Wanhao i3Plus Duplicator; 3D Printer

I've spent years convincing myself I don't actually need a 3D printer and, whilst it's still true that I don't *need* one, I finally caved when a friend started printing some component upgrades to his board games. He made a fleet of little, plastic, dice carrying ships for (the incidentally fantastic) Panamax and they looked superb. So I really had to have one.I spent a fair bit of time doing some research, weighing up the the costs against functionality before I settled on the Wanhao i3 Plus. It's main selling point, to me, is that it's a semi-decent printer for relatively little money: if I found out that 3D printing wasn't for me then I would have blown only £300 rather than close to £1000 that some of the decent printers cost. I also liked that there was an active community of modders and plenty of upgrades that can be printed on Thingiverse. I'm planning on starting with the tool holder.Over its cheaper sibling, the i3 2.1, it has a few improvements like integrated control panel (and thus smaller footprint) and better cable management that I thought warranted the extra £30. Some forums suggested the basic i3 is imminently more moddable but I think the community has caught up since those messages were posted as there are now plenty of mods for both.So what do you get for your cash? Well, to start with the you get a heavy metal frame that comes in two parts that are bolted together at the sides. The instruction booklet is actually pretty well produced but sadly littered with mistakes and I spent ages looking for a cable-tie to cut that didn't exist and some internal bolt holes that I think they've evolved away (or are present on the i3 2.1, who knows). But common-sense, if you posses it, will lead you through fairy easily and the printer is erected and the spool holder screwed on in no time.Now my printer arrived with an X-axis (this is the metal bars that from left-to-right across the printer as you look at it out of level. Apparently this is a common problem and it was easy to fix by manually turning the rod at one side to level it against the supplied measuring card. However, when I hit the home Z button, to bring the extruder head down to the print bed, it hit the microswitch that's supposed to stop it and kept going. The side where the head was stopped (the head wedged onto the plate) whilst the other side kept going for a bit before I killed the power, which took the X-axis back out of level. After considering returning the printer I concluded that this either meant a defective micro-switch or a loose cable so I took the base plate off the printer and found that a metal wire had come loose from its plastic housing where it plugs into the printed circuit board. There was a ton of hot-glue used on the connectors so I think these plugs coming loose may be a common shipping problem -- so check inside the base plate if anything does not work, as it's only held on with six or so hex bolts.Wire reconnected I was able to level the print head, ensure the head was at the right height for printing and then printed the only file that came on the included SD card: OK.gcode. This took about an hour to print and looked like a bottom or breasts to begin with but thankfully wasn't. The file printed wonderfully in the supplied blue, sparkly PLA. The supplied PLA disppeared quite quickly in my next few prints so I was glad when a spool of grey PLA I had simultaneously ordered arrived a couple of days later and was able to get very similar results with it.Now this is still a hobbiest machine, I think. There's a fair amount of adjustment, fiddling and cleaning up to be done. Getting the prints back off the bed can be challenging sometimes, but at least bed adhesion is not a problem: indeed, I've stopped even using rafts or even brims of late as the adhesion has been so good. If you're technically minded you'll have no problems but if you like your hardware to 'just work' then this printer is not that.I love that there are whole websites of stuff to print out, like Thingiverse, and it's actually quite fun modelling your own stuff. I'd recommend starting with the online app Tinkercad which is painfully easy to use. There are some great free tools out there like Blender, but with quite steep learning curves. Thankfully there are a ton of YouTube videos telling you how to do stuff, which certainly wasn't the case when I first learnt the similarly complicated Photoshop 20 years ago.Once you have a model you need to 'compile' it into printing instructions the printer can understand. If you've ever used the programming language Logo with it's turtle you tell to move around then you'll understand the GCode files immediately. They're basically simple movement instructions and the slicing software works out a good path for printing your shape in layers. It also automatically builds in patterns for sparsely filling the interior of your model (quicker and uses less plastic) and for adding supports for overhanging parts on higher layers. I'm still using the supplied Cura software which is very easy to use. I've heard there are others, such as Slic3r, but haven't investigate their special powers yet.All told I'm very happy with the quality of prints and what it can offer me. I'm already printing out functional whistles, repairing parts of broken equipment around the house, printing inlays for my board games' boxes and even some artwork. I'm happy with my choice of printer: I'm sure the more expensive printers can do more stuff, cleaner and faster, but this is perfect for playing and experimenting with and is as affordable and similarly hobbiest as 2D ink printers were back in 1993, so takes me back to my youth.

My Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus needed some attention when I received it and set it up, the lower x-axis bearing rod needed to be reinserted in it's right rod holder. It was hanging loose from the left end when it arrived. A relative quick fix and the printer seems to have taken no damage, I tighten all of the lock screws on the printer to prevent further mishaps. It prints ok as far as I can see. It also did not have any washers at all at the bed levelling screws. I took a pair of scissors and made 8 thin cardboard washers for the heated bed, 2 at each corner, one each between the nuts and the heat beds electrical heating circuit at each corner to prevent electrical short circuit to ground. And one card board washer each between the adjusting "wing" nuts and the lower aluminium bearing plate assembly to prevent unnecessary wear from heatbed leveling nuts over time. The printer has a loud unhealthy rattling noise from the bed when operating, quite loud but if you press a finger on the lower plate near a corner it quiets down. It definitely needs some attention before it gets worse, but I have not decided what to do yet. Have read some tips from other i3 Plus users regarding this issue and they suggest replacing the y-axis long linear ball bearing and also to replace the lower bed plate to a thicker one, replacing the existing 1mm plate to a 3mm plate. I am not sure how this will affect the print quality. Definitely going to replace the bad linear ball bearing though. It seems to be a from a bad batch or something. Other than that, I got the Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus up and printing pretty quick when I had mounted my simple cardboard washers and levelled the heat bed. I got a decent print right away. :)Oh, in addition to the cardboard washers I also rotated the sharp ends of the bed springs outwards opposite from the etched heat circuit to be extra safe of any wear and from electrical short circuit of the heat bed.So now I am looking for a good replacement for the y-axis long linear bearing, suggestions anyone?+ sturdy design+ relatively easy to setup+ a good beginners 3D-printer - you need some technical understanding but not a lot, and the beginners manual is pretty good.+ I never used one before, any 3D-printer that is, but I got it up and running without to much fuss.+ The touch screen works very well+ Wanhao has done a good job with this design- Quality control from Wanhao could be better, that said I could and can fix the issues I found so far and it is, as I said, a very sturdy design after all.- You need knowledge and/or patience to learn how to design 3D-parts in CAD-software and to convert them to printable files for your 3D printer (or you can download files from internet, but that is boring).EDIT: The heat-bed rattled and the bearings were noisy during the first couple of prints.To fix it I lifted the heat bed away from the under-carriage and pulled the y-axis bearing rods out of the bearings and greased the inside of the y-axis linear ball bearings and re-aligned the under-carriage when I remounted the bearing rods and under-carriage to the printer. On the under-carriage, loosen the four screws on each of the linear bearing mounts and slide the under-carriage back and forth a couple of times. Then gently re-tighten the screws on each bearing mount just a bit, tighten them all in small increments until they are all tightly secured. If you tighten each and every screw hard from the beginning the under-carrigage can get misaligned and the bearings as a consequence get noisy and vibrations occur.All things considered, you still get a lot for your money.EDIT2: I have replaced the DIY cardboard washers for the bed level nuts with ones I cut out of a new unused Wettex sponge dishcloth. The cardboard washers did not have enough friction to stop the bed level nuts from turning - I had to re-adjust the bed level time and time again. Replacing the bed level cardboard washers, I used a scissor to make new washers from a new unused Wettex dishcloth and I have not needed to re-adjust the bed level since! I have been using a first layer hight of 0.1 mm without raft for a week now and it works perfect without re-adjusting the bed level between prints! I planned to replace the stock bed level nuts with nylock ones, but the Wettex DIY washers works perfect so I am reluctant to replace them, even though they are not the most good looking washers out there :)I have been using the Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus for a while know and I am very happy how it performs, I have just upgraded it from four stars to five, in spite of the initial issues. Buy it![...]

