Holy Crap! I had recently dusted off the old anet A8 in hopes of getting working again. Low and behold, when I fired it up, this exact problem happened and I ended up boiling my pla. Turns out the temp sensor had fallen out of the block, causing thermal runaway. Luckily I was there to turn it off, and nobody was hurt nor property destroyed. Thanks for making this video, will update the firmware straight away!
Thanks for the info , i have been seeing a lot of comments about fire hazzard online & wondered what it was about . I own an A6 for 4 years & never considered it could be a hazzard . I even replaced heating element & sensor . No problem so far , thank God . This video is a service for good . Thank You .
I got my A8 about a year ago and it cost me less than $150USD. One of the first things I did was join a couple of A8 groups on Facebook. (Just about the only thing I actually use FB for.) There is a document there that has a LOT of A8 upgrade, safety, and repair info. INCLUDING turning on thermal runaway protection. The thing about the A8 is that it's about as generic a 3d printer as you can possibly get. There isn't a single part of it that can't be found online and replaced and upgraded, and, the information IS out there. But this requires research and a bit of effort. My A8 worked well when I got immediately after I assembled it, and now it absolutely purrs. Doesn't anyone remember--not all that long ago--when we wrapped nichrome wire around ceramic tubes to make a hot end? I've seen a lot of reviews on this channel where expensive brand new fully assembled printers did not work as expected and needed repairs or modifications pretty much out of the box. There are top of the line ASSEMBLED printers with inherent design flaws rooted in proprietary designs that are totally dependent on the manufacturers for support. In this very video, you pointed out how the Creality has the same software flaw that is at the heart of the A8 issue. Perhaps the A8 represents a perfect storm of flaws and shortcomings that plague the industry, and IMHO, turning off safetly features like thermal runaway protection is criminal. But ALL of the printers out there have components that get dangerously hot, or chemicals that shouldn't be in contact with skin, or create vapors that shouldn't be inhaled. The whole industry should be approached with eyes open and a special attention to safety. But blaming and shaming the A8 will not fix this problem.
Wow! I did not know that they had turned off that feature. I'd love to read that article though of where one caught fire. I have an Anet A8, the only one I've ever had. I've never had that kind of trouble with it, although after deciding on what printer I was getting I gorged myself on tutorials of how to use it and various upgrades to do. All this before it even reached my house. So after receiving it, as I was putting it together, I was upgrading it with a bigger power supply, mosfets for the heaters, direct soldering the wires to the bed, etc. I also upgraded the firmware to Skynet as per others recommendation. After a few months of no issues, I ended up with an issue where the filament wasn't coming out. Turns out the gear on the extruder motor had loosened it's grip, slipped off and wasn't gripping the filament. Easy fix. But then, not too long after, the extruder temperature was off, much more than usual, from what I had set it to be in the slicer. Wasn't like 100 degrees or anything. More like 10-15 degrees off. Couldn't figure it out. Then shortly after that, I couldn't get a reading on the extruder temperature at all. Generally just ambient temperature is anywhere around 21 - 30 some degrees. It was 0. Come to find out, the heater and temperature probe had slipped out of the heater block. I don't remember it actually heating at all, but the main point is that everything worked out and I think it's because of upgrading to Skynet and never actually running the stock firmware. I never knew they had disabled this safety feature until this video. Glad you're keeping up with this and getting the word out to everyone though.
I have an A8 just got it and it's my first 3d printer. Thank you very much for the info I'm doing this as soon as my 24 hour print finishes. I already desoldered the plugs and hard soldered the cables to the heated bed and replaced the heater block with an e3d v6. Keep up the good work sir.
Looks like someone is doing some good at Anet. I just read a comment from someone on UA-cam indicating that they had just received a new Anet A8 and that it had 4 wires going to the heater terminals on the bed, in addition to the 2 wires going to the thermistor. That was the only thing the commenter posted, so there might be other safety related enhancements. But that is a strong step in the right direction.
Thank you for this very important information! Suddenly I am feeling greatful that my Anet A8 has been sitting unused for months because I rage quit trying to get it to run properly.
I love my Anet A8 and quite frankly, I probably wouldn't have a 3d printer if the A8 weren't so inexpensive. But, with that said, as a former electrical engineer, I think it borders on criminal the number of poor choices that they made in their final design that was released to the public. The really sad part is that the corrections that I made to my printer in order to make it safer only amounted to a couple of dollars, if even that. At scale, it would cost less than a dollar to fix it, I'm sure. I won't recommend it to anyone with it's current flaws. But, I wouldn't trade mine for anything... Ok... Maybe a Prusa Mk 3. Definitely a Prusa Mk 3.
