 3D printed parts.

To do: Look more closely at why the carriages are hard to move. Try X,Y,Z motors without belts. Fix heated bed and test. Try extruding some filament. Look at how the Z-min endstop is used for auto-leveling, and check that it's working.

More progress... extruded my first filament, no real problem. It was a bit difficult to feed the filament through the Bowden connector at the extruder end though... I had to disassemble things to feed it through one piece at a time.

All the motors work without belts on. It would have been a good idea to check all this out before putting the belts on. But I'd done the mechanical assembly, followed by doing the wiring.

Turns out part of the problem with the carriages is that the carriages and/or wheel spacers aren't (sufficiently) dimensionally accurate. When the screws attaching the wheel to the carriage are cranked up tight, it presses the wheels laterally against the extrusion, increasing the friction. After I backed off the screws by a turn or so, they become much easier to move. Another part of the problem is that the wheels aren't round. They have little ridges on the surface the runs against the extrusion, which causes the carriage to move in clunky steps. I scraped away those ridges, and then vigorously ran the carriage up and down the extrusion by hand.

So I have one carriage now that moves under program control But it moves in the opposite direction to what I expect. A Home command moves it down, *away* from the end-stop microswitch. Requiring a quick pull of the power before it crashed into the bed. Coincidently/fortunately/suspiciously, the wiring instructions include a section on how to pull the pins out of the connector to reverse their order and consequently reverse the direction of movement. And, from experience, I don't like the idea of pulling those pins... it will be difficult to do that without damaging the connectors. That's *really* irritating, because a *tiny* piece of work by the developer would have saved every purchaser from having to pull all those pins to reverse the direction of the motors. (a) They could surely have provided cables that were wired up correctly, or (b) a quick glance at configuration.h in the source code shows that there are settings for motor direction and homing direction. I'll be looking at recompiling the software myself, with the right settings... a bit of trial and error to figure out the right values for those two things.

Quote
frankvdh
... Zonestar support has responded promptly to my requests and provided the source code for the firmware (Repetier Firmware) and the STL files for the 3D printed parts.

Hi thanks for this post, could you share these parts ? they hasn't sent them to me

ho and I've got a D810 too. (I'm french so my english could sucks a bit)

I didn't have any problem with the wiring, everything works at first try.

My feedback :

1 - Parts : definitely need to reprint carriage parts, with a bigger infill. Also I'm gonna modify the carriage in order to be able to tense the belt.

2 - Power supply : it's sucks, the 5A adapter doesn't even deliver nearly 5A, so the board doesn't works. And there's also another adapter for the hotbed ... I'll get rid of these and use an ATX power supply, put a main switch and wire all of that to the power connector on the ZRIB.

3 - Case : the case for the LCD suck need to reprint one fixed to the printer. Also, no case for the hotbed board :/ need to print that too...

4 - MCU : the ZRIB 2.0 is a good board, but the documentation given with the printer is for the old generation (1.1), and there's a big gap, the old one is based on sanguino, the new one on ATMEGA2560. Its flashed with repetier firmware. Compare to the original repetier firmware, only few constant declaration on pin.h are made due to the exotic origin of the board (not officially referenced by repetier). There's something that tingling me, it's seems that pullup resistor is directly sodered to each endstop connector, which means (almost sure about it) that pullup parameters in firmware has no effect on the board... need to confirm that point.

5 - Extruder : it's a really good part, and the filament support is well design, a very good point.

6 - Effector : Let's be quick, the Z probe mechanism sucks, it smashed the hotend to the bed in order to trigger a mechanical MakerBot 1.2 sensor on the effector. It's the first thing that I'm going to replace, I'll go for inductive sensor (an NPN one). Also, results from probing are not consistent with this mechanism due to the mobile part of the hotend support. Definitely need to re-print a better support for the hotend where it can't slightly move.

