Samsung is expanding its SSD lineup with the 870 Evo. It features the company’s latest V-NAND and controller, which allows the drive to reach the maximum SATA sequential read and write speeds of 560MB/s and 530MB/s respectively, according to Samsung.
The SSD delivers approximately 30 percent improvement in sustained performance compared with the 860 Evo, Samsung claims. The company also says the SSD offers 38 percent higher random read performance speeds than its predecessor.
The 870 Evo is not nearly as fast as Samsung’s 970 series SSDs (which have peak sequential read speeds of 3,500MB/s) and other M.2 storage. So, it won’t be the perfect choice for gamers looking for zippiest storage for their games. However, the 870 is perhaps a more budget-friendly option that might be best suited to general functions, such as for your media library, multi-tasking and web browsing.
The 870 Evo will be available later this month, starting at $50 for 250GB. The 500GB version costs $80 and a terabyte drive will set you back $140. If you’d prefer the 2TB model, you’ll need to fork over $270, while the 4TB 870 Evo costs $530.
Disney+ is about to play the music and light the lights. All five seasons of The Muppet Show will be available to stream on the service starting on February 19th.
Until now, the classic variety show has been a notable omission from Disney+, where it’ll join the Muppets collection alongside movies, shorts and original series Muppets Now. It will mark the first time that seasons four and five have been available on home entertainment.
The Muppet Show, which first aired in 1976, featured guest hosts including Steve Martin, Elton John, Mark Hamill and Diana Ross alongside the Muppets. It should fit right in with the family-friendly ethos of Disney+. To get you in the mood to binge the series once it arrives, here’s that iconic theme song. Good luck getting it out of your head any time soon.
Instead of a traditional march through Washington DC, today’s presidential inauguration will include a virtual one. Dubbed the “Parade Across America,” the event will feature performances from the likes of Earth, Wind and Fire, Nile Rodgers and the New Radicals, as well as ones from local groups in all 56 states and territories.
You can catch the entire event through the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s social media channels on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Twitch starting at 3:15 PM ET. Amazon and Microsoft will also stream everything through Prime Video and Bing. NewsNow from Fox, AT&T U-verse and DirecTV plan to carry the program live as well.
Even if not for the recent violence at the US Capitol, today’s festivities were likely to be mostly virtual anyway due to the coronavirus pandemic. But that’s not to say there won’t be an underlying message of unity to the proceedings, with the Presidential Inaugural Committee saying the event will “celebrate America’s heroes, and highlight the diversity, heritage and resilience of the country.”
YouTube will continue blocking Donald Trump’s official channel from uploading new videos and livestreams for a minimum of seven more days. The Google—owned video platform told CNBC and Bloomberg that it extended the channel’s suspension “[i]n light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.” Further, “comments will continue to be indefinitely disabled under videos from the channel.”
The website originally blocked Trump from uploading new content on January 12th after removing a video wherein he called the Capitol rioters “very special.” At the time, it also cited concerns about ongoing potential for violence for serving the channel a strike, which equates to a ban on uploading anything new for a “minimum” of one week. Now, YouTube has decided to keep the channel frozen — but accessible — ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Other social media platforms also banned Trump in one way or another after the Capitol riots and after he posted the video on his accounts telling the rioters that they were special. Facebook removed the video, explaining that it “contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.” It also blocked Trump’s accounts on its main platform and on Instagram indefinitely, and at least after Biden’s inauguration. Twitter suspended his account and made his tweets completely inaccessible on its website. Even Twitch disabled his account to prevent the platform “from being used to incite further violence.”
Trump, however, has been trying to get around those bans. He previously made attempts to tweet from the @POTUS account and the @TeamTrump account. More recently, his camp uploaded a video entitled “Farewell Address of President Donald J. Trump” on the official White House YouTube channel.
Korg is teasing the next member of the ‘logue family, the Drumlogue. We don’t have all the details right now as it’s still under development, but we do know it will be a hybrid analog / digital groovebox. Judging from the short teaser video, that means some analog drum voices similar to the Volca Beats, as well as PCM and digital synthesis voice. It will also support the ‘logue SDK found on the Prologue, Minilogue XD and NTS-1 which will allow users to customize the instrument with third-party effects and synth voices. Plus you’ll be able to load custom samples.