Thank you for posting this. I had been hemming and hawing about updating my A8's firmware for a year now and this finally gave me the push I needed. The new menu and pushing the center button instead of the right button to select will take some getting used to, but that'll work out in time. The Marlin firmware seems to be better at maintaining the temperature than stock A8. Stock set to 190 tended to run about 185-187. Marlin stays about 188-192. That said, my experiences with the stock firmware is that if either thermistor, hot end or bed, failed, such as when I overtightened the set screw and crushed the little epoxy ball, both heats are shut off. It'll still run the gcode you're running, but without heat, the filament will just solidify in the nozzle. And both will display an error, so it's hard to track down the problem. This appears to be a safety feature Anet didn't turn off, so that's good
Minor update to my situation. My original A8 board died... I think one of the thermistors stopped working, it's been a while, so no heat anymore. So I've upgraded to a RAMPS board. It's a 1.6, which I know is not a true 1.6 from the current 1.4 (or last I knew it was current) but it was cheap and it works and now my A8 is even more fireproof, like Kirk Cameron.
Thanks for the information! You helped a lot of people who had Anet A8 to not burn down his House! Safety First! I made the upgrade then i buy a Smoke Alarm.
I posted this to several of my Facebook groups as it's important to get the word out on this one.....I had planned on upgrading my creality 10s firmware anyway but this has just made it a priority
I do a lot of multi-day prints and fire is always a concern. I am glad you mentioned the CR-10 thermal runaway, which the community recently commented on. Like you, I just unboxed and started doing prints on my CR-10S and need to determine what version I have and upgrade.
Thank you for making this video. Have an Anet A8. Think this points out why using open source is so important. If the code is closed, it is hard to see problems. Wish car makers would use open source in there computer software. Wonder how many people could have been saved from runaway cars.
Probably none? Worked in automotive software engineering - while i think engineering practices could be better and produce better verifiability, the software is actually reliable, they just squish the problem by throwing an immense amount of money on testing.
I had upgraded to Skynet V1.1...but I think I will go straight marlin (Skynet V1.1 is working GREAT on my printer...so why futz with it...and I know the runaway is turned on in that because I checked all the configs myself before I flashed)
There is the choice of adapting repeteir using these instructions 3dprint.wiki/reprap/firmware/anet/repetier/install Or now using marlin with the supplied configuration files. Both will give you thermal protection I actually think the repeteir menus are less clunky than Marlin but use Marlin now due to my bltouch.
One thing i've noticed is the poeple building cabinates out of IKEA. Wood catches on fire ( if i'm not mistaken) , so additional measures need to be added to a wooden frame to make it truly safe . One thing i thought of using is a tile base on top of the wood base at the bottom. The sides & top i haven't quite figured out yet but i'm working on it . I've seen aluminum frames w acrylic panels . In my mind , also not acceptable. Aluminium would melt if a real fire ever got going .It will take a bit of thought but i will come up with somethimg.............
Anet A8 was my first Printer. at the low price i was amazed that it worked out of the box. but with help from community found many upgrades for safety and print quality first few were in place day one. others as skill grew. Just supersized that firmware would not be updated so many good reasons too
As a general tinkerer I love the fact I get to build and customise these machines. I want to learn and the only way to do that is get stuck in so thanks for this video. I shall upgrade my firmware on Christmas. I got it as a present so I built it to make sure it worked first. I think I got a fake machine because its wood not acrylic and the hot bed frame is wood not aluminium. all the other parts seem the same but I don't have some options like my last one had. My last one could put the print head to each corner so the bed could be levelled. This one doesn't have that option so I'm hoping the firmware update will fix that.
I've had thermal runaway on my Prusa MK2 twice in the nearly 2 years I've owned it. The first one occurred when the hot end thermister wire broke. The second time was due to the heatbed cable breaking. In both cases, the controller reported the thermal runaway conditions and shut down. I lost prints, but my house is still standing. I prefer this outcome. This is why I strongly recommend Prusa to noobies wanting to get into 3D printing. Besides, Prusa actually has online support staff.
Thank you so much. Ordered an Ender 3 and been looking up upgrade features and glad you mentioned this. Going to upgrade marlin just to be safe once my machine arrives.
Anet A8 by default has a temperature protection system, the person’s fire in the news was because someone silly put in a new board without properly setting up marlin, worst still, he didn’t tighten the screw to his heater cartridge nor test it with a good tug so it fell out mid print, know this everyone, upgrade your printer safely and always test things before leaving your printer alone :P
Agreed. I'd add a few fuses inline with the power input and power outputs which can also help prevent electrical fires caused by accidental shorts. The cheapest and easiest is probably the inline automotive blade fuse (either the mini or standard size). The fuses and fuse holders can be bought online or at nearly any automotive store for just a few of your local monetary units, and have various styles ranging from inline and splice varieties to dedicated fuse boxes. I'm always a fan of multiple, overlapping protection methods. If one fails, hopefully one of the others will catch the problem before it becomes a disaster.