7- Contact support : the guy behind the support is definitely a real hardware engineer, he always answer my requests and questions, even if they are really specifics. Of course he's chinese, so sometimes it's difficult to understand perfectly it's english, on the other hand it's the same from me to him (french)

8 - Firmware settings : Default settings are good, good print without any heavy tweak to the settings, just the usual stuff. But there's a potential critical issue with parameters of the P1-P2-P3 coordinates. These coordinates are use for auto leveling procedures. P1-P2-P3 coordonates in the firmware settings draw an isosceles triangle, which is good for a G29 command but very bad for a G32. G32 build a grid from P1-P2-P3 coordinates, which end to a parallelogram with these settings instead of a square. Because P1-P2-P3 coordinates are quite close to the border of the bed, a part of this parallelogram is out of the bed. I almost crash my hotend yesterday, hopefully I was watching and saw that the pattern was somehow strange. Personnaly I use the following coordinates (X/Y) : P1 -60/-60 ; P2 60/-60 ; P3 -60/60 which draw a right triangle, not as good as an isoceles triangle for G29 command, but definitly safe coordinates for G32 commands. Because my english could be bad I've made a drawing of what I mean :

Default settings :


My current settings :


Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2016 09:22AM by Hergonoway.

Hey there.
My Dad just bought the D810B and I finally assembled it.
Took me around 6 Hours because the Documentation is kinda confusing.
Sadly the bags with screws were not labeled. And of course not a single spare screw or nut.
As you mentioned the printed parts are a bit rubish (especially the carriages. I broke one aswell)

Other then that I can't say much because I'm still in the process of calibrating.
Oh while I'm at it: is there any chance you can send me the original Firmware.
I think some of my endstop settings are wrong and I don't know my dad's order number.

Regards
Balgur

[Memento, I'm french, my english sucks]

Here's the full original firmware, ready to compile :
[www.dropbox.com]

Personnal note :
The firmware is based on Repetier, basically you can pick up the configuration.h of the D810, run it into official Repetier configuration tool and pick up the last full firmware version. At the time of this post, you don't need to, it's up to date, just take it, compile and upload to the D810
For future release of Repetier, beware! Because the ZRIB board is not officially "declared" in repeater firmware, some changes have been made in pin.h in order to map correctly few constant to the right pin on the ZRIB board. In a near futur, if you use the Repetier configuration tool with configuration.h, you'll have to update pin.h by hand if you download the full firmware. (I personally use WinMerge for that, there's not a lot of stuff). There are also other files that are modified by Zonestar compare to official release of the firmware, but you don't need to replicate these modifications.

My advice : Comment out each line that is customize by ZoneStar and you as a memento for futur modifications. like "// old_value ZRIB ZonestarComment" for zonestar modification and "// old_value CUSTOM MyComment" for yours.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/10/2016 06:18AM by Hergonoway.

Embarrassment!

There is no need to recompile the firmware after all.It turns out (and is obvious on reflection) that the carriage direction depends on the carriage orientation. If the carriage is put on back-to-front, then it will be attached to the opposite-going side of the belt, and go in the opposite direction from what is expected. According to Murphy's Law, I had of course put all of my carriages on upside down.

For the record, the correct way to put a carriage on is for the single wheel to be on the left (two wheels on the right) when looking at the printer from the outside. Put another way, the arrow-shaped acrylic parts of the carriages should all point clockwise when viewed from above.

[Edit]: For some reason, I can't edit my earlier post to correct the error

I now have 2 carriages going in the right direction, and the original working carriage to be switched around. So all 3 carriages do now work.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/2016 07:07PM by frankvdh.

Well, it's finished.

I had to loosen the screw that serves as a hinge for the hotend, so that the hotend would fall away from the Z-minus limit switch when there was no pressure on it. I'm not happy about this movement in the hotend, and think it'll lead to print quality issues. The auto-levelling thing also sets the nozzle to close to the bed, so that when it starts printing the nozzle is actually pressing against the bed.



And I printed my first thing.



The spiral track in the background is due to the nozzle rubbing the bed during the Z calibration. And I saw exactly the same problem when printing... the first 2 layers, the nozzle was pressing so hard into the bed that no filament actually got extruded. I was surprised that the hotend didn't clog.

I'll do a bit of research into whether a Z offset can be set in Repetier firmware, and if so, try adjusting that.

while printing, on the LCD go to quick settings, then babystepping, you can offset the Z height in live (clockwise = Z go up) . This offset will be clear after a restart or a homing (g28). If you don't have time to calibrate the first layer, slice the objet with a "skirt" of 2 or 3 line to give you the time to use babystepping before it start printing the objet itself.

