Someone threw this 3D printer in the garbage... 

Honestly, I love the idea of making a printer from hardware store stuff. I would definitely watch that series.

My vote: Keep this as a museum piece and build a new one from hardware store parts. Would be interesting to see what is possible with today's knowledge and your experience in 3d printing.

I remember friends trying to build 3D printers like these 8-10 years ago. It makes you appreciate how far the 3D printing community has advanced.

You should donate this to a museum. These are becoming increasingly rare, and one in working condition and with a nice video story of yours would be a great showpiece in just ten years from now.

I want to see you get this printing reliably well, then keep this as a museum piece, and bring it back in a video 10 years from now. Lets see this thing in a head to head printoff against the latest budget model in 2033

This was fascinating! And I want you to pursue both paths but I'll happily watch either: - Piece-by-piece upgrade (with a test print after each stage) until you've basically replaced everything and turned this into the Printer of Theseus. - Roll your own DIY model from scratch with as many non-printer-specific parts from Bunnings/Jaycar as you can possibly get away with. (Maybe one or both of them will sponsor the vid?)

Fixing old gear like this makes one really appreciate modern day printers. Great vid Angus!

You seem to have picked up the printer that I disposed of 5 years ago. But since you're in Oz and I'm in the Old Country it's not likely. Besides mine was still working when I upgraded to a Creality Ender 3. The frame did have a lot of issues with warping and so on which is why I ditched it; but it did get me started with 3D printing and I loved it! Keep up the good work, and fix the printer!

I'd be down to see a hardware store 3d printer, DIY printers are always interesting.

That was my first printer. I wouldn't tolerate that level of frustration today, but back then it was like magic to my eyes. It's sill sitting in a corner of my workshop, and I've been planing to restore it to its original glory as a "show piece". I'm sure kids in the future will look at it and wonder at how far we have come.

When I first got into 3D printing, roughly 7 years ago, with my Anet A8 kit I almost lost any and all enthusiasm for 3D printing after buying a $5 V6 hotend from Aliexpress. I was so excited for it when it got there, I printed out a great mount and part cooling fan duct (on the stock setup), installed everything, and couldn't even get it to BEGIN a test cube/benchy. Your videos and guides (the first video of yours I watched was ripping assets from video games and printing them) are what kept me going and motivated. Ever since then it's been my hobby, and my joy, and I've gotten others into 3D printing after recommending your videos. Thank you for the reminder of where a lot of us came from, it's great to see where we started and where we are today.

I would love to see you do a "retro upgrade" series on this machine. - Obviously, the part cooling is the first upgrade anyone back in the day would have made. - The RAMPS 1.5 should be able to take Marlin 2.0, so make your life a hair easier and put in the firmware work. - After that, a new hot end assembly, and a newer style extruder (keeping the bowden). - Then just tune, tune, tune This would a good demonstration on the survivability of older printers. (I say as I'm converting my DIY Sells to a DIY I3)

I absolutely loved this video…it was an absolute banger Please do more like this, find some more ditched printers and fix them…this was wonderful..please do continue to upgrade and modernize this relic…it’s so ugly it’s beautiful

As ancient as this is compared to recent printers, I just upgraded to an Ender 3 S1 Pro a few months ago, and my original Anet A8 with a 1.0 board was in service until that point, and is still sitting next to the S1 Pro. Ready to print models are great, but if you're not afraid of some trial and error, DIY kits teaches a lot of lessons that are a great foundation to build upon.

Hey, I have a makerfarm printer! They were a local company here, and I paid about $700 for my kit 8 years ago. Other than some nasty resonance that was fixable it was a great kit for the time. I'm surprised to see that one of these ended up in Australia. I enjoyed seeing you try and restore it.

Okay, this was the motivation I needed to get my printer operational again. Really cool to see a printer return to basically as functional as it ever was from such a degraded state. Thank you so much for another great video, and I appreciated the sad dashie at the start/in the thumbnail too. Seemed appropriate for a 2013-era printer haha

Awww, what a brave little printer! You are a good person for saving this abandoned cutie It would be really cool to see you make a 3D printer out of parts from the hardware store

This was a fun one, I can relate to it because I spend a lot of my time fixing stuff from the dump that other people might think is just trash and then I run it in my workshop for years; in fact, if I didn't restore tools and machines I probably wouldn't have half the tools I own! Fixing old junk is pretty much the basis for my channel and it's fun watching other people take it on. Everything I fix has to end up useful, so I say, give it the upgrades it needs to be a useful, modern printer, and try to keep the old fashioned aesthetic; reinforce it, but keep it subtle!