I upgraded the firmware on my A8 a week or two after getting it becuase the stock firmware didn't support calibration codes from a remote host and there were some scaling issues with the steppers. A few weeks of printing after that, I had a loose heater element and got to discover the joys of mechanical debugging. I'm fairly certain that the runaway heat detection has saved me more than once. That element hit probably 400-500 degrees. One fix other than upgrading the firmware, by the way, is to make certain the heater block is properly assembled. Check every screw, and while you're in there, stick a bit of PTFE tubing under the extruder gears to make reloading the filament less of a pain. Maybe I just suck at it. For accuracy, put some super glue or Loctite on all of the screws that aren't exposed to heat and aren't the ones holding the extruder fan on. They have an annoying habit of vibrating loose, and if you're like me then boy howdy will you be pulling that extruder apart a few times.
Great video, I'm going to update the firmware before my next print. This sounds like something that could make a good plug-in for octoprint, the temperature failsafe plug-in will prevent the sensed temperature from exceeding set temperatures but it doesn't appear to have the logic to shut down the heater if say the sensor was loose and just measuring air temperature. The safety features need to be built into the machine but a backup via octoprint would be that much safer. I don't know how to write plug-in's or I would be working on that right now.
Already done. Here: github.com/jneilliii/OctoPrint-TPLinkSmartplug/issues/59#issuecomment-420474368 I also made an arduino which does the same thing but isn't reliant on a router/internet connection. Mine uses a 433mhz socket but a relay would do just as well.
3D Printing Professor, great video! I feel that anyone who is going to get into the hobby owes it to themselves to do a bit of research before making the plunge into 3D printing. That said, I agree that Anet should not leave it in the hands of the consumer the upgrade the firmware of the bot to ensure some pretty serious safety parameters on turned on by default. The quickest solution since the Anet A8 uses a modified version of Marlin is to ship bots with the open source software modified to there liking with the safety features turn on. Thanks!
when I got my a8 well over a year ago I didnt like what I had seen and stopped assembling it until I did the following: removed the power connectors on the Anet v1.0 board and replace them with short 14 AWG wires connected to XT60 connectors for portability reasons, I removed the connector on the hotbed and wired 2 pair of 16 AWG silicons cable for the heated bed connected to an external mosfet, there are 6 pins on the end of the bed but only 4 were being used, now all 6 contact points are, another thing I didnt like was the fact that the springs that support the hotbed rest again the bottom of it and are free to scratch through to the traces of the heating element causing a short, but to be fair there are other printers out there that are shipped like this, but the fix is easy, I used 4 wide m3 steel washers with home made cardboard ones underneath them against the bed, I have been running skynet on it for over a year, it prints pretty well, I have had no issues with it in the time I have had it but its hardly a stock printer now...
Awareness... Thank you... We need more of this info for the folks getting into fdm by way of cheap kits. It's alarming how many people are going that route with no bcakground or understanding of hardware and software.
I think you can't compare the Anet A8 to the CR-10S when it comes to fire hazard. In fact there are multiple factors which in combinator lead to the A8 fire hazard: The A8 hotend uses a very simple mechanism to keep the heater from falling out (a screw from the bottom, that most people are not even aware of, untill the heater starts getting loose, If people were to tighten that screw from time to time, the danger would not be there.) Then the A8 doesn't have a silicone sock or kapton tape wrapped around the heater / thermistor assembly. If some kapton was wrapped aound that part, the danger would also go away, because if the heater would get loose, it couldn't fall out because of the tape. Then, the A8 hat got the cable that goes to the heater not being attached to the extruder sled. So for every move of the x-axis, it will pull on the heater. Fixing the cable to the sled, preferrably as close as possible to the hotend assembly would also make sure the heater doesn't fall out. If any of these measures would have been implemented properly they might have avoided the fires as well. If you look at the CR10 stock extruder assembly, it is really difficult for the heater to fall out because of the metal cage around the hot end. Also, the CR10 has a metal frame and a metal electronics case that is not connected to the frame. So even in case of a fire on the hotend or the electronics, there is not so much plastics to catch fire as with the Anet A8 and its acrylic frame. In my opinion even though the CR10 doesn't have the thermal runaway protection activated in its firmware, it is a much safer printer than the A8. But if you are using a 3D printer you should always try to make it as safe as possible, so you should update to Marlin with thermal runaway protection activated, but you should also fix the cables to your x-axis sled, you should tighten the screw that holds your heater cartridge, put some kapton tape around you hotend to fix your heater, and maybe revisit some of the changes to the hotend /extruder assembly and see if they introduce additional risk.
