Back at it again with the 3D printing...

I know, I know. It's been a minute. There's a lot that's been going on, and I can only give my energy to a few things at a time.

Anyway...

I got another 3D printer.

I couldn't help myself. It was on a Black Friday deal.

I picked up this FLSun QQ-S Pro Delta 3D printer. You can see how tall this thing sits! It has a slightly bigger print base than my Ender 3 Pro, but has a taller print height. I always wanted to add a Delta printer to my collection of printers. I now have 2 Cartesian printers (an Anet A8 and a Creality Ender 3 Pro), a resin printer (a Creality Halot One), and now, a Delta printer (an FLSun QQ-S Pro).

Now that I mentioned the Ender 3 Pro, I took the time to upgrade that.

 

First off, I changed the main board. I swapped it from the stock Creality main board to a Big Tree Tech SKR Mini e3 v3.0. I figured that I could use the pre-compiled firmware BTT had on their Github page, but I followed a tutorial to compile the Marlin firmware for it. It seemed that the one I compiled was a bit better than the pre-compiled one.

 

This was the main thing I wanted to get installed on the Ender 3 Pro. I installed a Creality CR Touch to the printer, and I don't think the stock Creality main board would allow me to install it. This took the frustrations of leveling (or tramming, depending on what school of thought you follow) out of the equation always trying to get that bed to sit right and the first layer down perfect. This, plus the new firmware, made it way easier to keep that bed level. 

For the curious, I did both auto bed level on the settings on the printer and saved the settings, and also added G29 (for auto bed level) at the start of my gcode. Yes, it takes some time (I have it checking 25 points on the print bed, which gets done in 2 or so minutes), but at least I know that my first layer is going down just right.

This is the first print I did with auto bed leveling in place. Not the best, but way better than what I was getting before. 

Not sure how good this pic will show it, but the one on the left was before I installed the CR Touch, the right is after installation. The fact that I can't see the first layer lines on the right one shows that the auto bed leveling was worth it!

I was trying to use all my old filament to print some toys for sale and gifts to send back to my niece and nephews back in HI, as well as some gifts for some co-workers. I wish I saved some filament now so I could print more things. I'm gonna order more soon. 

I just ordered another SKR Mini 3.0 and a 3D touch. I plan on getting my Anet A8 up and running again. Stay tuned!