I have been trying to actively seek out videos of making dilapidated printers up and running. So far this is the only video I’ve found. I would absolutely watch a restoration channel about fixing up 3d printers. Im really hoping you find another. Maybe make a 3d printer museum to showcase the progression of printer technology

My printer is from this era, but I've just kept on upgrading components and improving the frame with reinforcements, and it prints ok and pretty quickly. Anyhow, these problems were considered normal just a few years ago and you could've made yours work by tweaking it a little more until it actually prints ok, and perhaps then upgrading a part at a time up to modern equivalent.

Wow! That felt a documentary on my first ventures into 3D printing lol. I had a version of that exact printer with all the same components and issues. Of course, I spent far more time problem solving than printing, but it was all worth it.

The era where they shoved a glass bead thermistor in the hot end and retained it with a screw.... Just like an ender 3 pro modern day :) I like the printer just as it is. These sorts of amazing finds from history for me. I fix them up as you have and retire them to a personal museum. Maybe tinker with them more from time to time to replace oem parts if available. More of a functional art project approach. Nice video cheers.

Aww that's so sweet, Angus is taking home & caring for strays :)

My first printer was an early wood printrbot kit and I was only ever able to get one print out of it in the few years I had it. All the complaints you talked about were so real and I remember there wasn't the level of resources that we have today. I completely gave up on printing until a few years ago when I ended up getting a ender clone. It crazy how much the tech has changed in a decade and how much easier it is to get reliable prints.

I honestly don't think you should upgrade much on this machine now apart from the hotend. It is such a snapshot into hobbyist machines in the earlier days of 3d printing

Please find the original owner lol. We need the back story on this printer. And we need to know what they are using now.

Angus, what a great video. I love that you took this thrown out printer and resurrected it for at least a few prints. Wonderful content.

Now I understand why my restored Prusa i3 didn't work. I had the same issue with a cheap hotend. The prints started good but, after a few layers it would fail. It only started to work after I bought a more expensive E3D V6. It print fine now. Fortunately mine came with a metal frame instead of a wooden one. Thanks for this video, you solved the mystery for me!

The4933 Drivers used are supporting microstepping. You can configure it via jumper under the driver board on the Arduino Shield.

I would love to see how we could reused part of an old 3d printer to make a dremel/cnc or a plotter or another machine . Thanks MakerMuse for the quality of your content.

Awesome content - I love anything related to vintage 3d printing. Whichever route you pick to move on with this project will be a must watch

Hey Angus, so glad you did this I was really looking forward to seeing it running. 😊 The old prints brings back many memories. I Think you have done this machine justice and is now destined for the pool room as Daryl would say. Love the idea of seeing what you could do to make a printer from the hardware. I remember early on many viewers (including myself 😊) used to comment requesting you to make your own machine. I think the time has finally come 😮😁. Cheers Karl.

That printer is so similar to what I’m using now. Folgertech i3 2020. It works pretty well. I got it in 2016 or so. Never assembled it until COVID lockdowns started. It works pretty well for me and got me to finally learn to use Fusion 360. Would love to see you update the firmware on that unit. The process of figuring out all the variables would be useful.

I’m not gonna lie, but I’d love to see both of those ideas. I didn’t get into 3d printing until the ender3 was released. But I felt the same way at first. Now I’m at the point where I’m building my own 3d printer.

Well done, Angus. Your energy and presentation style is highly engaging. This project reminds me of those “Will it start?” vintage car find videos. All the best, from Melbourne.

I have one of these!!! I built it in a weekend workshop in 2012... a few years later I bought exactly the same replacement extruder you said it shouldn´t exist!! I still have it and it´s not destroyed like this, so I´m transforming in a draw bot with my niece for Christmas. This videos was made for me (from the past), I struggled (and also learned) so much to print with it in the past! It's touching for me to see you restore it. Thanks a lot!!

