This Old 3D Printer

Day 68/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. One last Thing-O-Matic test before going back to the Cupcake.

Day 67/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. #Makerbot Thing-O-Matic on Sailfish. #3dprinting

Day 66/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. Thing-O-Matic Firmware Update!

Day 65/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. Returning to the root of the project. Pain and suffering.

Day 64/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. New acquisitions in!

Day 63/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. Cupcake printing Gridfinity parts?

Day 62/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. We're back live! First time using the single extruder replicator.

Day 61/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. That's not CoreXY and that's not reverse CoreXY either!

Day 60/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. What was your first printer?

Day 59/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. We read comments while I assume everyones a dude, my bad... I caught myself while editing captions but it's almost 2 am and can't rerecord this one.

Day 58/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. The Impossible Tour?

Yeah I'm not sure if Flash Print 5 functions on Apple silicon. Marlin is also an option. I have rough write ups for Marlin or Klipper configs I need to polish and post at some point along with literally every other printer in the collection lol.

I've only seen 2 i3 MK1s so far. I let Pooch from Repkord have the one I would have acquired. Frame wise it's essentially the same as the MK2. But the MK3 replaces the threaded Y rods with 30mm extrusions. We have a MK0 era 3mm build that has been updated with MK2 and MK3 parts but keeping it 3mm.

Nothing necessarily replaced anything at any given point in time. But the first few RepRap printers were threaded rod frames. Very quickly the majority of sold kits were plywood. From 2012 onward it was a pretty healthy mix. But current i3 descendents using threaded rod? Would love some examples.

Not on anything decent after 2017. Prusa i3 MK3 has no threaded rod. Creality, Sovol, Sunlu, Tevo, etc all used extrusion frames for their i3s. MendelMax, Lulzbot, etc went extrusion very early on. Threaded rod Mendel's have way too much side to side movement.

Day 57/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. Second day of caption testing and time lapses.

Thermal runaway protection is firmware based and the stock firmware didn't have. When the temperature is out of expected range while heating it halts the printer. This doesn't solve everything but it's important. Reminds me the XT60 connector on the bed cable is known to be faulty on the OG version

I am struggling to come up with a hotend recommendation but .6 will print faster often due to larger layers but it won't always flow more plastic volume per period of time. Modern high flow hotends can offer more speed at any given nozzle size so it's something to think about.

I can't speak for the early board safety. Most of the added safety is in software. Better boards give you more features. The ability to control all 3 fans instead of just the part cooling fan. Silent drivers which back when I ran an Ender also fixed a pattern issue in prints I had.

The original hotend and even on many of their newer models has a PTFE lined heatbreak where the PTFE goes all the way to the nozzle. This makes temperatures approaching 240C unsafe for human breathing but also tends to have heat creep and other clogging issues.

Learn to adjust the eccentric nuts so that the rubber v wheels are not too loose or too tight. The stock or upgraded hotends should be fine for 100mm/s. Custom firmware is a plus but the older OG boards are harder to deal with. I would avoid spending money on a new board but it would change a lot.

Bed leveling is a common complaint. Upgraded springs or silicone helps. Some people find ways to lock the adjusters. Avoid bed leveling probes as the X axis is often twisted enough to cause useless mesh syndrome and make it print worse. I would get a better surface in the long run.

I would avoid doing what every Ender user does and dump 200-300 into it. Reliability first speed later. An all metal hotend will save you a lot of heartache, remaining Bowden is fine but I always change the plastic extruder to metal. Cheap or clone hotends would be my go to.

Day 56/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. Now with Facts and Captions and twice the disappointment j/k.

Day 55/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. One last live print for the road. Klipper guide soon!

Day 54/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. No part cooling is starting to hurt. I didn't bring any Aquanet either.

Day 53/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. My first overhang test and no part cooling to help it!

Day 52/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. No miracles here but some improvement and new information on the latest acquisition.

Day 51/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. New addition to the collection.

Day 50/365 Printing on Vintage Hardware. Input shaping on a Thing-O-Matic?