Upgrading my 3D-printer

Hi everybody

Glad to see that there are some steemians who are in to 3Dprinting!

Some years ago (almost 10 years) I bought my 3D printer. I used it for some time and printed loads of prototypes for different projects. However, as the years passed I have had less and less time for this hobby, until I totally stopped 4 or 5 years ago. Now I will try to bring my 3D-printer back to life! In order to do so I need to fix some problems, and I thought I'd might document this process on steemit, as there might be interest for this?

The printer I bought was this type:

http://wiki.fabbster.com/Main_Page

The first problem is that the manufacturer have stopped the production of the fabbster. Since few of the parts are standard with this printer upgrading means I will have to sew together a lot of different parts. The first thing is the electronics controlling the printer including the firmware and the software. These are outdated, and there is now considerably better parts for a reasonable pricetag.

There are several good reviews around to figure out what board to choose:

https://all3dp.com/2/5-fantastic-3d-printer-controller-boards/

I currently ended up buying the Duet 2 wifi. This is a great board, with superb stepper-motor-drivers! I must say, this is a huge step from my old machine!

Connecting the Duet is straight-forward and well documented on the wiki-page. Some soldering and tinkering must be accounted for althoug... but thats the fun part, right ;)

I now got the machine moving and heating the hot-end. Althoug I currently waiting for my new extruder...

I'll keep you updated on the next step in my project!

Keep on printing in the free world!