Love the concept of this video. I would definitely watch more videos on fixing, making and improvising printer builds and repairs,

To change the microstepping on the ramps 1.4 there are some jumpers under the stepper drivers

Love your Work Sir!! I picked Up In July 2022 a CTCi3 and an ANET A8, Both Projects, for Restoration!!!

I absolutely love that you did this. I hate seeing tools that people would otherwise have loved be disrespected.

I would love to see a printer made from hardware store parts, especially the enclosure / framework.

I did not expect Rainbow Dash to be chilling in the thumbnail. I guess 3D printers are 20% cooler than regular printers...

New to the channel 🤠 I love the vintage 3dprinter video it's nice leaning history 👍😁 thank you very much for all the work you did to share with all Sending positive vibes your way 😎

This was my first printer, and it was a beast. Those tall, loud, angry motors. The beast of a 3mm Wade's extruder used the same big, tall, overpowered steppers. The only thing I miss from those days is how much stiffer 3mm TPU is. There is one incident I had with that printer that I will never, ever forget. I was printing something with a slightly tangled spool of 3mm glow-in-the-dark ABS. I was sitting across the room playing video games with my headphones on when I heard the loudest bang you have ever heard from a printer. The tangled spool stopped unwinding. That stupidly powerful Wade's setup didn't slip, and it kept pulling that filament tighter and tighter. My spool was hanging off the top of the printer, and I can only assume that the extruder was putting more and more tension into the wooden frame as it refused to slip on the filament. Until the 3mm ABS filament snapped clean in half. It was loud, and the printer physically moved a couple of inches when all that tension was released. I am surprised a little bit of poop didn't come out. This was by far the scariest noise I have ever heard from my desk.

A build from scratch would be pretty awesome ☺️. But would also like to see this guy working with a better hot end and a cooling fan

The path forward is pretty clear. You've already invested this much effort so might as well get it printing reliably. But ALSO make a hardware store printer for it to go up against once you DO get it printing. Then compare and contrast. Also, I literally LOL'ed when you brought up the SD card & very professionally stepped around divulging the contents. I would have absolutely said, "Waifus. This nerd was trying to 3D print anime waifus."

Awesome video. I used to have 8" model and I did a lot of upgrades on it and at the end it was printing quite well it even had autobed leveling and all. I even build an ecloser for it. But at the end I wanted some more reliable printer and switched to prusa mk3s+. The old printer I gave to a friend. It still works and still prints.

Gheghe, I love this. Takes me back to the time of my first printer. The misery finding out on what material to print. The el-cheapo hot-ends. The electronic fuses on the RAMPS board. The amount of cables that hat to come together in an enclosure way to small. The m6 dual z-axis. ;D Courageous that you restored this Dinosaur and lovely to watch!

The zombie printer is great! If you wanted to squeeze some more content out of it you could have a video showing us how things have changed since the start of hobby 3d printing. For example all the hacks and little things that people would do. A video on making something from absolute scratch would be interesting. A fun gimmick would be something like a tech tree. For example to make a hotend you need to make a version of your own and show why its so hard to make them and to get an official one you need to print something like a cube or your maker coin. "So we made our own hotend however they are really dangerous and should never be done. Here's the print I made with it so lets change it out for an E3d one." Idk it would be interesting to me.

pony

I was fully expecting you to test the printer with a pony like your older videos

Id watch all of the video options you stated. This was the first 3d printing video i have watched in years. I got really into it all about 5 years ago. Great video

That brony bait works on me

I have similar style 3D printer, this video helped me to recognize some issues I have. Thanks.

I thoroughly enjoyed this video. It reminded me of one of those car videos where they find a junker and see if they can get it to run. I'd love to see you take this to the next step - what here is worth saving, scrap the rest, and modify it to today's standard. As someone who would like to tinker with a yard sale find like this, please show me what it would take (and if it's even possible).

there is something immensely satisfying about repairing old junk and making it work. great video, very entertaining :).

Just purchased a 3D printer back in August of this year, took me about a month putting it together. Turned 65 in July, 2022. Almost bought one, few years back glad I waited.

