Reviving the Anet A8...

Let's start it like this...

Here's the first 3D printer I bought in 2017. It was an Anet A8. It taught me a lot about 3D printing; how it works, bed leveling (tramming), slicing, etc. I have printed some "improvements" that made it functionally better. Functionally, it was perfect...until I changed out parts that I felt I was pressured into getting. After swapping out those parts, the prints just got worse. To top it off, the display had a weird blooming effect, making it hard to read. Then, I messed up something when I was building new firmware for it.

I just sidelined it. That was late 2021.

I looked at updating the A8, since I was already in the process of upgrading the Ender 3 Pro. So, I ordered the same BigTreeTech SKR Mini E3 V3 for the A8. I also ordered a new touchscreen to replace the one that was going bad. While I was at it, I also ordered a 3DTouch to add on for automatic bed leveling.

While waiting for the board to come in, I went ahead and built the firmware that I was going to use with the A8. There was a bit that I had to change, but some online tutorials assisted with getting that all done. I also got some parts printed for fan holders, electronics case, and the bed leveling holder.

I also took the time to get the A8 stripped down to get ready for the new parts. I took the main board out, cut out all the wire ties out, and all the wire looms removed. I'm planning to get some cable chains printed for the extruder and heater wires looking good, but I want to make sure that everything worked before I printed the cable chain parts out.

I also had to get the endstop switches changed out from the 3 pin JST connectors that the Anet board used to 2 pin JST connectors that the BTT board needed. I had some of those connectors from the Arcade 1up project last year, so I de-pinned the connectors and re-pinned the endstop switches with the 2 pin JST connectors from the joystick wires I had.

The new board finally arrived. I started by getting all the connectors installed on the new board, getting the new firmware put on an SD card, and get the A8 ready to be powered on.

On power up, the new display and the bed level probe worked. However, there were a few hiccups. The first one was that the X axis were reversed. A quick change in the firmware build fixed that problem. Then the probe was not working properly. The probe would trigger, but it would not stop the Z axis from going down. This caused a divot in the spring steel build plate I had. There was a lot of searching I did. It turns out that there was one option I did not tun on to make it work. Another firmware re-build later...

Probe starts working like it should! I ran an auto bed level command from the printer and off it went.

This is the full thing. The screen is a nice upgrade to the 5 button screen it was before. The nice thing with this touchscreen is that I can swap between the touchscreen and an interface similar to the Ender's screen. The biggest plus with this upgrade? SILENT STEPPER MOTORS!

So, as it is in the picture, it's functional. It will home properly, it will run the auto bed leveling sequence, it will heat the extruder and bed to the proper temps. I'm still having issues with actual prints. It will home, but sometimes the X and/or the Y axis will bind and not move, not without a little nudge. I'm pretty much done with these bearings. I'm going to put the original bearings back in after giving them a deep cleaning.

Just a few more things need to be done before I can call this upgrade done. The A8 will hopefully return to its working self soon.

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!

It's time to re-shell some stuff...

The short of it: 

- Went back home to Maui for a celebration of life for my cousin.

- Came back and immediately did a cross-training stint that starts at 5a. (The flight landed at 1030p, got our baggage about 11 or so, had to take a shuttle to the car that took about another 30 minutes, drive back to my brother's house and talked for a bit until 12ish, then my drive going home and arriving at about 1230, try to sleep and wake up at 345, then drive to work around 4ish)

- PRGE was that following weekend. Didn't have to take care of a booth or LAN area, just had fun.

Here's a few things that I picked up this time around. Not shown is Street Fighter 2010 for NES. Kinda finished up my Ridge Racer collection. 

Also there is a replacement shell for a SNES. I was going back and forth about getting the replacement shell, but I figured this was a nice one to replace my old SNES.

...It really needed it. Now, this is my original SNES from 1992. I was gonna give it the Retrobrite treatment, but the shell is really brittle. Also, I tried doing an S-video mod, hence the holes in the original shell. 

I did break a piece off because of how brittle the plastic became. It was for the cartridge lock that's connected to the power button. I just took it out, seeing that it's really not important for the functionality of gameplay.

Swapping out the parts was simple. I was missing several case screws, so I just used some screws from the PC Engine that I failed to repair. They were a little longer than the original SNES ones, but I made them work. 

The next re-shell that I worked on was for a Gameboy.

One of the other things that I got at PRGE was a LCD replacement for my DMG Gameboy. Now, this wasn't really a re-shell per se. I thought that a DMG that I had wasn't working properly with batteries in it. It turns out that the rechargeable batteries I was using wasn't the greatest. So, I just swapped this one out, then I'll use the screen from this one and install it on a DMG that I had with a bad screen. 

I still need to modify the shell for the screen. The DMG that I'm putting the old screen that was on this one will need a new screen lens, which I'll probably buy later.

I bought this grinding pen to modify the shell to have a wider viewing area for the new LCD. I just had to remove 1mm from around the inner edge of the shell...

...not my best work, but cleared just enough to have a better viewing angle for the new LCD.

...Yeah, not really the best. But with the new glass lens I'm installing...