If you don't have this option then you should set the parameter of babystepping to 1 in configuration.h of your firmware (then recompile and upload)

I suggest to remember the value of baby step which gave you a correct first layer, then go to Z calibration menu, go to the Z position equal to the value of baby step (if it was 0.15, go to z = 0.15 ) and set Z=0.

hi i dont suppose you have the link to the dropbox for the contents of the sd card ? the seller sent out a blank sd card to a friend and we contacted the seller who sent us a dropbox address that comes up 404 error we contacted him again and he said he will look tomorrow as it was bed time lol.
thanks

The link they gave me doesn't work anymore, here's the zip file I saved :

[www.dropbox.com]

thanks

Oops... it seems that my printer is actually a D810 -- the D810B has an ATX power supply, and the heated bed controlled by the ZRIB controller board, whereas the D810 has two brick power supplies (5A and 10A) and a separate controller for the heated bed. Hence, I've changed the subject of this message.

And I have a problem with the separate heatbed controller. It turns the heated bed on if the temperature is above the set point, and turns it off if the temperature is below the set point. This is the opposite of what is required.

This potentially dangerous... if someone was to lower their setpoint enough for the controller to turn the heater on, it would *never* turn off. Who knows what temperature it might reach?

My interpretation is that it has the wrong type of relay installed... Normally Open instead of Normally Closed. Hopefully the fitted relay also has a Normally Closed contact that I could use with a cut trace and a jumper. (I am not comfortable with removing the relay entirely and replacing it).

It's no a problem with the board it's a bad factory configuration. The board is a thermal regulator control board, I've got one similar a long time ago so there's 2 mode :

1 - a heat mode which power up when you're below a certain temperature, in our case it's a thermal resistor which heat up
2 - a cold mode which power up if you're above a certain temperature, most of the time you use a fan or a cooling device with this mode.

I think your board is in cold mode (bad defaut configuration from factory), try to go to the configuration menu of your board, there's only 3 button, I think you go to the configuration menu by pressing 2 buttons at the same time for 5 second or something like that. The menu should be very simple because of the "screen" size, something like few set of parameters. Here, the first or second set of parameter should handle the mode of the board, Try to find the parameter where there's only 2 choice like "H" or "C" , "HEA" or "COL". If you've got "C" or "COL" then change for the other one.

And that should do it

Thanks, @H. Just got this from ZoneStar support:


Plz set the Temperature to Heating mode:

1. Connect power adapter to control board, turn power
2. Keep press "Set" button, until it show "P0", release the button.
3. press "Set" button again, until it show "H" or "C", if it show "H" release the button, if it show "C", press "+" or "-" button to set to "H"
4. Keep press "Set" button, until it show temperature number, release the button.

P0: control mode "H"--->Heating mode "C"--->Cool mode

And another misunderstanding... the brass Bowden attachment thing that attaches to the extruder doesn't thread into it. Each time pressure was applied (particularly when the nozzle was too close to the bed, the brass fitting would pop out. In fact, there is a grub screw accessible from the top of the extruder which clamps onto it. For convenience, I've replaced the grub screw with an ordinary M3 socket cap screw.

The next issue is that the filament cooling fan duct needs to be redesigned. When the nozzle is printing somewhere out towards the +X, +Y limits, it is tilted, and in fact tilted so much that the fan duct is below the nozzle. That means that when printing the first layers, the duct rubs the bed. On later layers (assuming that the print isn't already wrecked), it bangs into the sides of the print.

Added simple tensioners to each of my belts: [www.thingiverse.com]

Found this Cheap PCB Thermostat Case today on Thingiverse. It looks like it's designed for the ZoneStar heated bed controller. This is licensed by edofalcone under the Creative Commons - Attribution license.

The Autodesk 123Design source file is included, so it'll be easy to mod to mount to the D810. I've converted it to STEP and imported it to OnShape as a public document. If anyone who wants it can't access it from either of those places, please let me know and I'll try to find a way to get it to you. If anyone wants to collaborate (or do the modding themselves) on my OnShape project, let me know your OnShape username and I'll set it up. If anyone is going to do the mod using 123Design (or some other tool) and share the results, please let me know and I'll leave you to it.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2016 05:25PM by frankvdh.

