Anycubic Mega S Essential Mods | Upgrade Your 3D Printer

what's up everybody jj here today i wanted to take you through all of the modifications i've done on my 3d printer up to this point i wanted to cover some of the what i think are essential mods some of the things you should do first with your printer that greatly improve either the noise or the quality of your prints up to some pretty advanced ones this x carriage i just put on here was pretty advanced of a build so i wouldn't recommend this being your first upgrade you do for this printer but if you're up to the challenge and you're ready to learn a lot about your 3d printer some of these might be a great next step for you first let's get some coffee and let's get right into this so this screen cover right here is what i'm calling the first upgrade you should do for your printer i thought that sticker that comes on this front plate was super cheesy you can pull it off but then you're left with an exposed you can see kind of the edges of this touch screen so you print out this pop it on the front and you can put any color you want this red filament was one of the first filaments i owned and so i printed it out put it on here and it really adds a little bit of flair adding whatever color you want a purely aesthetic upgrade but it's a great step to making this printer your own now the next upgrade i would recommend this is a balance between aesthetic and actual utility these are bed leveling wheels they simply attach onto the bed leveling wheels that are already there you just pop them in place they do add utility because they're so much larger and easier to grab than the default bed wheels also there's this arrow printed around the outside and that shows you if you turn it with the arrow that raises the bed if you turn it against the arrow that lowers the bed so it's really easy to reach around the back feel the arrows and know which direction you should turn it to adjust your bed it also is another place to add a little bit of flair and color to your printer so many printers just come in black now you can make it whatever color you want now let's go around to the back of the printer so this was an upgrade i put off for way too long this is your y carriage cable chain so when the bed moves forward and back this cable chain keeps the cable well managed this is a safety risk i would highly recommend you print this way sooner than i did i waited way too long so the printer in stock mode just has the cable coming out of a metal hole in the chassis and so every time the printer bed moves forward and back it rubs this pvc sheathing against that metal hole and after a while you'll notice that pvc sheathing will wear out which is a huge safety risk and those wires are high power if those arc you could easily start a fire so just save yourself some trouble print this one out fairly early on before those wires wear out and you may wonder about these other cable chains on the printer you can replace those if you want but this is the only one i would say is essential as a safety feature the bed needs a cable chain these other ones are more more for an aesthetic feature and i'll link specifically the one that i used along with all the other models that i used down in the description down below thingiverse will be your best friend when it comes to modding now that we've covered some safety features let's move on to making this nice and quiet so anyone in the know when they see these colors you know you're getting a nice high quality silent fan these are noctua fans this one specifically is cooling off the heatsink on the hot end and even on your stock x carriage you can put in silent fans and the park cooling blower fan isn't knocked to a but it's still a much more silent fan i will link them both in the description below and that will go a long way in making your printer so much more quiet the next mod i would recommend for making your printer really quiet is replacing the stepper motor drivers on your main board the default ones are the main reason why your printer motors make that whine while they're moving back and forth i got tmc 2209s and i would highly recommend them if you want a quiet printer if you're leaving this in your garage and silent doesn't really matter for you you can leave the stock fans on there you can leave the stock motor drivers on there but like me i had it in my living room and so it was really annoying how loud it was and these silence up the printer so much and while you're replacing those it will be a great time to replace your firmware the stock printer firmware that comes on here is kind of an out of date version of marlin and there's so many great features you'll be unlocking if you go ahead and update to a newer version there's added features added safety features it can also make the installation of your stepper motor drivers a little bit easier because if you download the correct firmware you won't need to reverse the plugs on the motor wires there's plenty of videos already out there that cover installing those and your options involved so i'm not going to cover it in depth here i just want to let you know that updating your firmware really isn't that difficult and i would highly recommend it on your path of upgrading your 3d printer now the next upgrade i would highly recommend makes your printer