
Modifications I made to my ANET A8 3D Printer
I’ve been doing a lot of 3D printing lately so I wanted to share some of the modifications that I made to my ANET A8 3D printer to improve the quality of the prints and the usability of the printer.
The first change I made was to the cooling nozzle.
This nozzle works much better as it allows air flow all around the plastic which cools the plastic more evenly and faster.
This filament guide makes sure that the filament goes straight into the extruder and doesn’t get caught on the edge of the extruder.
Before I fitted this guide I was getting jams in the extruder because the feed rate wasn’t constant due to it snagging on the edge of the extruder.
I printed a button to go over the filament change bolt as it was very difficult to hold down the small bolt head when changing the filament.
I printed tool holders, to hold snips, spanner, screwdriver and Allen keys.
It’s very useful to always have these tools to hand when working on your printer or prints.
I printed a bezel for the LCD screen just because it made it look nice.
I changed the spool holder that came with the printer for a new one.
This new holder was much better than the old one, on the original one the filament could slip over the edge of the spool and jam between the spool and the holder whereas the new one can’t do that. It happened a few times where the spool jammed and pulled the spool into the printer. This hasn’t happened since I changed the holder.
I bought this holder from eBay but the sellers keep changing so I won’t give a link, but if you search for “filament spool holder” on eBay you should find one.
I didn’t design any of these models, some of them I had to modify slightly to make them fit correctly.
Here are the links to the original Thingiverse files:
- Cooling Nozzle: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2572459
- Filament Guide: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2572454
- Extruder Button: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2182276
- Tool Holder Right: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2086689
- Tool Holder Left: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2072360
- LCD Bezel: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1915994
These modifications helped to improve the usability of the printer and the quality of my prints.
As always if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask,
Conor.