You really can't tell how ugly the cuts are.

So much brighter. I left the plastic protector on the lens just because. 

I have aspirations to reshell a Game Gear, but I think I'll just hold off on that for now.

The end of the Nintendo Vs. Cab...

I. Was. Done. 

Let me explain.

I've tried, to the best of my knowledge and whatever the internet would lead me to, to find any and all instructions to get that Vs. SMB board to work. I've got a Vs. to JAMMA board and tried using that along side a Supergun JAMMA board and my RetroTINK 5x. Nothing I tried didn't work. I stopped short of running the same set up that I had when I initially broke the machine down.

Nothing. Just blinking screen, or no screen at all.

I asked my friend to take the cabinet back. Luckily, he already had a buyer interested in it. I couldn't keep it in my garage anymore. So tonight, I transferred it to his place.

It's really par for course for me trying to do repairs. I'm upset that I couldn't figure it out, but I'm kinda glad it's out of my garage now. It took up way too much room.

Anyway, that's the end of the Nintendo Vs. cab saga. On to the next one.

Experiments in resin 3D printing... (no pics)

I finally got around to using that resin 3D printer I got last year. It was relatively easy to get up and running: level the print platform to the bottom of the vat, pour in some resin, then start the print.

The resin I had listed a best by date of April or May. I decided to try it out anyways, at least to break in this printer.

Tried my first print (some Sega Saturn power and reset buttons). It took about an hour and a half to print at the settings I had. When it was done, there was nothing on the build plate. I guess I didn't have the first few layers set properly. The print ended up being stuck on the bottom of the vat. With gloves on, I dug it out of the vat and tried again.

I changed some settings, letting the layers sit a little longer exposed to the light. This time the print stuck, but only one of the three things completed printing. After changing a few more settings, I managed to get two of three things printed. I figured that the supports that I had were too thin, so I made the supports thicker in the slicer. I haven't reprinted it yet, but I will soon in the future.

I next tried to print a mount for a Fenrir I still need to install. This time the print took about 13 and a half hours. I just let it print overnight. 

The next morning, after the print completed, there was only one flaw on it. It was at a noticeable part of the mount, but nothing really detrimental.

I next tried printing some gears for a PC Engine CD, which was the main reason for me to invest in the resin 3d printer. I did some slight changes the print settings, mainly how long each part was exposed to the light. This was the first print that I made that actually came out as they should! I still have to test fit them, but they look just as they should.

I tried a few more prints, but those prints didn't complete properly. At that point, I just poured the left over resin back in the bottle and cleaned up the mess.

My take on resin printing? It's really good at getting a nice, smooth print, getting .05mm layers. What I don't like is the post processing. Unlike FDM printing that I'm used to, resin printing has a lot of post processing. The left over resin needs to be rinsed off with some sort of solvent. I used a cleaner and let it sit in an ultrasonic cleaner. Then it needs to be UV cuired, which I just put in the UV bin that I made for retrobrighting old consoles. I also learned that after rinsing, the print needs to dry before curing, otherwise it'll get spotty and not cure properly.

There's still a lot for me to learn about 3d printing, both resin and FDM still. Hopefully, I'll get better at it.

It's been a minute, what's been done?...

Where do I start.

I've been in a slump lately. Really don't feel like working on anything mod-wise. I have a few Saturns that I need to finish (repair, Fenrir install, etc.), a PSX that need's to be finished (Xstation install), and other miscellaneous things. I've been reluctant do to it because of work exhaustion, family, and tendinitis working it's way back into my hands. 

The Arcade 1up is complete, fully operational. There's just a few things that need to be buttoned up on it before I can move on. Again, life is becoming slightly overwhelming, so I'll finish it when I finish it.

I've been improving my office a bit...

I mounted my LCD TV to the wall. The studs were not centered where I wanted it, so I used some scrap wood from some old Ikea shelving to screw some lag bolts into the studs. I put some countersunk bolts on the back and secured the mount itself with some nuts. I used regular nuts, but I'm thinking that I should have used some locking nuts instead, but it works the way I have it now.

I installed a sound bar mount and secured that to the brackets behind the TV, just so I have more room on my shelf for consoles to display. The mount itself is an articulated mount, so I can pull it out and tilt it left or right to watch TV or play games on it. It's nice to have it up on the wall now. Next is to get my consoles set up.

We also inherited a truck ('99 Nissan Frontier) from my wife's grandparents. We lovingly call it "Grandpa Truck". The truck was completely stock. The stereo was stock, the speakers were horrible sounding, meh power...but the main thing is that it runs. I've been able to do a lot of recycling runs and large item deliveries with it.

But it still had a really bad stereo system...and I need some good music while I'm driving.

First thing invested in it was a new head unit. 

I invested in an Atoto F7WE. I bought a refurbished unit from eBay. It has wireless Android Auto on it, which is a big deal for us. I also ordered a wiring harness at the same time to make the install easier. It was a pretty straight forward install. 

The stereo worked great since we can now stream from out phones, but the sound was still awful. I ordered some new MTX component speakers. They were relatively inexpensive, and it had some installation parts for free.