so much easier to use are you tired of using this sd card every time you want to load new prints onto your printer wouldn't it be nice if there was a web ui already built onto your printer where you can monitor it upload new files start and stop prints and that's our next mod this is a raspberry pi connected onto the printer running octoprint octoprint creates a web server you're able to log on to and easy easily access and control your 3d printer along with all the community created plugins there's so many added features that come with octoprint i think this is an essential upgrade if you want ease of use and to unlock so many added features this specifically is a raspberry pi 4 but raspberry pi 3s work just as well i do really like this mount because it's sort of a french cleat here the printer case can come off i can take this wherever i want and this arm just sort of clips on to the metal vertical brace here and also adds place for your webcam on the front the webcam is another great feature that comes with octoprint it allows you to monitor your prints from anywhere and check in make sure things are working correctly i know it may sound lazy but it's so much easier to just open your phone and check if your print is working correctly then walking into the next room you may think you're not that lazy but it'll happen to you too and this was just a webcam i had laying around you can use anything you could use a raspberry pi camera for that so if you use your printer very much at all would highly recommend setting up octoprint it's really not as hard as it may sound and now it's time to move on to the final upgrade i've done to this printer the x carriage let me explain what that's all about this is one of the most advanced free open source upgrades that you can make for your printer you may ask yourself why do i need to upgrade the x carriage if my prints are coming out fine and if that's true for you i would say keep using the stock one until you want something more until you reach a limitation of that one that you want to improve upon keep using the original so the benefits of this one over the original one is dual part cooling fan so the cooling ducts cool the part on both sides a great example is the classic 3d benchy where the hull is a pretty good overhang test i found on the original printer since it only cooled on the left side here if i oriented this part towards that then i printed a fine hole but if i were to reverse it like this the overhang was never very good now on this one i printed this exact 3d benchy like this and the hull is probably one of the best i've ever printed reason number two is how open of a design it is the original is fairly closed off in a metal box and keeps everything tucked away hidden from you and it just works with this one it's so much easier to get in there and change things to get things off of your hot end changing the nozzle is so much more exposed now it's fairly easy to access number three would be the aesthetics and what i learned along the way i didn't design it and all credit goes to the designer but i picked these colors i printed them i put them together myself and made the printer work now and it's a really satisfying feeling knowing that you built this you put it together and it works really well now it makes me want to go back and reprint these other aesthetic parts to the printer and make it one cohesive theme now that this is such a large part of the printer but if the aesthetics and looks aren't really doing it for you it also makes great prints as well so there's that but that about wraps up the current mods that i've put on this printer it prints so well now but it printed really well initially if you've just got this printer know that you don't have to jump into these more complex builds and as certain things start to limit you that's when you can start upgrading things but anyway i hope you found this video useful and maybe you learned some mods that you could use on your own printer if there's any that you're using on your printer that i don't know about put them in the comments down below i would love to hear from you i think that's one of the best parts of 3d printing is the amazing community around it and how much you can use your printer to make your printer better i've got a lot of future plans for this printer i'm thinking about adding clipper firmware on here so if you're interested in that video make sure you hit that subscribe down below so you don't miss out on that video and while you're down there if you would hit that like button it really helps me out and lets youtube know that more people would like to see this video i hope you guys make something amazing today and i'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: JJ Shankles

Views: 10,666

Keywords: GoatToaster9, JJ Shankles, 3d printer upgrades, Anycubcic, anycubic mega, anycubic i3 mega, anycubic mega s, anycubic mega s 3d printer, anycubic mega s setup, anycubic mega s leveling, anycubic mega s assembly, essential 3d printer mods, beginner 3d printing, anycubic 3d mega x-carriage, anycubic x carriage mk4, 3d print, i3 mega, 3d printing, 3d printing 101, anycubic mega-s, best budget 3d printer, i3 mega upgrades, 3d printer, how to 3d print, anycubic 3d printer

Id: _tpL61LEts0

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021