It also sounds like it will have a digital effects section, similar to Korgs recent synths like the Modwave and Opsix. Though, it’s not clear what effects specifically are going to come built-in.
Korg says that it has a “direct, performance oriented interface” and a “sequencer with deep features” but didn’t provide more details than that. Most of Korg’s recent instruments dating back to the original Minilogue in 2016 have focused on knob-per-function controls, so I would expect more of the same here. As for the sequencer, well, Korg did recently he impressively sounding SQ-64, and it would only make sense for them to bring some of the features over from that while keeping the ‘logue line’s Motion Sequencing in tact for parameter automation.
Sadly we don’t have much more to share beyond that. The Drumlogue is still very much in development and, while it might come out before the end of the year, Korg hasn’t offer a release window just yet.
American security company Malwarebytes has revealed that it was targeted by the same “nation state actor implicated in SolarWinds breach.” The firm says it doesn’t use SolarWinds’ IT software, which served as the hackers’ entryway into the systems of all the companies and federal agencies they breached, and that it was infiltrated using another intrusion vector. In particular, the bad actors got in through a dormant email protection product within its Office 365 tenant.
The company first found out about the intrusion after getting word from the Microsoft Security Response Center on December 15th regarding a suspicious activity from a third—party app in its Office 365 environment. That activity was “consistent with the tactics, techniques and procedures” used by the actors behind the SolarWinds attacks.
Malwarebytes assures its anti-malware users, however, that it conducted an extensive investigation and determined that the attackers only gained access to a limited subset of internal company emails. Upon examining its source code and reverse engineering its software, it found no evidence of unauthorized access. Malwarebytes stresses that it doesn’t use Microsoft’s Azure cloud services and that its software remains safe to use.
The SolarWinds hack started sometime in March after attackers breached the company’s Orion network management tools. They used a vulnerability in that product to infiltrate the systems of SolarWinds’ customers, including Microsoft, the DOJ and the US Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration. Representatives from the FBI, NSA and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recently published a joint statement naming Russia as the most likely entity behind the hacks.
Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy S21, S21+ and S21 Ultra, the latest iterations in its premium Galaxy S range.
The Korean vendor announced the devices alongside a new pair of wireless earbuds, the Galaxy Buds Pro, at a virtual Unpacked show on January 14.
This unveiling distinguished itself from previous S series phone announcements by taking place in January. Previous Galaxy Unpacked shows announcing new S series phones have usually taken place in February.
Additionally, the S21 Ultra is the first Galaxy S phone to come with an S-Pen. At the end of 2020, Samsung’s head of mobile TM Roh said that the company was looking to add some of its Note series’ “most well-loved features to other devices in our lineup”.
This announcement comes in the wake of Korean news outlets reporting that Samsung is looking to end the Note series, with a potential iteration this year likely to be the last in the line.
Specs
The S21 Ultra is the highest-end device in the range, with a 6.8-inch WQHD+ AMOLED screen and a quad-camera setup.
It has 12GB and 16GB RAM variants, either of which come in 128GB, 256GB or 512GB internal memory.
It runs Android 11 on the Snapdragon 888 chipset, with a 5,000mAh battery.
In camera terms, it has a 108MP wide sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, a 10MP telephoto and 10MP periscope telephoto lens, while the front camera is 40MP.
The S21 Ultra can shoot 8K video at both 24fps and 30fps, as well as 4K at 60fps. Users can also grab photo snap from 8K video.
The S21+ also runs Android 11 on a Snapdragon 888 with a 4,800mAh battery.
It has a 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED screen, and a triple-camera setup that features a 12MP ultra-wide lens, a 12MP wide lens, and a 64MP telephoto lens. The front camera is 10MP.
It comes with 8GB RAM and 128GB or 256GB internal storage.
The S21 is the cheapest of the three devices, with a 6.2-inch FHD+ AMOLED screen and a 4,000mAh battery. It also runs on the Snapdragon 888 chipset.
Like the S21+, it comes in 8GB and 12GB RAM variants, with either 128GB or 256GB internal storage.
