Thanks for the advice I will give it a shot.

Here is the guide I used

https://hackaday.io/project/14823-monoprice-select-mini-maximum-3d-printer-mods/log/55525-upgrade-the-z-axis-with-a-nema17-stepper-and-tr8x8-leadscrew/

I had to cut out the old lead nut and drill tiny holes to mount it. The wiring that came with the new motor plugged into the main board but the motor turned the wrong way so I had to switch two wires. Do not switch them the way they did it in the guide it will not work.

Something to consider is also that the stock screw is not standard and you should change your layer height to

Layer Height (mm) 0.04375 (results may vary)* 0.0875 0.13125 0.175 0.21875 0.2625 0.30625

https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/3904/what-are-the-magic-numbers-on-a-monoprice-select-mini

There is also sailfish firmware which iirc helps a lot plus using octoprint and modern slicing software. The only pain point is leveling the bed manually and not having a flexible bed plate so sometimes removing the print can be a pain. I used to get pretty good prints off of this clone.

Prusia slicer makes it easy to set up two extruders as well as having the option for the firmware. Although it still outputs gcode and you have to convert it to x3g which I use the GPX octoprint plugin for. I’m sure you could use Orca slicer but it’s not documented. I used to use Slic3r before Prusia slicer became a thing.

I had to go with prusia slicer but at least it’s an up to date slicer.

Yes this is the first layer. I can upload the gcode later if you’re curious.

It’s a brand new roll that printed fine on another printer yesterday. I think the issue is the z axis motor as now it’s toast after I crashed it into the bed.

The outer perimeter is sticking really well though. If you look you can see where the nozzle was dragging through the plastic on that part then when it goes to infill it does this guitar stringing thing.

I expect more power efficient chips that are ai specific to come out in the next few years. Eventually you’ll be able to run good models on your phone. Not sure about ram requirements or anything like that if the model could be shrunk down somehow. There’s definitely huge gains in optimizing efficiency to be had. Right now is the equivalent of an old IBM mainframe trying to do a spreadsheet. We might even giggle at the thought of gigabytes of ram in the future with having multiple terabytes as standard on personal devices.

It would wildly fuck with enterprise systems because you would have to have a way to verify age for the users of EVERY system. The way it is now you would have to verify the age of users of iot and smart devices. You have to have id to turn on your lights or use the refrigerator.

They could be making tens of dollars! But seriously used printers are essentially worthless.

We need to nationalize the oil industry and stomp down anybody denying climate change including these schill politicians.