Thanks for the input, I've seen this model and currently integrating it to a support for the 2020 with m4 boat nut, I'll share it when it's finished

Hello everybody,
We have upgrade this kit and please kindly free feel to download it from the below link:

D810 Upgrade
[www.dropbox.com]

D810 video:
[www.dropbox.com]

D810 print parts:
[www.dropbox.com]

D810 release document
[www.dropbox.com]

This time we have upgraded the following:

1. Printer parts
2. Auto level module and firmware
3. Document

Quote
Hally
Hello everybody,
We have upgrade this kit and please kindly free feel to download it from the below link:

D810 Upgrade
[www.dropbox.com]

D810 video:
[www.dropbox.com]

D810 print parts:
[www.dropbox.com]

D810 release document
[www.dropbox.com]

This time we have upgraded the following:

1. Printer parts
2. Auto level module and firmware
3. Document

Thanks for this update ! but there 2 little things,

1 - there's no source code for the firmware (only the hex file) could you share it as well ?
2 - new pieces seem to be better, unfortunatly there's no instalation guide for them, especially for the extruder, the rest is OK it's small improvment. The guide and the instalations videos in the link are the old ones, the hot end seems to be attached on the extruder with springs, and the proximity cooling tube seems to be attached in a different way also. Could you update the guide ? or make a new video to show how to assemble the extrudor with these new parts ? I'm almost sure that additional hardware is necessary to update the extruder from the one we have.


Thanks in advance.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2016 01:17PM by Hergonoway.

Quote
Hally
Hello everybody,
We have upgrade this kit and please kindly free feel to download it from the below link:

Hi Hally,
It's great to see the kit supplier here. I hope you'll be able to use the feedback here to improve your product. I would love to hear your responses to comments on here, and also any comments/questions you might have for your customers/users.

Frank

Hi Hergonoway,

Thanks for your supporting and advice!

1. Frimware sourcode download link: [www.dropbox.com]

2. We upgrade the effector, in order to improve the sensitivity of automatic leveling sensor.
Download link: [www.dropbox.com]

3. We upgrade the hotend (heat sink device), in order to solve issue that filament is easier to stuck.

Hi Frank,
Thanks all of your advice.
I saw your message in here about three weeks ago. And we have benefited a lot from your message, of course include other customer ;-)
I ask our colleague to improve this product. the major points:
1. Improve the strength of printing parts.
2. Improve auto leveling sensor sensitivity.
3. Improve the hotend, make it better to load filament and reduce the probability of stuck.
We finished these improving and release them now.

In addition
1. We put the motor on the above, in order to make the ENDSTOP connection easier.
2. I thought a independent hot bed is a good idea, it solves the problem of how to wiring. But some customers do not recognize. If you have good suggestions, kindly tell me please.
3. We are designing a new version, the step motor and the control board will installed in the bottom. Once we're done, I'll share the STL file.
4. If you have any advice on the firmware or machine, please feel free to let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Quote
Hally
Hi Hergonoway,

Thanks for your supporting and advice!

1. Frimware sourcode download link: [www.dropbox.com]

2. We upgrade the effector, in order to improve the sensitivity of automatic leveling sensor.
Download link: [www.dropbox.com]

3. We upgrade the hotend (heat sink device), in order to solve issue that filament is easier to stuck.

Thanks, what's the "spring generating" part page 3 ? where can we buy this thing ?

and if I may, you should definitly attach the extruder fan part to the cooling fan part, as one piece. I'm currently trying that and it's working way better than the original, and no screw.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2016 10:23PM by Hergonoway.

Hi Hergonoway,
The new version effector need some custom components, include:
1. 3 pcs "spring generating"
2. 1 acrylic piece to mount the hotend module
3. 1 metal piece to mount the extruder fan and heater sink.

We will put this upgrade module on the racks of our store in the next week.