Additionally, all three devices have stereo speakers designed with AKG, are IP68 rated for water and dust resistance, and are protected by Samsung Knox security software.
They all are Samsung DeX compatible, have fast wireless and super fast charging, and can share powered wirelessly.
Pricing
All three devices are available to preorder from January 14, before a January 29 release date.
The S21 starts at £769, the S21+ at £949, and the S21 Ultra at £1,149.
The Galaxy S21+ is available in three colour variants: Phantom Silver, Phantom Black and Phantom Violet while the regular S21 is available in four variants: Phantom Violet, Phantom Pink, Phantom Gray and Phantom White.
Buds Pro
Samsung also unveiled the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro, a new pair of earbuds that are the successor to last year’s Galaxy Buds Live.
The smartphone vendor says they will feature Active Noise Cancellation which will filter out up to 99 per cent of background noise.
The buds will feature custom built two-way speakers and are IPX7 rated for water and sweat resistance, with an 11mm woofer and a 6.5mm tweeter.
The buds will launch on January 29 at £219 in white, bronze, and purple.
SmartTags
Samsung also announced the launch of the SmartTag and SmartTag plus which uses ultra-wide band (UWB) technology for tags which can fit on all sorts of devices and track them from your smartphone.
The SmartTag can be located via SmartThings Find and Samsung is offering the SmartTag as a pre-order incentive alongside its S21 devices. The SmartTag will cost £29.99 and is available from January 29.
CCS Insight chief of research Ben Wood commented on the launch of the S21 series:
“The new Galaxy S21 range follows the formulaic approach to annual upgrades that all phone makers are now locked into.
“In a cutthroat smartphone market featuring a buoyant Apple, I think the biggest differentiator is the decision to announce these products earlier than usual rather than the incremental improvements to the camera, display and design.
“Samsung’s decision to announce its latest flagship Galaxy smartphones early is a sensible move given the market turmoil created by the global pandemic and the postponement of the annual MWC event, which usually provides a showcase for Samsung’s latest new devices.
“It also narrows the gap since Apple’s announcements in October 2020 offering Samsung something new to compete with the iPhone 12 portfolio.”
After finding an Anet A8 for the bargain price of £114 on Amazon, I decided to buy one. Tine to build a flat pack 3D Printer…….GULP!
Basics:
Screws and nuts are bagged in neatly-labelled baggies. I recommend keeping them bagged and only pulling them out as needed.
The screws are attached to blind nuts which are held in position by slots in the wooden frame. When assembling, I recommend first inserting the nut into the slot, then pushing the screw through the hole and screwing. Doing it in this order greatly sped up my build.
Go figure, I screwed up the first step. My top plate is facing the wrong way, which would have made the display upside down. See Step 23 for how it is supposed to look.
One of the parts was not drilled, drilled it myself using the other mating part as a template.
This is where things start to get a little more challenging
I started by finding all the parts pictured in Before Assembly
Two of the wood parts were found in a baggie with an assortment of small wood parts labelled “A8”
The limit switch has a long wire labelled “Y Endstop” attached to it.
The self tapping screws are used to secure the switch. They tap into the wood. I never got them to tighten much but they were secure. I would recommend using some hot glue to snug it up so it can’t move.
Not sure if motor connector is mounted in correct direction in picture.
No comment.
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Threading all the nuts on the rods is a pain, here’s some tips:
You can thread several nuts down the rod at once by inserting them next to each other and twisting the rod.
Make sure you have the washers installed in the right order!
You can pre-thread most of the nuts on the rod before actually putting the rods into the assembly.
Measure the length of the rod between each assembly for each rod segment and try to get them as close as possible to each other to “true” up the structure.
After installing these rods, you should play with the position of the nuts from step 6 until there is no play whatsoever in the rods. They should be held up tight against their retaining caps. Note – the belt guide at the bottom of the above picture is facing the wrong way. It is fixed in step 9 below.
The screws are much too long for the parts they are securing – this is intended.
Once the bed plate is attached to the rods, you should once against test your alignment by sliding it back and forth. It should slide smoothly with no binding or extra pressure on one side or the other. Binding indicates some misalignment from step 6.
Get the belt as tight as you possibly can (by hand).
