Tronxy X1 3D printer upgrades

This is a brief post, mostly for my own usage / keeping track, detailing the few upgrades  I did to one of the cheapest 3D printers out there, the Tronxy X1, which I bought a couple of years ago for my 8 years old son.

It turns out it’s much more capable than what I thought and I’m using it more and more often, as it has a slightly bigger print area compared to my other printer, the Mini Fabrikator II (I also have an old / initial version Ultimaker, on which I’ve given up, after years of frustration, mainly with the extruding system…).

Z axis Tightening

Bed Tightening

Extruder Motor move

Fan slow down

Initial, unused attempt at Z axis tightening

 

It all started from a lot of play around the Z axis, which would often result in circles being printed as squares. After some search it appears the tolerances on all axis are one of the several known issues with this printer.

So I downloaded and printed/adapted from Thingiverse a few parts, most importantly 2 tighteners for the Z axis, but also for the bed.

I initially thought that the problem with the Z axis was made worse by the heavy extruder motor being attached to the gantry moving vertically so I moved it to a fixed place on top of the printer (retrospectively I don’t think this changed anything 🙂 ).

There was also another very annoying issue, with the Extruder Fan which was very loud and a bit too powerful, as the printer was struggling to go beyond 200-210 degrees C.

To keep it simple, I decided to simply drop the voltage to the fan from 12V to around 9V. So I measured the current used by the fan, which was around 0.15Amp, and added a ~22Ohms resistor in series. The voltage drop on it should be 22*0.15 =3.3V.

It seems that 9V is about right, the airflow is still powerful enough to cool the extruder but it can now go up to 240-250 degrees, and most importantly it’s quieter ! 🙂

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