First thing that came out of the printer was a pile of fluff and some thing else which I was unable to discern. First tests seemed okay, however the reported bed temps were jumping around. The thermositor on the bed was securely attached. On closer inspection it looked like the printer had previously been in someone else's hands. The extruder jammed several times and needed servicing. However there was always a 'burning smell and it got worse to the point that smoke began to appear on and around the extruder. Returned to amazon for refund.

A potential fire hazard reason for one star otherwise ok. Great looking printer with a clean design. It did work straight out of the box but there are loads of problems. Nice manual, a small tool with necessities and all well packed. I did use it for about 10 times so far and noticed screws missing never supplied, bed carriage started to cut through the power wires due to sharp bed edges rubbing against it. Difficult to level the bed as z sensor gets hit so hard when homing the axis it moves each time making it hard each time you need to print. And there is probably many more issues not yet discovered. Read posts on wanhao groups before purchasing the printer, it is a high maintenance product probably like most of 3d printers.Update Dec 2019. I have upgraded to adv++ and it was the best what I have donefrom the upgreads untill one of the motor drivers failed.

Me la esperaba mejor

Passionné d’impression 3D et A force d’entendre du bien de cette imprimanteJ’ai fini par me décider d’acheter La i3+J’ai rencontré quelques petits soucis de réglage plateau et d’adhérenceJ’ai fini par remplacer le builtak par un plateau en verre.Et j’ai imprimé une amélioration qui se place au niveau du ventilateur de la buse qui sert à mieux rediriger l’aire.Du coup je n’ai plus aucun problème je réussi jusqu’à à maintenant toutes mes piècesLa i3+ reste Fidel à sa réputation.Là où je suis un peu déçu c’est à propos du site du constructeur plus précisément au niveau du tchat liveJ’ai voulu me renseigner pour la duplicator 9 la grande sœur de la i3+A ce jour j’attend encore une réponse

Bin absoluter 3D-Neuling, habe somit keine Erfahrung oder Vergleichswerte...... Zusammenbau sehr einfach, auch ohne Anleitung...... Bett einjustieren mit Rändelschrauben geht auch sehr einfach ...... 30 Minuten nach dem Auspacken 1. Testdruck vom auf der SD-Karte vorhandenen Musterobjekt (Hand), läuft mit den Standardeinstellungen problemlos durch (ein paar Meter PLA blau ist bei der Lieferung dabei ........ habe mittlerweile 5 gleiche Objekte mit verschiedenen Einstellungen gedruckt um Erfahrungen zu sammeln, bisher alle unbeaufsichtigt störungsfrei durchgelaufen (2-5 Stunden pro Druck), bisher nur PLA... zur Qualität des Objekts kann ich nicht viel sagen, da Vergleich zu anderen Geräten und Objekten fehlt. Für mich als Neuling ohne besondere Erwartungen an ein Billiggerät schaut es einmal sehr gut aus....... fazit: habe genau das bekommen, was ich mir erhofft und erwartet habe um dieses geringe Geld. Profis müssen halt ein vielfaches (10-fache?) investieren!

Très bien emballé prête à fonctionné montage 10 min et go. impression de superbe qualitébon print amusé vous bien

salve a tutti leggete attentamente la casa la da per una temperature del piano 120 gradi oltre i 109 non va l'estrusore lo danno per 260 gradi oltre i 255 non va se cercate di forzare le temperature oltre quelle che vi ho scritto si azzerano e la macchina si blocca. l'assistenza italiana lascia il tempo che trova ma almeno rispondono quella conese non se ne parla. ho conttattato 2 volte l'assistenza e al quesito della temperatora mi hanno detto che 109/255 sono più che sufficente la seconda volta chiedendo perchè la base me la stampava a 109 e appena partiva il piano scendeva a 80 e dovevo riportarlo a 109 mi hanno risposto che la macchina aveva sicuramente qualche problema .quando gli ho chiesto perche non si riusciva a configurare con il pc mi hanno detto che è pericoloso la stampo si blocca che i driver sono nel sito ma io li ho installati ma non si configura altra cosa mi hanno detto che potrei modificare il firmware insomma come al solito una caterba ci cavolate. assistenza un bel 3 come voto però fanno un sacco di video.comunque ancora le stampanti 3d per casa ne devono fare di strada .per me il gioco non vale la candela. prezzo elevato .e assistenza scadente.