Looking for help tricking out my new XYZ Da Vinci Printer! (more below)
Hey Guys!
I think I’ve finally decided to go with the “XYZprinting Da Vinci 1.0 3D Printer” as my first printer guys! Thanks for all your help guys, especially Patrick Ryan, Tim Rashall, and Eric Lien for helping me gather information and settle on a decision. I plan to order tomorrow or so, and my mind is already moving onto what modifications I hope to make soon after is arrives, and I’d love any help you guys can give me on this. Here’s what I hope to do in time:
Jailbreak the firmware so that I can run reptier or some other superior program to dodge what I’ve heard is some pretty crappy default firmware.
Find a workaround regarding XYZ’s proprietary filament scam so that I can use any filament that I want.
Somehow rig all this up to run Octoprint so I can ultimately have this running in my garage while I’m off on my computer upstairs. This is a last-minute workaround from my initial plan of putting it right on my computer desk after I read an article that 3D printers can hurt your lungs almost as much as smoking, so I probably should have it right next to me in my poorly ventilated computer room all day
Thanks guys, I will appreciate any help you can give me. I’ve also found that Josh james over on Youtube seems to have a setup similar to what I’m wanting, so I’ll probably be studying his work as well
Well ashley, largely the design of the machine itself and the value of the hardware compared to the total cost. For $500 I get the heated bed, a huge build 7.8X7.8X7.8 build area, a fully enclosed case, and many other things that would normally cost hundreds to add to a custom printer like the Printrbot Simple, etc. Whereas these hacks should all be almost free, so if I can “reset” the hardware side of things, I should be getting quite a lot of high end features for a low end price.
Least that’s the theory. If anyone has any suggestions for a better route or warnings about things I may have missed, I welcome the advice.
I think I’ve found a tutorial on how to do most of what I want to right on this link, and it doesn’t look all too hard. Would someone with a more experienced eye mind looking over the video to see if I’m judging this correctly? Cause it looks like this guy found a way to just “brainwash” it and boom, you got a great printer for the price that now thinks it’s just a normal rep rap…
@Wayne_Friedt oh, and I don’t “have” to do all of this to it to use it, it comes fully “functional” right out of the box and I may well leave it as is for a while, I’ve just heard that people start getting annoyed by the inferior software after a while so I’m being proactive about this
You know, that’s a very valid point about the current 3D printer ecosystem right now. There isn’t a good <$1000 printer that comes enclosed, with a good gantry setup, decent build size. Maybe the Solidoodle comes close, but the quality was poor on the first iterations. Dunno if the SD4 is any better.
Exactly! I’m already stretching my budget to get a $500 one, so even the original Ultimaker would be little more than a dream for the next few years. My theory is that while software can be confusing, at least changing the software is free, and it just takes a few smart people with the time and willpower halfway around the world to figure out how to brainwash this cheap little gem and then they can come tell the rest of us how. And from what I’m finding in videos like this, it sounds like a lot of people have already made considerable progress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya0SPLHGKs8
I haven’t used the DaVinci printers yet but I did look at them when they had a display at 3D Print Show NYC and talked to the reps quite a bit.
The only thing that makes me nervous about your plan is that the fundamental hardware quality is a bit unknown (to me). The demo prints they were showing were terrible and they did confirm that the spools were chipped and that all the software was proprietary so I kinda lost interest at the time and didn’t look all that closely at the mechanics (to see if it had something to do with the lousy prints). If there are problems with the hardware, I imagine they’ll be MUCH more difficult to mod around because of the enclosed structure and mass produced parts (presumably lots of injected molded architecture).
My impression of these guys is that they are a mass manufacturing company (XYZPrinting are an arm of a massive Taiwanese company called Kinpo Group) trying to figure out 3d printing. As such, they are bound to make mistakes along the way BUT presumably have the R&D muscle to make course corrections if they have the right people steering the ship. As far as hackability goes there’s no way to know if these early generation models will suffer more fundamental problems that require mods OR if the next generation models will have the same problems and just be harder to hack (a wrong-headed manufacturer could see mod-ability as a design weakness itself). It seems like a bit of a roll of the dice right now but not a hugely risky one because of the low cost of entry.
You don’t need to hack the firmware. They use slic3r as their slicing engine and standard gcode. You should be able to slice your objects with whatever engine you want and then run it through the free encoder. I’ll have to find the link to that encoder, it’s been a while. I stumbled on it when I was looking into getting the Da Vinci.
Thanks for the info John and Evan, I need all that I can get on it. As I’ve said before, the price-to-value ratio is the main thing drawing me to this, and the fact that it’s a huge manufacturer may actually explain that. Also, I’m glad to hear the default programs may not be so bad, as I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet and am just having to go one what others tell me. And if you could find the link to that encoder I’d appreciate it Evan, as it sounds pretty handy