Don’t cut the belt short. Cut it a few centimetres long (there is 20cm spare between the two belts you need to cut) and have the excess hang out of the anchor area.
When installing the bed, the screws should thread into the bed support plate primarily. Compress the springs completely to start with. The wing nuts are there for support (jam nut) only.
The bed was installed incorrectly in picture. The connector should go towards the y-axis motor. This is fixed in step 25 below.
This step isn’t very well documented in the written manual. Here are some tips:
Assemble the z-axis support plate and fixed plate into a box before screwing into main frame.
Install wires into motor and have harness sticking through the hole in the frame where you install the motor. Looking from the front, the motor on the left gets the short wires labelled “Z1”, the right gets “Z2”.
The instructions leave out the hardware needed to install the limit switch. You will need 2 M3x30 screws, 2 M3 nuts and 2 M2x12 screws. See picture for more detail on how this should look installed.
When installing the Z-axis limit switch, move it to the top of the adjustment area. THIS IS NOT HOW IT IS PICTURED.
This step was missing from the instructions. I found it in a later page in the manual. Page 31 in mine. It is fairly basic – it has you mount the X-axis motor.
Like with the Y-axis rods, make sure these rods are secure with no play.
Instructions were missing to “attach X-axis switch to plastic component from step 13 using M2x12 screws. I used some glue too since this application was not secure at all.
Few suggestions:
I had to ream out the hole in one of my elastic couplings to get the jackscrew to seat into it. You should be able to seat it down at least a centimetre.
I had to move the elastic coupling up on the motor to get the jackscrew to stay inside of the wooden hole at the top of the frame.
I used loctite on all the set screws to secure them in place. I’m not sure if this was necessary but it seemed like a good idea.
I used a level from a smartphone app to level the rods with the rest of the frame before hammering them into the plastic bit on the other side. It was a very tight fit – I suspect because some plastic manufacturing parts remained in the guides for both ends.
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Notes:
Only two of the screw holes are used – kinda hokey but it works.
If you have thermal paste like the kind used in computer builds, installing it between the extruder head and the heat sink would be a good idea.
The directions don’t specify where to use all the spacers. I simply used two of them as washers for the screws I used to tighten the assembly together.
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N/C Picture combined with #18
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It helped to use a partner to perform this step. The nuts are to provide reinforcement for the screw threads when you tension the belt – it should be as tight as you can get it!
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Check the input voltage switch on the power supply! Mine was shipped as a 120V unit but the switch was in 240V mode. I’m not super impressed with having to hook things up for wall power – this is a big no-no for consumer electronics. Triple check everything is wired correctly before plugging anything in or completing this step.
N/C
I wired the controller in three steps:
I wired all of the fixed wires to the controller and loomed them together using wire wraps. These wires were:
The power wires
X, Y, Z limit switch wires
X, Y, Z1, Z2 motor wires,
Display wires
The wires from the power supply side go under the printer. There are two slots that you can feed them through underneath the printer.
I initially wired the extruder wires in one long loom that loops over the top of the 3D printer.
At this time, I finalised the wiring for the extruder. This involved screwing the extruder into place, tightening the lock nut, feeding the heating cylinder into it and setting it in place with the lockscrew, and ensuring that the thermocoil was inserted into it’s slot.
When screwing the extruder into place, make sure that the tip extends a millimetre or more past the bottom side of the fan duct. If you do not, your fan duct will drag across your prints, ruining them!
Do not screw the extruder too far in! Doing so will cause the screw to bind up the bearing that feeds plastic to your extruder and the printer will not work. (This is fixable, you’ll just need to disassemble your extruder to do so)
Double and triple check that your thermocouple is inserted into your extruder. This is perhaps the most important component on the printer because it is responsible for regulating the heat of the printer head. Operating the printer with a misplaced thermocouple can end in fire!
I wired the bed wires and the power supply wires on their own loom underneath the printer. The Bed wires were given sufficient play to move the bed full forward and aft.
Last week, I bought the Anet A8 printer for the low low price of £114 GBP. I believe it has brought the cost of 3D printing so low that every true hobbyist now owes it to themselves to look into owning one. During the process of building and customising our A8, we took a ton of notes in the hopes that it might prove useful to others. In this article, we’re dumping our build guide, set-up guide and upgrade guide in massive write-up. For those of you who recently purchased an Anet A8, we hope this helps you get started!