Love the Old School Stuff!!! Great Video!!

My first printer was the MakerFarm Pegasus 12. Very much like a Voron kit, just a box of parts and aluminum extrusions. So cool to see an older one brought back to life! I resurrected it for the start of the pandemic. It cranked out over 3500 ear savers 24/7 for front line workers and health care workers. I still have the printer, just deciding what to do with it. I started upgrading to Marlin 2 and testing (it was originally setup with 1.1(?) and RAMPS 1.4). Definitely go with the hardware store, would love to see what you come up with to improve the frame and printing :)

I love to see you try to get this old printer as good as high end modern printer and while keeping as many original parts as possible.

Brilliant! Thanks for making the video, it was very interesting. All 3d printers are made of a series of components cobbled together (or expertly engineered to work in unison with each other). It's crazy to be reminded of how bad things were in those days but it needed to happen for us to come as far as we have. It is now a work of art, an objet d'art or a museum piece. Put it on a high shelf, out of the way and smile every time you see it. I'm inspired by your video and hopefully others are too. Thanks again.

2:55 You can tram the gantry with double Z motors on a single driver. I used to do it the simple way by just ramming the Z axis to the top of the printer in the start gcode, then using ABL with a sensor to account for the rest. I know someone who works at a landfill station. A few years bback he contacted me to give me an Ultimaker 2. It was only missing a main board and a power supply, other than that it was pristine.

I have 2 Makerfarm Prusas in my attic. They were amazing first printers back in 2014,and what got me started in the hobby. A great look back down memory lane.

I have an I3 clone, a Mk2 Toolson edition with the frame made of stainless steel. It uses the same extruder and hotend, although my hotend is an original E3D V6 bowden set-up. It's now controlled using a Re-Arm for RAMPS with TMC2100 drivers. The bed as shown in the video is basically the same as what I have, an aluminium heated bed mounted on a stainless steel subframe with sinter-bronze bearings on hardened steel rods. Prints decently enough for me, now busy with getting Klipper installed and running the vibration tests. The part I love the most is the tinkering, the making, the trying of stuff and seeing your efforts pay off in better and better print. Anyone can go to a shop and buy a kit, build it and voila, I'm probably old-school and love the engineering in it.

Brings back memories of building one of these back in the day and spending time printing spares and upgrades for itself.

Nice way of showing how 3d printing envoled the past few years. Your knowledge Made this "repair" possible. Nice Video, finally Something Different :)

What you are describing are most of the issues I got with my first printer, an Anet A8 about 6 years ago. But at that time I never found a video like this one to make me understand what to fix. 😅 Glad I switched to a Prusa I3 not long after and never looked back.

This was a trip through memory lane! I actually bought one of those hotend clones for my old Anet A8 and now I'm really glad I never got around to "upgrading" it 😅 I think it'd be cool to see you build the modern equivalent of these hacker printers. One of my favourite videos of yours is the fallout "fabricator", I really learned a lot about modelling for printing from your process there.

looking at this early model of 3d printer .makes me thankfull for my ender /how far we ve come

just re watched this vid again, to give me some fresh energy to start my Resto projects, Would love to see a Bunnings ( hardware) Printer Build!! I'll do one too

Great! I loved this restoration… and it is worth any single second!!!

Nice work! Also - creeping ever closer to the magic 1 million subs! Great work.

Brings me back to my first printer. Pre ramps, pre prusa, so many home Depot trips!

Crazy to think what I forget is becoming an old tech; can now be found where REALLY old stuff is usually found

I still have my plywood printer which was my second machine, brought during lockdown in 2020 to see whether it was possible to 'polish a turd'. After a lot of incremental improvements and tweaks, such as printing new parts for itself and screwing the frame onto a sheet of thick ply for stability it's not too bad and good as a backup printer where my main Ender 3 clone is busy with other stuff. Update a year later: Still got this printer, now has an SKR mini because I was getting sick of stepper motor noise. It's now getting more use than the Ender 3 clone (mostly because its closer to my desk).

