Anet A8 Plus 3D Printer Full Review

Here is a comprehensive review of Anet A8 Plus 3D printer from Fugatech 3D Printing. Anet A8 Plus 3D printer is a complete diy kit. Nothing comes assembled except for its extruder head. You could probably build it up in about 2-2.5 hours. It is a direct drive printer which i love. Direct drive printers they are just much easier in my opinion you get less retraction, less stringing, you can do more materials with the direct drive. it makes flexible filaments easier.

It is a 300 x 300 x 350mm on the z build volume. This is as far as i know and far as i've seen online, the absolute cheapest large format 3D printer on the market.

It comes with a glass sheet which for me was pretty flat. didn't have too many issues trying to level it. the bed knobs are a little small but it is usable. Because it's such a large bed you can easily pull it to the front fix the front or the back. and The way that it was built and wired are very easy to follow. All the cables are labeled very well that make putting this together much easier. 

It is using a older Anet specific 8-bit controller so you're not going to have anything like sensors homing or silent steppers. this is not the quietest printer out there. it does have a very loud 5015 fan. The 4010 fan on the side for the heatsink is also very loud. The motor used is a4988. If being quiet is a factor for you, don't look at this printer because it's not quite at all. You could modify it easily, but out of the box, definitely, not a quiet printer. it does use a 24volt pcb aluminum bed. it is running dual the steppers. They are not linked in any way.

It's running a standard 320 watt 24 volt power supply. it's not a Meanwell. and again it is running their own custom board running marlin. it does have a full graphic display. The LCD control screen is connected by magnets which is a very interesting thing and it comes with a like two meter long cable. i found this was more of annoyance than it was a convenience because i don't need to take this off to look at the print. i would mount it on this side. If I want to be able to take it off and actually have some slack but i ended up just riding the cable around the front putting some zip ties on it and keeping it fixed.

Now let's talk a little bit about quality of the actual build. It's really not that bad. There are several sheet metal parts. some of it thinner like the power supply mount and enclosure. and the actual control board mount and enclosure is all a pretty much like a 1-2mm sheet aluminum. The top brackets on the z-axis is a 3mm piece of aluminum, so a little more sturdy for that.  The x and z carriage parts are injection molded, as well as the x-axis extruder carriage.

Then the y idler tensioner and the y bracket for the y motor are also 3mm aluminum. of all of this there are only two 3d printed parts, the first one is the little fan shroud part cooling fan, the other 3d printed part are the y-rod holders.

It was so easy to get all these parts aligned properly, because they are using not blind joints but they're extrusion joints.

i should say and that they are absolutely perfect because these are pre-drilled and tapped. there is no guesswork. it's very very quick and easy to install that you can do this one in about two maybe two and a half hours. Because of these joints you really don't have the need for any type of inside corner brackets.

Let's talk about the extruder a little bit. It is a direct drive but is a very very strange direct drive. They are using a very small throat or very small heatsink

it is not an e3d. it is a mk8.

They do have this very strange 4010 fan blowing against the extruder

now they do on the official anet website have a 5015 mount, that you can swap this fan out for a 5015.

The 5015 fan would create a very sharp cold zone for that to have a good transition going from the cold end to hot end. It would be a good upgrade for your Anet A8 Plus.

Let's go ahead and whip out some of these prints so you can see the quality that comes off 100 stock machine. i haven't changed anything in this except for adding a silicone heat sock to the hot end.

Let's take a look at some of these stock prints.

Chinese chess piece on the sd card 

This is the test print included in the sd card. i used some old junky pla with  pre-slice settings on the sd card. The print quality of this test print wasn't fantastic, but it did work.

xyz calibration ripple test cube

Now this was me slicing this myself in simplify 3d. and it looks absolutely fantastic. you can see a little bit of the retraction, and ghosting on it. but that just wasn't quite dialed in yet. But overall, really well. top layers are great. it's very consistent.

Benchy

This is a 150 scale benchy. still retraction you can see, but everything did come out well again just a little bit ghosting here on the bow. But it bridged very well over all of the windows. no issues there everything filled in nicely, and no wobble and very smooth walls. and it also did not really have that divot that you get in here from when starts printing the hollow or the the solid deck. there really is no deformation in there which is really good to see. The cooling on this is pretty adequate.

it prints great. it is a large scale printer. Overall if you're looking for something that is a great printer to start with, this would be the one that you want to buy.  It's very easy to upgrade this printer. there's mounting points on here that you can easily bolt on other parts. If you want you could buy a spring steel and magnetic sheet on the bed so you have a flexible build plate. You can upgrade the board also easily to a skr or a a big treetech or an mks board, that way you have 32 bit you could do centerless homing with this very easily. I think everyone should get this and start moving forward more custom builds.