Anet A8 Build Log with Pictures
The printer came with a digital manual that can be accessed on the SD card that comes packaged with it. I was actually pretty impressed with the quality of the manual. Much like the manuals you get from Ikea, it expressed the entire process pictorially and I generally found it pretty easy to follow. It was, however, missing a section and really needed some extra pictures at certain points. To alleviate this, I used a video released by the Anet team in tandem with the written instructions. Here is part 1 of that video:
I took pictures of the process of building my Anet A8, which you can find by expanding the section below this paragraph. I want to note that this was my first 3D printer build and I screwed up in a few places (which I have documented). I would not use the pictures below as your sole source of information for building this printer.
Click here to view my complete build log
Setting up your Anet A8 for the First Print
The instructions terminate with a completed printer, but do not provide any guidance on how to do the first time set-up so that you can do your first print. I find this pretty unforgiveable – at this point you still have a considerable amount of set-up work to do! Anet provides a pretty handy “debugging” video which covers most of these steps, which you can find here:
I’ll also write out exactly what I did after building my printer:
Bed Covering Material
The printer bed of the A8 comes from the factory with a brown masking tape covering it. This isn’t just for shipping – Anet intends for you to print on top of this! In fact, painters tape is one of the better beginners bed printing materials. Hopefully you, unlike me, did not remove this tape.. Another material you can use is called Kapton tape, which is a tape which remains sticky in a wide range of temperatures. This will provide an arguably better printing surface. Luckily for me, I had some Kapton tape which we have used with our Lulzbot lying around so I put it on my Anet A8’s print bed.
The best solution for bed covering material is to buy a small block of glass to seat on top of the bed. This is discussed later.
Whatever bed material you use, make sure you get it sorted out and applied before you continue on to the next steps. Anytime the material is changed, you’ll need to re-level the bed at least.
Aligning the Z-Axis Rods
Finer alignment of the Z-Axis rods should be completed first. The Z axis motors should always move together and keep this alignment, so you basically set it now and check after every few hours of use. Misalignment here can cause the same symptoms as an unleveled bed. Furthermore, any time this is messed with, you’ll need to re-level your bed (and possibly set the z-axis limit switch).
Setting the Z-Axis Limit Switch
The limit switches are used to tell your printer where its “home” is. This location is then used as a relative point from which all the rest of your printing begins. Of all the limit switches, the Z-axis (vertical motor) limit switch is the most important. It is used to tell your printer where the point is where the extruder head is just slightly over the bed.
This limit switch will need to be adjusted. To perform this adjustment:
Power up your printer and access the main menu.
Go to Quick Settings->Home All. The printer head should move to all the limit switches.
Disable the motors by going to Quick Settings->Disable Stepper Motor.
Move the printer head X-axis and printer bed Y-axis so that the head is over the bed.
Measure the distance between the tip of the extruder and the bed.
Subtract 2mm from that distance and lower the Z-axis limit switch down that amount.
Repeat step (2) to re-center everything against the limit switches.
Repeat step (3) and check the extruder head. It should now be within 2mm of the bed, but not touching it.
Continue to leveling the bed.
Leveling the Bed
Leveling your bed is probably most important calibration you can do. The procedure configures your printer so that your extruder tip is a set distance from the bed at all points across the bed. This allows the printer to accurately print the base layer of plastic which forms the foundation for everything you print.
Leveling the bed on the A8 should be accomplished at first set-up, every 5 or so prints after that, and anytime you move the printer or otherwise adjust it. In most cases, the process should only take about 5 minutes, so don’t worry about it too much.
If your prints are having problems where the base layer is not adhering to the bed properly – particularly if it is just one area of the bed that is having this problem – bed leveling is very likely to be the problem.
Power up your printer and access the main menu.
Heat the bed and extruder to PLA settings by going to Quick Settings->Preheat PLA. Do not touch the extruder tip after completing this step! It will be extremely hot. The bed will also be hot, but touchable.
Go to Quick Settings->Home All. The printer head should move to all the limit switches.
Disable the motors by going to Quick Settings->Disable Stepper Motor.