Great video also the employees are so nice at microcenter they ware there because they want to be i guarantee it somehow almost everytime i get what i come for there amazing

I love the extruder repair. Exactly like the Fabricator Mini extruder! I'd love to see a from scratch build. I'm considering doing one myself!

I have a 2016 CTC i3 pro B, it's still working, but as you say the stepper drivers are original, I did change the main board to a Geeetech GT2560 and added a bed leveling probe. I also put the same V6 clone hotend on, but using direct drive. It prints reasonable, but I am now in the process of building a very big core XY, which will have closed loop drivers on the XY motors and a 32 bit main board. This video made me realise just how old my printer is.

I recently saved 2 from the recycling yard, got the bigger one of the two functional again yesterday. What a great feeling!

Ahh cool! I made a video of a 3D printer I found at the dump as well. But I haven't had time to completely fix and use it yet. Well done on your score, awesome vid!

I'm glad that you've put as much time as you have into this project, but I can't imagine putting any more time or effort into it would be worth it.

God this made me nostalgic! One of these was my first printer and it was about as bad as you said. PLEASE make this a video series where bit by bit you modernise this relic, I would love to see what path you take!

That's a great video and a good exposure of all the things we now take for granted when it comes to modern non-bent-plywood 3D printers! I think you shouldn't tinker more with it, maybe change the heat break but keep the rest as it is as a relik from the past.

wow after an year trying to understand why my printer wasn't working after retraction i finally understand why (which was also my final though). Always very informative and nice videos!

I absolutely loved this video - it brings back so many memories. I started with a different plywood kit around the beginning of 2016 and so much of that kit was similar to this model of printer. Repetier firmware, no cooling, threaded rod, cheap clone V6 extruder (but I had no heated bed or LCD and my X/Y axes used a string drive). Later I replaced those threaded rods with leadscrews, replaced the string with belts, made my own part cooling solution... and that thing printed pretty darn well. Oh, and that heat break on the cheap V6 clone? Mine had a super-thin PTFE liner to constrain that larger diameter to one closer to that of the filament. As such, I didn't have jam issues. I suspect yours either lost that liner or never came with one. Lastly, YES, that printer would get thrown out of whack with every change in weather. I lacquered my wooden parts (as it came completely disassembled) to help reduce the ingress of humidity, however, the stresses of the mechanical system and the flex of the wood from moving the machine (along with those t-slots for the small nuts) made for a machine of poor stability. I don't miss that aspect of printing.

You look a bit exhausted :)) And it was exhausting ,that time,to get these things working .Greetings Belgium.

Very similar to my first! I still have it down in the workshop partially disassembled, and heavily modified. I wonder if I should try revive it for another purpose at some point.

I have and still use a fully home built Prusa MK2 clone. I did not use plywood, it's 4mm thick CNCd metal and a bit better stepper drivers on the same RAMPS 1.4 board, the rest is printed on a friend's A8 (a true fire hazard if I've ever seen one) and vitamins from the hardware store and an old ATX PSU and my own quick swap roll holder. I have optical endstops, auto level, cooling, self-lubricating sliders and a RasPiZ for Octoprint. I use a similar bowden extruder, but I modified it to have very little space so I can easily print with TPU. It's a bit slow and the volume is a bit small but it's been my printer for many many years, and frankly, for home use I don't need more. I've been meaning to modify it for multi material printing but had been too lazy to actually do it and during the holiday season I can't afford to take it apart for weeks.

It works Bravo! 👏 My first printer was pretty similar but in acrylic. I think It has the same hotend ... I understand now why I have (nearly) never succeed to print anything on it 🤣 Thank you very much! 🥰

It's great to revive a 3d printer. It still wants to live! I bought my second hand 3d printer and also respectfully cleared the SD card he left inside. It had a folder directory in it that looked like it was taken from a camera. The owner sold his printer as he was moving the next day. About the bowden tube, I removed it and bought a mod to have the extruder right above to the hotend so it would be a direct-to-hot-end and no resistance in the tube.