Thank you very match for telling me i am new in 3d printing and watch a lot of video s to keep my printer save but havent heard ore readed about this again thank you for telling me
It's Repetier Firmware on the Anet and it defaults to protection disabled, and it's not quite so trivial to enable it, might not have crossed their minds, and it might not even work properly, judging by developers' conduct on github issue tracker. However of course many ship with Marlin with protection disabled. That's difficult to even begin to justify. Regardless, none of these should be left running like that. Perhaps we need a grand database of 3D printers which lists * whether they are flashable without additional equipment, i.e. have bootloader via USB * whether they are compatible with open-source firmware and whether actively maintained distributions exist * whether they ship an open-source firmware legally or under a GPL violation * whether they have any of the numerous known safety features - i.e. individual bed fuse, individual hot-end fuse, thermal runaway protection in default firmware, flyback diodes on MOSFET outputs. Anet doesn't have any of those, not a single one. * whether they have known severe construction defects like unsuitable connectors or unproven and suspicious MOSFETs. The heated bed connector on Anet for example is more than a bit suspicious. Geeetech has shipped unknown MOSFETs in some iterations of GT2560 board. Also people need to be made aware that cable management and strain relief is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, especially in kits that you build yourself or printers that you modify. The heater and bed wires need to be tied down in a kink-free manner where they terminate into the moving part and at a stationary point, this is non-negotiable. Chances are, none of the fires would have happened if everything was just affixed properly.
I must stand in defense of the A8 because it has been an excellent low cost tinker kit of a 3D printer, of course I believe it is very much an adult kit so kids have no right playing with wiring, that fire was unfortunate but it was because someone was making changes to their machine without understanding the changes they were making and it was because they changed the firmware irresponsibly to remove the current safety temperature system of the A8, I know this because when I had my thermistor fall out mid print, the machine turned off the cartidge and did not burn down my house
2 things you can do to make the heater block safer # 1 add a thermal fuse to the block #2 add a second heat sender to an independent non soft ware based control circuit that will shut off if it reads a tempura outside the set range of the secondary controller ..
I think PSA type videos like this one is probably the best thing that can be done. Maybe ask retailers to put warning labels on the product listings so people are aware of the situation. At least then they can make the decision of whether they want to go through the process of fixing it or steer clear in the first place. Honestly, I'm starting to think that, unless you have a good reason not to, the first thing anyone should do with a new printer is upgrade the firmware to the latest version.
Fern Moore I mean yes, PSAs help. Though maybe if the community stopped encouraging people to buy machines that are known to have critical, potentially deadly design flaws we wouldn't be in this position.
I don't think anyone encourages people to buy machines that are known to have design flaws. We encourage people to buy things that work, and then discover later the hidden evils.
it is up to you as and owner of a 3d printer to make sure you set it up properly because if you make a mistake in setting up the profile and get the heat temps wrong and start a fire that's your own fault
just watched your video on the a8, I was about to buy one, thank you for changing my mind and the safety advice. thanks again so much. with your advice I still have my funds my home and my health not in any order there . I figured it was to good a thing to be true. great advice. keep it coming. very informative.
Fred Wilson Dude thats absolute nonsense, everything in life catch fire, toasters microwaves cars, televisions iphones, you name it, there has been only two reported cases of this printer catching fire, and people had made a big thing about it, all electrics including the most expensive ones also catch fire in larger percentage numbers, this is very easy to prevent by a dummy proof free upgrade, and even if you dont make the upgrade dont mean ur printer is going to catch fire , thats just simply stupid, is just a precaution to minimise any possibility of the printer catching fire. the Value of the annet a8 is amazing, not only for the price and the quality of the prints, but because you get to build it yourself and learn on the process why and how things are printed valuable information to get the most quality results, things that you dont learn on ready made printers, I been using anet a8 for 2 years, I have also 500 dollar printers, and I get nearly the same result and quality, after doing some adjustments and free upgrades, my printer has never caught fire and had it run it on dailiy bases the first year with no upgrades, I did all the upgrades afterwards cause I love building and creating. in my opinion this printer is a must for beginners of 3d printing and forget about people trying to scare you about fire, is nonsense,. just do an easy upgrade for your peace of mindf simple
I have a anet a8,it was printing really good but all of a sudden my prints are rubbish. I’ve levelled the bed,changed the nozzle,I’ve made sure screws and belts are tight. I’m at a loss 🤷♂️
A picture of what exactly "rubbish" prints look like would be worth 1000 words here. Can you jump on my discord and post a question in #troubleshootung? discord.gg/rpwXqE5
I would just like to say that some anet a 8 do ship with that safety code turned on my printer was like that but I agree you should update your firmware just to be safe
I have been an embedded engineer for the last 20+ years. Working on thing like fire alarms and car braking system, also HA systems, safety systems are built in to the code, and how every much the end user asks, it would be unethical, for us to allow, the default setup, to be unsafe, so unsafe options can not be “saved” so every time the system boots, it should be in a safe mode. So should Marlin’s firmware be changed to stop the boot state having these option disabled, and if this option need to be disabled (only time I can think of, if for safety testing of some kin, calibration of the systems) can only be done until next reboot or power cycle by some gCode, menu option.
