Geeetech Prusa I3 Pro B

Just received one of these as a 71st birthday present to myself. At only €179 including delivery from Germany I thought there is not much to loose if it's rubbish. Having examined the parts I am quite impressed. All but one of the printed plastic parts in the standard Prusa design have been replaced by metal parts. The acrylic frame has been increased in thickness since the earlier versions and should be quite rigid. Everything is well packed and identified. I have seen some complaints that the 8 mm rods for the linear motion are undersize but I have measured mine at 7.949 mm so not too bad. They are however of unhardened stainless steel so are likely to wear with heavy use.

Now to see how well it goes together.

Russell.

Will be interesting to see!

Any chance of a link to the supplier please?

This is where I found it but I'm sure you'll also find it on the U.K. Ebay.

Russell.

Thanks Russell!

John.

Russell – Please keep us up to date with the performance/results of your new bit of kit . Did you consider the addition of the following from the same supplier?

**LINK**

I see a lot on 3D printers (titled threads) in here but 3D printing SOFTWARE seems to be a bit neglected, might be a good idea to start a proper 3D printing software thread where people can list the software they use

If 3D printers go the same way as 2D printers they'll soon be a dime a dozen

Edited By Ady1 on 28/10/2016 10:22:47

There are some reviews for a number of these on ebay. They all seem to be a bit mixed. I get the impression that the most important aspect when they are actually used is settings and some people have a lot more trouble sorting that out than others.

John

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Yes, I saw that but don't really see the point unless you don't have access to good measuring equipment. It only needs to be done once (unless you change the bed) and seems to be quite straightforward using a dial gauge.

Russell.

Bit of an update:

It took about three evenings to assemble about 500 parts. Some minor niggles with the assembly such as wrong size screws specified in places, square nuts used for assembling the laser cut acrylic frame too wide to fit some of the slots in the frame. The round rails for the x-axis wouldn't fit in the holes in the metal end brackets which had to be opened out with a rat-tail file. Nothing too taxing to correct.

So, with the build complete I installed the Linux version of the Repetier software on my laptop to drive it. Firing up the software it found the printer and connected so I tried manual control to jog all the axes but one of the two z-axis motors didn't work. I tried plugging it into a different driver but still no joy. I then noticed that two of the wires in the lead connecting that motor to the driver were swapped over compared to the other motor leads, cut the leads and cross wired them and the motor the worked!

Tried homing all axes and found that the x-axis motor drove the carriage in the wrong direction, away from the home switch. A quick check on the Geetech forum and it appears that the supplied firmware for the control board has the x-axis direction wrong and you need to modify a setting the firmware. I already have the Arduino IDE installed so I modified the firmware accordingly and uploaded it to the Arduino based control board.

All then seemed OK so I levelled the bed, set the nozzle height using a paper feeler, anddrew up a 25 mm cube and opened the file in Repetier. Sliced it using Slic3r and previewed it. It looked O.K. so I tried to thread some filament into the extruder to print it. B****r it! It wouldn't go in more than halfway to the nozzle.

After calming down, the next day I stripped the extruder and found that the throat piece that guides the filament into the nozzle had a sharp step in its bore about 6 or 7 mm down and the filament was catching on that. I thought there might be a bush missing but eventually decided to just chamfer the step using a 3 mm spotting drill. Reassembled the extruder and found it easy to thread.

So, tried to print my test cube again. Not very successful - despite careful setting of the nozzle height it tried to print the first layer 2 mm above the bed.

Back to the forum and I found that there has been an ongoing problem with the z-axis homing with no real answer. I tried homing the printer again and found that homing it by pressing the home button on the manual interface on Repetier homed it correctly to the switch closing position but homing it from Gcode it went to the switch closed position but lifted by 2 mm before zeroing the z-axis.

After spending some time poring over the firmware files I found a setting that seemed wrong, changed it, recompiled and uploaded the firmware and tried again and it printed correctly.

The result was better than I expected for a first try. The cube measures between 0.15 and 0.22 mm undersize - good enough for now while I play with the various parameters to get the best performance.

Next I'd better make something useful on it for her indoors to justify the time and cost. Although I think the cost was well worth it for the learning experience alone.

Russell;

P.S. If anyone else is tempted to buy one I'll supply details of the firmware mods needed.

Russell, P.M. sent.

With the Dremel 3D40 heading out the door soon I've got one of these kits.

I haven't dived in yet but it looks well put together.

Neil

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Your opinion would be interesting, whilst the Dremel is fresh in your mind.

MichaelG.

Well first impression is that it is a 'complete' kit in both senses - it has everything needed but it also is totally unassembled!

I will be doing some direct comparison prints.

Neil