Move the printer head along the X-axis and bed along the Y-axis so that it is over the close-left corner of the bed relative to you.
Adjust the printer bed screw until you can just fit a piece of card stock paper (measuring .2mm in width) between the bed and the extruder tip. You want the tip to be hitting the cardstock but not pressing it into the bed. You can test this by moving the head with the card under the tip. If the card moves with the head, that’s great. You don’t want it to be hard to move or for it to make scratching noises while it drags on the paper though. You should be able to insert and remove the card easily.
Repeat (4) and (5) for the other 3 corners of the printer bed.
Repeat the whole process again, noting any errors.
If any adjustments were made in step (7), repeat the process again. Keep repeating it until you check all four corners with no errors found at all.
Screw on and tighten the wing nuts which secure the bed leveling mechanism.
Repeat the leveling process one more time – sometimes the wing nuts can throw it off.
Your First Print
With the bed leveled, you’re ready to attempt your first 3D print. Before you do that, though, you need to understand the different types of printer input files and how to generate them.
STL
A 3D print generally starts with an STL file. This type of file describes a 3D part as a set of triangles is generated from a CAD modeling program like Sketchup, Blender, Solidworks, etc. These are also the types of files you download from online open-source 3D printing sites like Thingiverse, Yeggi and others. To read more about how to find or create your own STL files, check out our article on using 3D printing for drones.
GCode
3D printers do not have the capability to print an STL file, however. As sophisticated as they might look, they are actually controlled by pretty dumb little computers. These computers can only follow a very basic set of commands – like “move X-axis motor left 1mm”, “extrude filament .5mm”, “turn extruder temperature to 210 degrees”, etc. These sorts of simple commands are exactly what make up “.gcode” files.
An important thing to know about gcode files is they are compiled for the printer. A gcode file built for our Lulzbot Mini, for example, should not be used with the Anet A8 built in this article. It may work – but more likely it’s just going to make a wasteful, dangerous mess of stringy plastic.
Slicers – Converting STL to GCode
“Slicer” programs fill in the important middle ground of converting STL files you can download from the internet into the gcode instructions your printer needs to build a model. The Anet A8 SD card comes with two slicer programs – “Cura” and “Repetier”. We are going to recommend you use Cura in this guide since we are more familiar with it (it is the slicer of choice for our other 3D printer).
Printing your first gcode
For people who have never done a 3D print in their lives, I recommend you start out by printing one of the pre-compiled gcode files that is on the SD card that came with your A8. There are several options you can choose from, it doesn’t matter which one you pick. The objective is to see if your printer is properly put together and can print out something basic that has already been designed for it.
The process of printing a gcode file is a few easy steps:
Put the file on the root of your SD card.
Insert the SD card into your Anet A8 printer.
Access the main menu by pressing the center button and select “SD Card->Mount”.
Access “Print File”.
Select the gcode file you wish to print.
The extruder head and bed will begin heating up immediately. Once they are up to temperature, the printing process will begin. Watch it carefully for the first few minutes to ensure the first layer is properly laid down onto the bed and is sticking fine. If it is – you’re free to walk away. If not, you’re in for some troubleshooting.
Printing some STL files
This is the real reason you likely got a 3D printer – you wanted to turn some camera mounts or other quadcopter parts from STL files into real plastic bits you can actually use. In this section, I’m going to walk you through how I printed out my first few STL files on my Anet A8.
Cura
As mentioned above, I will be using Cura as my “slicer” – the program that will convert STL files to gcode files the printer can use. I recommend using Cura 14.07 with the Anet A8. It is almost a year old at this point, but I was able to get it working very quickly.
Version 14.07 of Cura should come on the SD card that comes with the printer. You can find it under “A8*\A8*\A8\Software\Cura 14.07”. You can also download versions of Cura here. We highly recommend you download Cura 14.07.
I briefly tried to get the latest version of Cura – 2.5.0 – working, but was unable to due to some printing problems with the settings I was using. I will continue to attempt to get this to work and will update this guide if I figured it out. Honestly, though, unless you are trying to do some pretty advanced prints, Cura 14.07 should be more than enough for your needs. I have yet to find a model it could not print.