The reason why the stock speakers sounded bad? The 20+ year old speakers were falling apart. There was no speaker surrounds to speak of! As I removed the door panel to install the speaker, all of the surround material fell out from the bottom of the door.

After removing the old speakers from the door, I realized that none of the holes on the speaker didn't align with the speaker mounts. The kit that came free with the speakers were of no help as well. The stock tweeter location had a special mount that didn't fit with the tweeters that came with the speakers. I couldn't find a way to install the tweeters in without drilling a hole in the door panel, which I really wasn't in the mood to do.

So I just used some zip ties to secure them to the old mount locations. Yes, I did drill some holes, but it was just in the old speaker mount housing. These speakers sound amazing! There still a lot of tuning that I have to do to make it sound even better, but that's for another day. 

I still plan on installing some rear 6x9 speakers and possibly a powered subwoofer as well. But again, that's for another day.

Interesting little tidbit about the speaker wiring in the truck. Because it's a extended cab truck, there are no "rear" speakers to replace. The speakers in the door were wired that the tweeters are the "front" speakers and the lower door speakers are the "rear" speakers. When I install the 6x9 speakers, I'm gonna have to do some of my own wiring from the head unit to the speakers. 

I have hopes and aspirations to go back to fixing those console repairs and installs soon. Stay tuned!

The Arcade 1up is finally going somewhere...

As per my last post, I had a stripped down Street Fighter II Arcade 1up that I killed the monitor in. I still couldn't figure out the issue with the weak kick on the board; I made it as far as reflowing the pins on the IDE-ish connector on the main board before killing the monitor. 

Then we had the fiasco with getting the monitor out and stripped down. That where I stopped working on it. I went and started looking for a replacement monitor. I ended up using a monitor that I found a while ago.

I proceeded to strip it down from its casing and started to figure out how I'd get it mounted in the cabinet.

To get it as flush as I could to the monitor panel. To secure it to the panel, I used some T-Rex tape. I taped both the front and back of the monitor to the panel.

Along with taping the monitor to the back of the panel, I also used some scrap wood I had to securely mount the monitor to the cabinet. I used some angle brackets that I had for a different repair project to firmly get the monitor mounted in place.

I used my Raspberry Pi to test out the monitor, using a DVI to HDMI cable. I had an old Retro Pie image on it, so I figured it would just load up with no issue. 

Nope...

I was greeted with an error saying that the image couldn't be displayed. Also, because the monitor that I was using had a auto screen rotation option, it was stuck rotated 90 degrees. 

...

I thought I did something wrong with it when I stripped the casing off of the monitor. I did some online searching and learned that there are some options that I need to change in the configuration file to have Retro Pie to work with the cable I was using.

After changing the settings, I retried again. This time it loaded properly, even while the monitor's OSD was rotated still. I began testing some games, then this happened...

...I just realized that I was using a backup to the backup monitor to test the image. Anyway, the video setting was incorrect. It was very stretched out. I wasn't too inclined to figure out what to do to make it work, so back to searching for a prebuilt image that I could use with the Arcade 1up.

I managed to find a smaller image that was arcade games only. I burned the image to SD card and tested it with the monitor (that's already installed in the cab, not the backup monitor in the above pic.) I didn't get a pic of it, but it did run just fine. I used a USB controller to check that the image ran the game fine.

Moving on, I ordered 2 USB encoders for the controls. I didn't want to upgrade all the buttons and joysticks since it's really for my son to play with (since I already have the 3 arcade cabs in the garage), so the stock ones work just fine, albeit a bit loud and clicky. I also took the Raspberry Pi out of the Argon One case.

I wanted all PCBs mounted in the case using some sort of stand-off. I found a few good ones on Printables that worked perfectly. 

I had a few miscellaneous screws that worked with the print. I'm also planning on getting a fan possibly installed that would regulate the temperature in the cab, mainly blowing on the Pi. I have a possible way of mounting the fan, but I'm not sure where I have the Pi currently position is where I want it to stay.

 I printed the same stand-offs for the USB controller boards. Some of the wires from the stock buttons needed to be resoldered. After getting it all secured, I did some wiring management...because...

I didn't want it to look like this or know that I left it like this.

I was trying to design a button that would fit in the original power and volume switches originally were. I got a bit frustrated trying to get a decent design, so I decided to just drill out the holes to fit some extra arcade buttons that I had. 

I first used my hole drill bit that I got to drill out the holes for the Atomiswave cab. As you can see in the pic, it tore out. The Arcade 1up panels are made of MDF. Using the drill bit ripped at the layers of the MDF, just making it look ugly. If I could do it again, I would use a stepper drill bit to get the hole bored out.

I redid the SD card with a different image and did the initial set up. So far, it works just right. I called it a day after doing some button reconfigs and getting the right screen shader up and running properly. I still have to finish getting speakers installed and getting some sort of clean power management system in the back of the cab. I have several things in mind, but I still need to plan for it.

I hope to finish this up soon, but I still need my son to finish cleaning his room before we get that thing in there.