I know for a fact one of the A8s that was in the news for catching on fire had a re purposed computer power supply running it that fried. Not a stock power supply.
I bought some super cheap heat blocks for the anet A8 and they have three grub screws 2 for the heat cart and one for the thermistor they probably cost an extra 1 cent more than the dodgy oney Anet supply.
My personal opinion on this. The Anet A8 is NOT a bad printer. It, in itself, is not dangerous. IF.. And it is a big if. If it is well maintained. You do not drive a car without having it serviced occasionally. Changing the brake discs and pads. Changing the oil etc. Same needs to be done with a 3D printer A8 or any other printer. I have an A8. I check it before each print. I see it like driving a car from 1950 when compared one from 2018. Modern cars have Anti lock brakes ,Air bags, Side impact protection systems, Seat belts and some have traction control. A 1950's car does not have these. But it does not make them inherently dangerous. Just less safe. While I do not agree with your hard stance against the A8 and Anet. I do agree that the safety features should be switched on from the factory. Yes. Maybe there might be a reason to switch them off. An option to do so in the menu system along with suitable 'Are you really sure about this?' message should be available. Part of the problem is these printets are are DIY build. So the quality of how these things are built up varies from petson to person. I've read stories of the printers being built on less than 3 hours. I built mine over a week. I took my time to learn about how it worked and made sure everything was good. So a lot of the issues can be avoided. But yes. I will be upgrading my A8 to the latest version of Marlin and I may look at adding the option to switch the safety features off and on to the firmware myself.
What I found interesting is that the problem is also with the Creality printers and others and not limited to the Anet A8 alone. To leave it to the public to solve is irresponsible and it is just a matter of time when the manufacturer will have a class action lawsuit against it. The public can take precaution but ultimately it is the manufacturers responsibility to ensure that his product is safe.
Anet is unique in this in that their temperature sensor is known to slip out from time-to-time, resulting in opening the loop *and* they disabled the safety meant to catch that. It's a one-two punch that makes Anet machines uniquely dangerous.
Man i haven't had any of these problems. probably because i have ample cooling on it. ram mine for 28 hours strait with no problems several times. I have the original one though, the "omni printer" version. I keep my element and thermister tight and make sure to replace any thermisters that go bad. When one does go bad, the system stops everything. Common sense stuff. I guess i got it early enough or late enough to miss that. I guess the original software had this safety in it.
i've never seen a single article on someone's ANET actually catching fire. I've ran my anet a8 stock version for 3 years now. Not a single problem. Well i've had problems....but nothing with my board, power supply, heatbed or anything like that.
Just google "Anet fire". It's been a couple of years since this happened, and to my memory there were only 3 that were publicly reported on. It's a pretty specific set of failings that need to happen. But, so far it's only been ANets that it happened with. Not to say it couldn't with others. Also, easy to fix.
I greatly think that the thermal runaway should be better writen and wire tie wrap instead of those plastic spring (so that even if the screw is loose, every thing stay in place)
Hello, I am looking for ur help. I have bought anet a8 3d Printer. But y and z axis motor fixed plates are missing in the package. It will be nice if you can share the parts picture with dimensions. I'll be able to manufacture the parts on my own. Thank u.
Wondering how long it will be before the victims of the fires get together and bring a class action lawsuit against them for disabling a safety feature that *may* have prevented the fires.
Having worked a temp job updating the firmware of phones one time, I can attest that it only takes a work day to do a couple thousand with enough people, but that's more than rock bottom, which Anet is pricing thermal they themselves for.
At some point criminal/civil liabilities need to apply if these safety checks are intentionally removed and there isn't at least a note as you open your printer indicating that -- and at a minimum a link to a website where you can get a safer firmware. I have always been saying -- stop buying junk, use better hardware, but you can have the best hardware, best wiring, best practices, and something can still fail. I've seen expensive silicone insulated wires fail with no visual indication (silicone insulation will just snap back, and the strands break) - simply from being tugged too hard. So the firmware protections are our safety switch, and they should NEVER be disabled. You can adjust the range for thermal runaway detection to avoid false positives, but NEVER turn them off. This is why GPL compliance is so important. For now I would say if you have a printer, not just an A8, any printer, and you didn't setup the firmware yourself, assume these protections are not on, and go get the latest firmware and turn them on.
Or they could have one more temperature sensor, a total of 2 temperature sensors for redundancy and increased the price may be few more $$. Would have helped a lot for this kind of mess.
In this video you mention Creality turning off the runaway heat sanity check too. But then you say no more about it? Do I need to upgrade my CR-10? Is it safe?
