So I’ve had an A8 for a while now. I see countless comments here about how “It’ll burn your house down!” or “Don’t buy Chinese garbage.” and it peeves me. This is not a printer that you pull out of a box and start printing with.It’s a tool. A project. A constant work in progress. It’s only for people who enjoy and are good at tinkering and building things; people who are electronically or mechanically inclined. The problem is that many people who do not have these skills buy this printer, and cause problems.”Problems” and Solutions:StabilityA perfect example is a very popular thingiverse design of mounting a 1kg spool of filament onto the top of the frame with thin little arms. If you have this printer you’d know that unless you brace the vertical walls, there is a slight wobble. If you already guessed that balancing a 1kg weight on the top of the frame will exacerbate vibration, then this printer is for you. Harmonic resonance or whatever.Speaking of that, people complain about the frame. Yes, it can be wobbly. But you got this printer because you like to make things. So stabilize it. THIS is what the vibration of my printer looked like stock. Between .04 and .11 g. After I added supports I got this, between .001 and .003.Also, brace everything! Bolting it to a level piece of plywood would be best. But brace the vertical walls, and absolutely brace the walls that are attached to the Y belt/Y motor. The stress of the belt tension on the frame will cause flex, and can absolutely break on you. Once again, this is a kit printer. Don’t call it a shitty printer because the frame piece broke, most of the time if something breaks it’s because you did something wrong, or didn’t do something right. This is not a plug and play printer. You wouldn’t call a Formula 1 Car shitty because you didn’t change the oil and didn’t install a roll cage, would you?If modifying your printer does not seem fun to you, this printer is not for you.Speaking of that, the A8 has a huge community on thingiverse. There wouldn’t be these hundreds and thousands of people all coming together for a printer that didn’t work and caught on fire, right? Also remember the rule for online reviews. It is way more likely that someone will post a comment or review saying something negative and complaining over someone taking the time to post “Just wanted to let everyone know my printer’s been working well.”FireIf you’re the type of person that thinks things just break or set on fire spontaneously, this printer is not for you. Every object on earth is put together a certain way, and can break a certain way. If you don’t know how power supplies work, how stepper motors, hotends, thermistors, heaters, etc work, then this printer is not for you. How can you expect to prevent your printer from catching fire or fixing something that broke if you have no idea what would start the fire, or how a part works in the first place? For instance:Power Supply Unit:Fan- Stock, this thing gets hot. So hot that you will actually burn your fingers if you touch the sides of the psu where the regulators are bolted onto the inside. I hung an 80mm computer fan over the psu’s grill and now the whole box doesn’t even get warm, I swear.The goddamn stock power wire/plug- Just a rule, if it looks like you can bite through a wire with your front teeth without it hurting, it’s too thin to plug into your 15 amp wall outlet. Get rid of the stock wire immediately. Either cut an extension cord that has thick wire, or buy a universal 3 prong connector. Exactly like THIS ONE. This is the socket on Amazon. If you don’t understand that the thinner the wire, the higher the amps, the hotter the wire will get, maybe this isn’t the printer for you.Secure everything- If you have wires hanging all over the place, contacting moving parts, contacting other wires, you’re asking for wear or a break, causing a short.PrintingLeveling- Get an Inductive Level They’re between $3-8 on amazon, and then look up how to use it. I don’t even use it “properly.” I’ll let you in on a secret. I just use it as a plain endstop, no “autolevelling program”, if you can even call it that. I’ve been doing it enough that I eyeball the bed and adjust the level, and adjust the bed screws. Set the first layer height to 50% and I’ve never had a failed print since. You can use the paper trick until you get used to it, but your wife shouldn’t get jealous every time you’re rubbing your bed with a piece of paper, and twisting and tweaking your Z lead screws. With practice, I can eyeball it faster than the autolevel script, and way faster than sliding a piece of paper back and forth like a caveman.Quality- I’ve been getting better quality and more consistent prints than my friends with “real” printers, and they’re always surprised when they see I’m using a $180 printer with two pieces of plywood screwed into the frame as support, a fan hanging off the psu, and leveling the bed by getting down on one knee and adjusting the bed while staring at it at eye level. I like to think that I can get such good prints because the printer is an open frame, and I can adjust everything as precisely as possible.Here are a few examples of an extreme. THESE were printed when the printer was completely stock (besides firmware), eyeballing the level, no bracing, .3mm layer height, 50% first layer height and speed, 120mm/s perimeter, 175mm/s everything else. When printing little parts that will never be seen, I don’t care about how it looks as long as it’s stable, and I like having a print take 15 minutes instead of 50.Using those PLA prints for another example, the bed takes about 3 or 4 minutes to get to 60C, and the extruder takes about 2 minutes to get to 190C.Final ThoughtsI’m sure I’m missed a lot of what I wanted to say. I’ll write it down if I remember.This printer is not perfect. Even if you are 100% careful and prepared, you could get a faulty board that just goes up in flames. But that could happen to anybody else. Of course, the chances are higher with a dirt cheap chinese board, but that doesn’t mean it will happen to you. In fact, if you modify the printer with better parts like the wire and fan, push it hard on some test prints and watch it and it doesn’t catch on fire, you likely have a safe board.If you are worried about getting this printer, it’s probably not for you. You can get prints as good quality as any other printer 10 times the cost, but you need to know what you’re doing. If you doubt your ability in any way, it may be worth it for you to spend a coupe extra hundred dollars to get a “higher quality” printer. (Which in so many cases I’ve seen it doesn’t even matter because there are shitty printers that cost 2 grand. Don’t get all personally insulted because our $180 acrylic framed printer, held together with tiny M3 screws, prints just as well as your printer that you’re still making monthly payments on.)If you are looking to buy this printer, or have bought this printer and have questions or just want to talk about it, I would love to hear from you. If you want to tell me I’m wrong and how you can’t wait until my house burns down, I’d love to hear from you too!(Also I just wanted to add that if you’re having trouble printing things and think you’re doing everything right, try getting that expensive slicing software that I don’t want to name in fear of being called a shill. I tried others ones and honestly, Cura is a total piece of garbage comparatively, and repetier and Slic3r look cool if you stopped buying computers after Windows 95 came out. 😉 )TL;DR- If you’re genuinely good at fixing things and like to build things, buy this printer 100%. If you’ve never used a soldering iron, and complain when you don’t understand things, do not buy this printer. http://ift.tt/2i21ZWx