Reflecting on my experience so far:

• The LCD on the top of the printer is too high if the printer is on a table. And you want the printer to be on a table, so you can easily access the bed.
• The USB cable is too short to be practical with the controller board at the top of the printer... it's only just long enough to plug into a computer that is alongside the printer.
• The weight at the top of the printer isn't a problem. In fact it might even be a good thing, with some mass to resist wobbling.
• Taking all this into account, I think it's a good idea to move the controller board to the bottom of the printer. That way it'll also be able to control the heated bed, and you won't need two power supply bricks.
• Check the screws attaching the rods to the carriages and effector regularly. Several of mine had loosened, causing errors in the print. Even better, use something like Loctite or hot glue or nail polish to stop the nuts loosening, or replace the supplied ordinary nuts with Nyloc nuts.
• Two more of the M3 rod-ends inserted into the ends of the carbon fibre rods have pulled loose... I've epoxied them back into place. And repaired yet another broken lug on a carriage.
• The filament holder is surprisingly good. I've used it with a nearly full 1kg spool, and it works just fine. It's also good for those shorter lengths of air-wound filament.
• I haven't run into any issues with the hotend at all. Obviously that tiny axial fan provides sufficient cooling after all.
• The length of the Bowden cable means there's a certain amount of drooling as the head moves from place to place. Maybe the drooling can be controlled with more aggressive retraction. Also there's a lot of filament wasted at the end of a roll. Maybe I'll try a flying extruder.
• Personally, I don't think it is worth trying to make the current bed-leveling system work. In fact, I don't think the G29 system is needed... after all the bed is on springs and can be levelled manually. A non-contact proximity Z sensor to detect the bed would be useful. In which case, it could also be used for bed-leveling.
  
  Even if the nozzle motion is limited to 0.5mm as per the new instructions, that's still about 2 layers of printing. You can't afford to be out by that distance; if the nozzle is at the right height at one point, then 0.5mm high elsewhere will cause adhesion problems, or if it's 0.5mm low then it will be pressing against the bed and not extruding. And it seems that if the nozzle can move relative to the effector plate, then it will move (at the worst possible time) and produce lateral and vertical errors in the print.
  
  One issue I ran into yesterday was that the nozzle pushes the bed down against its springs before the Z limit switch triggers. That leads to a complete miscalculation of the bed plane. If you're going to have springs on the nozzle to push it back into place when not pressed down against the bed, then those springs need to be [b]a lot weaker[/b] than the springs that hold the bed up.
  
  My current technique, which seems to be quite reliable, is to not use the G29 command at all. I've got the bed level, and wedged it in place so that it can't move at all. And I've tightened up the screws on the nozzle hinge, so that it is locked in place relative to the effector plate. Finally, before each print session, I calibrate the Z by gripping a piece of paper between the nozzle and the centre of the bed.
• I've added an IP camera looking down at the bed. This is temporarily hot-glued in place in the middle of one side at the top of the printer. The IP camera is convenient because I can look at it from anywhere on the Internet via isecurityplus.com (although I can't do anything if something goes wrong). Looking down isn't very useful... you can't really tell if extrusion has stopped for some reason.
• I've used the printer in 3 modes
  
  • standalone via the LCD & SD card, The beeper thing at every click is annoyingly loud, but the feedback is necessary. A piece of tape on the speaker is very effective.
  • controlled using Repetier host software on a Windows laptop,
  • controlled via Octoprint on a Raspberry Pi 3. It seems that cancelling a print in Octoprint somehow kills communication between the the Pi and the printer, but that may be an Octoprint issue. I'm planning to add a RPi camera sometime, and also some relays so that the RPi can turn the printer (including the heated bed) off on command.

Hi Frankvdh,

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience.

About the questions you have mentioned:
1. As I mentioned, we will make a new version to put the control board, LCD and motor to the bottom. And I will share the stl file once we finish.
2. The screw is easier to loosen is an issue, we will try to improve it. At the present we will write a note in the documents to prompt the customer to check.
3. The new hotend will make it easier to load filament.For a user who is not very experienced, it is very helpful.
4. I also think it is not necessary to increase G29, especially if you have implemented G32 to calibrate.
5. We also considered to use a proximity sensor, but because of the size of PS, how to mount it on effector is a question.

Sincerely thank you and hope to continue to hear from you!

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Hally Zhong
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Shenzhen Zonestar Innovation Tenchnology Co., Ltd.
E-mail: zonestar@163.com