I wouldn't recommend using any 3D printer with thermal runaway protection disabled. All it takes is a thermistor to fail (be it in the heated bed or hotend) for a runaway condition to occur.
At the moment a build of Marlin, either from Creality or the Marlin team, isn't ready to go, so there's nothing to upgrade to yet. Also, remember you'll need a bootloader to update the firmware on a CR-10. As for if it's safe, just don't let it run unattended. Until the firmware can watch out for problems, that's your job.
I am happy flashing a boot loader - my cr10 is not a creality (it's from Amazon). Is there a way to check if it is disabled? Mine does give me a MinTemp error if it's really cold - i print in my unheated garage - if the thermistor in the hot end reads below 10C - so that is a good sign. Is there a real world check I can do? Unplug thermistors from board and see what it does? Thanks for the answer - I think this is an important topic that needs high visibility/outspoken users - like yourself - to highlight.
Some other big things that people forget, or folks that are new to kit printers is good cable management, and to tighten screws for "preassembled" parts (looking at the hot end here). Every kit I have assembled had the heater cartridge just slid into position, and not tightened down. Couple that with lack of understanding about cable management and keeping all the hot end wires tied down causes a lot of these "burned" printer issues. Most of the burned printer photos/vids I have seen could have been avoided with 1) updated firmware as the easiest 2) some common sense with cable management. Just my 2 cents worth.
My brand new Creality Ender4 went up in smoke! If I hadn't been sitting by it? I was running a print, the skin didn't look right, I killd the print, went to changing the outer layer settings, heard a noise, looked up the screen said over heat protection and the print head was t 450c and climbing, I grabbed the power plug and yanked It out as the board was catching fire! Creality Is sending a hot end and board.and yes, the heat block melted, run away protection engaged and still running away? Any help?
Now here is the kicker, I replaced the hot end, heater and thermister with exact matches, when I plugged it back in, it ran away instantly as soon as it got power?
Alright, Alright, after many pauses? comments.... other things, I finally Made it to the end of the video, I'm half thinking about clearing all of marlin, then entering #42 and hitting send! What's the worst that can happen? I'm old school and followed Kurt Russel's advise, I have two fire extinguishers
To be fair, anyone buying an Anet A8/A6 **KIT** (emphasis on KIT) should have done a minimum of research on the different kits available from various manufacturers and therefore should ALREADY KNOW the issues that need to be addressed with that printer. As such, failure to address these issues should at least lie EQUALLY as much on the consumer as the manufacturer. Buying a 3d printer kit that requires assembly says, at a minimum, that the purchaser is competent enough to assemble AND MAINTAIN their device. That being said, I personally would not recommend to anyone that they purchase an Anet printer kit as their first printer. The number of problems this printer comes with, not the least of which being incorrectly sized/poor quality smooth rods and bearings, make this printer a good learning experience ONLY if you already have another printer with which to begin printing the upgrades and repairs for the Anet. Also, as far as fire risk goes, upgrading the firmware will not totally obviate the risk if fire. There is another risk of fire with this printer that by the time the software detects a problem, the fire would already be present. I'm referring to the heated bed connector, which is nowhere near sturdy enough for the amount of current that must pass through it. If an Anet owner doesn'y directly solder the wires to the heated bed immediately during assembly, they are risking the connector overheating and burning. How much damage this actually could cause is entirely a matter of the surrounding environment, as the plastic connector itself is fairly small. But if a bit of burning plastic falls onto wood or more plastic, then the fire could grow out of control rather quickly. Again, I feel that this is the purchaser's responsibility primarily, but it is also something that COULD have been remedied at the manufacturer level.
ANet promises they've fixed this problem with future 3D printers, but which ones I'm not sure. But, being as they make no effort to stop you from beign able to update your firmware, it's always fixable.
@@3dpprofessor When i get mine, i will contact Anet to see if i can get the source code. since the A9 is not really being sold or has any community support-like mods I already know of a dozen mods im gonna do. The first one before even using it will be a glass bed
I have had 2 of the anet a8 3d printers. I updated one and not the other. I believe there is a faulty connector where the power enters the board as I have had 1 fire losing the machine and the other connector melted and threw sparks right in front of me. this could also be from the board getting to hot or itself being faulty. I now have a 3rd anet a8 that I have changed out the connector and have installed a fan blowing directly on the board from an outside source. cross your fingers, I have taken some temp readings and have seen them climb as well as taken some readings with my multimeter and have seen spikes. Dont buy this printer.
No, the MP units do not have this problem. They have a different problem: the "emergency stop" only kills the heaters, but the printer keeps on going like nothing's wrong. Which is better than lighting the house on fire, I suppose.
