I’ve had my predator converted to a duet board for almost a week now. It seems to be running really well. I’ve tweaked so I am getting consistent prints. The details are nice and clean etc. I still have some more work to do regarding overhangs, bridges and some slight ghosting but for the moment, its all issues I can live with.
I also seem to be getting the odd layer that doesn’t seem to extrude 100% correct but this seems to be an issue that most people are having and not just on this printer. It appears to be down to the hotend that anycubic use so at some point that will be getting an upgrade. What I will probably do is upgrade the effector to a smart effector at the same time and kill two birds with one stone. Then I only have to order the extra E3D parts required as the effector comes with a custom heat sink.
The above images are of Phil A Ment. As you can see, I still have some issues with overhangs. This will be my next issue to tackle. He was printed at 0.1mm layer heights and 60mm/s print speeds. He took 6 hours to print. I know he has a hole in one foot but that was from me messing around with the print settings on the fly.
The above images are of Cali Cat. Again, the overhang issues can be seen going up the underside of the tail.
All in all though, I am happy with the printer so far. I have moved my config files to GitHub for easy management.
Installing the Duet
At the moment, my duet is sat on one of the mounting pegs that were used to secure the trigorilla pro. Not ideal but I’m waiting for a panel mounted ethernet port to arrive before I go ahead and mount my board properly. Once it gets here, I’ll document the process and post the mount I design to thingiverse. I have already found a mount I like the look of, so I may remix that to make it fit our printer. That of course depends how well I get one with freecad.
That’s all for now. Keep your comments coming.
Hi Jay
Do you actually recommend the Predator at all?
It seems you basically are keeping the structure, motors and LCD, replacing the extruder and mainboard…
Well a lot of people are having great printing success with the stock board. I personally like to tweak and play with things. All I have left now is the frame, power supply, end stops, bed and frame. It’s still a good machine without those changes. But at it’s price point for its size, I don’t think there’s much competition.
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Hi, did you use the Anycubic MOSFET board or are you driving the hot end straight from the duet 2? Also how did you end up mounting the duet?
Thanks
I used the mosfet board to drive the heated bed.
I’m driving the hot end directly from the duet 2.
To mount the duet, I printed a mount and double sided tapped it to where the original board was mounted