That reminds me a bit of an Anet A8 I had for years. I’ve been through a couple but now have a Neptune 3 that I picked up second hand - I know I’m old, but modern Budget machines and slicers are like magic!!! The A8 was a struggle every single print, the Neptune has been working all weekend with barely a second thought lol

I bought an Anet A8 in like 2015 or 2016 and still use it today. Last year I ran into a bunch of problems with the acrylic frame... everything I printed was skewed and no matter how many times I took it apart of ran the skew tests and flashed the marlin changes it didn't fix it.. after upgrading the frame to 2040 aluminum, adding tl smoothers, pei sheet, new power supply, and a biqu h2 it prints great.

7:53 in the future, a thread chaser is a way better choice for chasing threads compared to a die. a chaser is designed to push the metal back into shape whereas the die will cut the bent threads making them weaker and shorter

Oh man. This brings me back. These came out right when I first got into it, I was still in high school so I was on a very tight budget. In no particular order, here's some memories: - Those stepper drivers should support much better microstepping than that (16x IIRC), usually with jumpers under the drivers. on the RAMPS board. - I remember keeping the threaded rods snug was a complete pain. Lost quite a bit of quality from them working themselves loose. - I think I remember Marlin had weird EEPROM bugs in it for quite a while around that era. I just wound up reflashing regularly for any kind of tuning - I got very fast at menu diving on the Marlin LCD menu after a while - One of the biggest upgrades I ever did was getting a *genuine* e3d v6 hotend, those things were awesome! The glass bead thermistors was all we really had back then because the proper thermocouples were CRAZY expensive, and needed a custom amp board to be usable. The e3d way beat the hell out of the other options, which was to literally bond/tape them in place. Yuck. - Octoprint was a game-changer. Came out a year or so into me owning an i3 clone - The number of cooling fan mounts I tried was insane. They all sucked. The radial blowers worked best but were insanely loud. - All the slicer options were terrible by today's standards - The smell of cheap hairspray - Having a second bed covered in kapton tape for ABS - The gut-wrenching sound of one of your axis motors losing steps mid-print (if you know, you know) - Literally super-gluing a print back to the bed because it was a really long one and I was losing my sanity trying to keep it stuck - Z-wobble was the bane of my existence and I never managed to fully beat it on that printer I wound up donating that printer to a local middle school, but I have some truly great memories with it. It definitely required patience to operate and it was rare you got anything usable your first attempt at a print, but man back then it was the wild west. Nobody *really* knew what they were doing, and that's what made it fun. For anyone in the community back then who reads this, I hope this sparks some memories. For new folks, welcome to the community, and I hope you see some of the effort that went into making this hobby what it is today.

I am still in the process of reviving an old Protos V3 kit printer. Its running Klipper now (on the original RAMPS), and has a Voron Stealthburner Toolhead with a knockoff V6 in it. There is some bed adhesion issues (due to the original solution being tape on bare aluminium) which i am trying to fix with G10 at the moment, but it is printing ABS just fine and its dimensionally accurate. There is more work to be done, and i had kinda put it aside, but this video motivated me to go back at it.

This was my first printer, although mine was the v-slot version! I still have it, although it's not operational currently. it certainly was a great way to learn and understand how 3D printers actually work! My version had a self designed extruder with twin E3D V6 nozzles, although it does feel very antiquated when it's compared to my Bambu lab P1P!!

Set it on a shelf as a curiosity. That's where my wooden 2 head Replicator is now. I found it in a junk shop for 50 USD including 3kg of ABS filament. I actually used it quite a bit. Everybody was saying at the time, "You need a temperature controlled environment," but the thing worked the best out in a shed where an overhead door was usually open. A few years ago, on Angus' recommendation, I got the Sidewinder X1, which I still use.

Had a similar i3 clone with an acrylic frame several years ago. Honestly, I spent so much more time troubleshooting weird issues with it than actually printing that I ended up giving it away and waiting a few more years for the printers to get better overall. These things were plagued with issues back then. Respect for pushing through on one this bad.

I still have my I3 Pro B acrylic frame printer that cost about 450.00 usd at the time. Took me ages as my first build. It has the ramps 1.4, heated bed, direct drive. Found out the original ramps was bad so had to wait for a new one and a rod was bent. I have since moved on to better machines. Fun to watch you fix one.

i love your idea of a diy printer from the hardware store. i have parts from 3 different printers that don't work anymore and would love to see your take on something like this