My first printer was a CTC, purchased in January. It's basically an A8 knockoff. When the runaway heating issue came to the fore, I immediately stopped using it. My new CR-10 arrived today, and I'm much happier with its output. I do plan on upgrading the firmware of my CTC and using it as a tinkering machine, but the CR-10 will be my workhorse, and I won't run the CTC unless I'm in the same room.
Yep. This may help also. I made a standalone Arduino second set of overtemp and smoke sensors which will shut off a cheap, hacked 433mz remote socket. All parts, code and instructions attached. Feel free to improve and share: ua-cam.com/video/n-JgQ3SaVME/v-deo.html If you don't fancy going that far, you can configure Octopi to shut off a TP Link Smartplug (or more recently a Wemo socket) by linking the TP Link and Temperature Failsafe plugins and writing a small shell script. Instructions are here: github.com/jneilliii/OctoPrint-TPLinkSmartplug/issues/59#issuecomment-420474368 It isn't just the Anet. The Tornado is as bad or potentially worse given the 230v unearthed bed and frame with no strain relief. I would also suggest a 5-6a blade fuse/breaker to the motors, board and hotend and a 15a breaker on a 12v bed power cable. Also offloading current from the mainboard with a bed mosfet.
China = cheap = means very poor quality, crap parts and even danger. So if you don’t now how to check everything on the machines don’t buy them. Buy something USA , Europe build . You get always for your money.
This isn't the first time that Vice has crossed lines they promised to honor and bullied sources and interviewees. I'm glad that you're bringing this to light.
The biggest immediate issue for her is her Patreon account being shut down. Boycotting Patreon isn't the answer because it ends up hurting other creators out there. We need a way to pressure them into reinstating her account, I just don't know what that is.
Knarf Sreirb except that every country sources their parts from China. Often they even just private label entire products made in China and you don't even know it till you read the fine print.
I dont think the sexy cyborg influenced the male members of the board I suspect it was those two big bad boys she took in with her LOL, anyway just to point out my CR-10 came with thermal runaway not enabled once you managed to get into the firmware and I know of 4 other friends had the same thing so I suspect there are plenty out there with this problem so Anet is not the only culprit. regards, RobUK
All the ANets used Repetier still do. And a old old version. And that is really the problem here, the old Repetier and Marlin did not have these fail safes. And not just ANet is still loading old firmware.
Quite Frankly this is NOT true. I have ran mine with the original firmware for more than 2 years no with no issues. But you must provide strain relief on the heated bed connector.
Hey Prof, is that why last week she posted saying she wouldn't be posting for awhile? Something to do with all of this? She said they shut down her Patreon page...Seems like more afoot......
Probably the same, but I don't know as I've never had hands on with one. There are, in fact, a ton of 3D printers this probably applies to. Update your firmware, kids.
This is what the race to the bottom gets you. The Anet couldn't be made any cheaper with almost no corners left to cut, so they started using subpar components that performed so badly the thermal runaway was getting triggered in normal conditions. Ethics be damned, the quick fix was to disable thermal runaway. Companies that violate the law and ethical standards like this deserve huge fines and jail time for the executives to make other think twice before releasing such shoddy products.
The public at large wants something for nothing. People expecting high wages, yet want high quality products below the manufacturers cost. Thats what's driving the race to the bottom.
I'm working on it. But I'm not going to stop making videos while I'm scrounging together the funds for a good camera and mic. Those things are expensive.
Anet uses an old version of Repetier. Skynet was a Arduino IDE/Marlin roll up to make adding a graphic screen and or bed leveling easy to add to an A8 and A6.
A "boycott until the firmware is fixed" won't solve the problem. World (or at least China) is full of shops, that have units for sale with old firmware already installed - you will HAVE to check this manually (or just upgrade firmware anyway) in any case. If you have issues with false positives, rather than disable this safety feature, you can "relax" the conditions for triggering a bit. Had to do that on my system. Also, regarding Creality also having this disabled - shouldn't this be rather easy (but slightly dangerous for inexperienced users) to check on most printers? Just disconnect heat probe & start heating WHILE carefully monitoring the hotend with external thermometer to see what will happen. If the heater keeps heating up too long, reset the machine immediately (and let the cold end cooler do its work to prevent filament clogging the system), mark the machine as "dangerous", and do a firmware upgrade. Maybe you can even query whether these settings are on via USB serial connection? (can'to check right now) If not, maybe they could at least add a way to store some boolean (on/off) settings in a short hexadecimal string, that you could query from LCD panel. Then, to make things easier, there could be a web page, where you can enter the string, and get "readable" output about what's enabled and what isn't. If using hexadecimal, there could be 4 such on/off values in each character.
I'm not sure I endorse the "poke the hornet net" approach to testing you suggest there, but, yes, that would be a black box method of testing if that feature is enabled. The menu for marlin is the one thing that's most contentious. It eats up the space pretty good, so they try to keep in minimal. But why do you access all the control options from the prepare menu, and all the system settings from the control menu? Seriously, this thing makes no sense. I get the sense that they've got a "that's the way it is now" mentality to changing it, like people wouldnt' be able to handle it if the menu were suddenly intuitive.
