After having worked with the Hephestos2 for nine months now I thought it was

3D Printing
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After having worked with the Hephestos2 for nine months now I thought it was time to share my experiences with it. I did have my share of problems with it, mostly due to my own mistakes, but I’m still satisfied with it. Anyone here having experience with the Hephestos2? What are your thoughts?

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Bought one to print the parts required for building my now main printer (eustathios). Now I use the hephestos mainly for flex and exotic filaments. The extruder is nice (dual gear like bondtech and direct drive. The heatbed is a limitation but like you I use buildtak. The only thing you can’t really solve is the wraping.
The machine is quite noisy even after 2 firmware updates fixing high pitch stepper sounds. If I can I use it while I have other things to do elsewhere in the house :wink:
It’s quite noob proof. Every actions like loading/unloading, calibrate, etc are guided, axis zero’ed each time, paused until heated or cooled at setpoint, etc. A bit too much if once or if you already have experience.
I didn’t have any problom with the extruder, just changed the nozzle to a SS one for carbon filaments, printed a new cooling fan channel and added light.

All in all it’s a good choice. The DIY assembly is a good thing to learn how is made the thing.

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@Maxime_Favre
Thanks for your elaborate answer. I really appreciate it. It’s my first 3D printer and it really got me into this. The learning curve of the Hephestos was not very steep with this kit. I agree that the printer is susceptible to warping (although I have very little reference) forcing the user to pay a lot of attention to nozzle distance to print bed and bed leveling. Besides carbon what other exotic filaments do you use?

BTW: I like your workshop with the lathe and the and eustathios printer. Well done. Even saw a glimpse of the Hephestos.

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Wraping occur mainly on long parts. Sometime you can avoid it by adding some pads on the corners. However it’s difficult to anticipate.

One thing I need to retry is to reduce the cooling fan. On the first firmware it was off or full power, regardless of the % set. This can help to limit the wrapping.

I do brass, stainless and copper filaments too.

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@Maxime_Favre
Thanks for all the info. I never updated the firmware. I somehow never got around doing that. It’s certainly worth it to give it a try.

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I highly recommend you to upgrade to V2.3.0.
You can see the current version on the about menu (or something like that).

The upgrade is pretty easy with the updater: https://www.bq.com/en/support/hephestos-2/support-sheet?ssess=5825bb8808de6&sorigin=productList