Configuring your Printer in Cura
Configuration of Cura is pretty simple. When you first launch the application, you’ll be prompted with the “Machine Creation Wizard”. Click “Next” to access the first configuration page.
In the next step, select “Custom”.
Finally, copy the settings seen in this screenshot on the next page:
With that completed, you’ve told Cura the hardware specs for your printer. You still need to configure it to tell it how to best print. I recommend doing this by loading a pre-programmed “profile” file from Anet. This profile can be found in the ini file on the SD card that comes with the printer (under “A8*\A8*\A8\Software\Cura 14.07”).
Once you have the file, load it into Cura by clicking File->Open Profile.
Generating your Gcode File
Now that Cura is set-up, you can start generating Gcode files that your Anet A8 can use to print objects. This process isn’t too difficult but has a small learning curve to it. To start “Load” an STL 3D model file into Cura using the button in the main window. Position the 3D object inside of the printing box where you want it. You can rotate, resize and move the object using tools which you can find in the main window of Cura. Once you’re done, you can create the GCODE file by clicking the “Toolpath to SD Card” button, which saves a GCODE file to an attached SD card.
From here, the printing process is identical to the steps above “Printing your first GCODE file”. Plug your SD card into your printer and cross your fingers!
Anet A8 Upgrades
Purchased Upgrades
Mosfet Upgrade – Highly Recommended for Safety
The extruder and hotbed FET drivers are one of the big weak points of this printer. Left to their own devices, they will slowly melt the plastic connectors on the main board where you plug in the extruder / hotbed wires. A couple of people have even reported smoking boards. For this reason, I highly recommend bypassing these FETs by using a specialized expansion board. Luckily, these are pretty cheap and readily available. I picked mine up for $16 on Amazon.
The installation process is pretty simple and covered in this guide: //3dprint.wiki/reprap/electronics/heatbed_mosfet
I did the mod on both my hotbed and extruder, though most people only suggest the hotbed. This removed all load from my Anet mainboard:
Borosilicate Glass Bed
The stock aluminum bed must be covered with painters tape or kapton tape to print well (or at all). This is a little frustrating to work with because it needs to be replaced regularly and it is extremely difficult to get it perfectly flat. The result is 3D prints that have imperfections on the bottom and issues with the first layer of the print.
The best workaround I’ve come across in the printing community is to use a glass sheet on your bed. You can have this sheet made by a local glass specialty store, or you can purchase one on Amazon. Living in a small community with no glass artisans, I opted for the latter. Unfortunately, Amazon only offers glass beds that are slightly smaller than the 220x220mm printing surface available on the A8. Here is the one I picked up: Signtek Heated Bed Glass Plate.
There are many ways to install a glass plate on the bed. I opted to just use Kapton tape to do it. Installation is relatively simple:
Remove the heated bed.
Place glass sheet in center of the bed plate.
Use Kaptop tape to secure it.
Screw heated bed back on.
Re-level bed – always necessary!
Printed Upgrades
This might be the coolest thing about the Anet A8 for me – when you first build it, you have a low-end 3D printer, but you can actually upgrade it to a pretty decent machine by simply using it to print out upgrades for itself. I find the notion of the machine improving itself pretty pleasing. Maybe I’m just a little weird though. Anyhow, here are some of the upgrades I printed for my Anet A8 that I can recommend to anyone:
High-Efficiency Extruder Cooling Fan Duct
Upgrading the fan duct had an immediate improvement on the quality of my 3D prints. Had I known what I do now, it would have been one of my first prints. Unfortunately, it is a pretty challenging object to print (it requires supports, among other things). So – if you’re new to 3D printing, don’t try this as your first print! But try it soon.
//www.thingiverse.com/thing:2133328
Spool Holder and Top Mount
Getting my filament spool attached to my Anet A8 was a top priority. I didn’t like having to place it on top of a workbench or cabinet. While I was at it, I printed a proper spool adapter / holder, which was a massive print which took almost 16 hours! I recommend both – they really improved the ergonomics of the printer.
This is a feature that came with the higher-end Lulzbot mini we own that I wanted on my A8. It confines the movement of the wiring harness for the extruder to simple push-pull motions and protects the wiring. It looks really snazzy once completed.
