With basis being a cheap product, there’s lots of areas where the printer hardware can be improved.
It’s all about stiffness, weight (or lack thereof) and precision. Also, several components come in different versions offering resolution in multiples of 2, more power or less noise.
The more indirect improvements will be to improve the thermal characteristics surrounding the printer’s workbed. Adding fans to remove unwanted heat or a cabinet to keep out the cold.
So far I’ve either done or is considering doing :
- Z-axis leadscrews. Huge improvement! Here’s an explanation to what a leadscrew is and how it differs from a threaded rod: Short paper
- Better stepper motor drivers. Minor improvement.
- Rubber ‘motor-mounts’ for X- and Y-steppermotors. Quieted the mechanical drivetrain quite a lot.
- Hotend fan. A separate Noctua fan with no duct or anything.
- Cabinet. Two Ikea LACK tables, some (3D-printed) bits and a little perspex does the trick. Snipped from Thingiverse 🙂
- Adding a concrete slab base was considered, but not done. Actually, the flexing of the whole IKEA-assembly while printing seems to absorb residual energy from X/Y-motion just fine.
- Eventually, the puny little fans cooling the machine’s electronics and extruder got noisy and were replaced with Noctua fans – Silence! Huge improvement.
- Z-gantry modded at the fan duct – I cut out the plastic grille causing wind noise and got less of exactly that.
The system now lives beside my desk, being ‘furniture’. It just works, taking filament from a 2kg spool of filament sat on top of it.