Holy Crap! I had recently dusted off the old anet A8 in hopes of getting working again. Low and behold, when I fired it up, this exact problem happened and I ended up boiling my pla. Turns out the temp sensor had fallen out of the block, causing thermal runaway. Luckily I was there to turn it off, and nobody was hurt nor property destroyed. Thanks for making this video, will update the firmware straight away!
Thanks for the info , i have been seeing a lot of comments about fire hazzard online & wondered what it was about . I own an A6 for 4 years & never considered it could be a hazzard . I even replaced heating element & sensor . No problem so far , thank God . This video is a service for good . Thank You .
I got my A8 about a year ago and it cost me less than $150USD. One of the first things I did was join a couple of A8 groups on Facebook. (Just about the only thing I actually use FB for.) There is a document there that has a LOT of A8 upgrade, safety, and repair info. INCLUDING turning on thermal runaway protection.
The thing about the A8 is that it's about as generic a 3d printer as you can possibly get. There isn't a single part of it that can't be found online and replaced and upgraded, and, the information IS out there. But this requires research and a bit of effort. My A8 worked well when I got immediately after I assembled it, and now it absolutely purrs.
Doesn't anyone remember--not all that long ago--when we wrapped nichrome wire around ceramic tubes to make a hot end?
I've seen a lot of reviews on this channel where expensive brand new fully assembled printers did not work as expected and needed repairs or modifications pretty much out of the box. There are top of the line ASSEMBLED printers with inherent design flaws rooted in proprietary designs that are totally dependent on the manufacturers for support. In this very video, you pointed out how the Creality has the same software flaw that is at the heart of the A8 issue.
Perhaps the A8 represents a perfect storm of flaws and shortcomings that plague the industry, and IMHO, turning off safetly features like thermal runaway protection is criminal. But ALL of the printers out there have components that get dangerously hot, or chemicals that shouldn't be in contact with skin, or create vapors that shouldn't be inhaled. The whole industry should be approached with eyes open and a special attention to safety. But blaming and shaming the A8 will not fix this problem.
Wow! I did not know that they had turned off that feature. I'd love to read that article though of where one caught fire. I have an Anet A8, the only one I've ever had. I've never had that kind of trouble with it, although after deciding on what printer I was getting I gorged myself on tutorials of how to use it and various upgrades to do. All this before it even reached my house. So after receiving it, as I was putting it together, I was upgrading it with a bigger power supply, mosfets for the heaters, direct soldering the wires to the bed, etc. I also upgraded the firmware to Skynet as per others recommendation. After a few months of no issues, I ended up with an issue where the filament wasn't coming out. Turns out the gear on the extruder motor had loosened it's grip, slipped off and wasn't gripping the filament. Easy fix. But then, not too long after, the extruder temperature was off, much more than usual, from what I had set it to be in the slicer. Wasn't like 100 degrees or anything. More like 10-15 degrees off. Couldn't figure it out. Then shortly after that, I couldn't get a reading on the extruder temperature at all. Generally just ambient temperature is anywhere around 21 - 30 some degrees. It was 0. Come to find out, the heater and temperature probe had slipped out of the heater block. I don't remember it actually heating at all, but the main point is that everything worked out and I think it's because of upgrading to Skynet and never actually running the stock firmware. I never knew they had disabled this safety feature until this video. Glad you're keeping up with this and getting the word out to everyone though.
I have an A8 just got it and it's my first 3d printer. Thank you very much for the info I'm doing this as soon as my 24 hour print finishes. I already desoldered the plugs and hard soldered the cables to the heated bed and replaced the heater block with an e3d v6. Keep up the good work sir.
Fyi to anyone who does the soldering upgrade the pins in the connector are shorter than I expected almost ripped a pad.
Thank you. I haven't started printing on my A6 yet but before I do, I'll do that firmware before anything else. Thank you again.
Looks like someone is doing some good at Anet. I just read a comment from someone on UA-cam indicating that they had just received a new Anet A8 and that it had 4 wires going to the heater terminals on the bed, in addition to the 2 wires going to the thermistor. That was the only thing the commenter posted, so there might be other safety related enhancements. But that is a strong step in the right direction.
Thank you for this very important information! Suddenly I am feeling greatful that my Anet A8 has been sitting unused for months because I rage quit trying to get it to run properly.
I love my Anet A8 and quite frankly, I probably wouldn't have a 3d printer if the A8 weren't so inexpensive. But, with that said, as a former electrical engineer, I think it borders on criminal the number of poor choices that they made in their final design that was released to the public. The really sad part is that the corrections that I made to my printer in order to make it safer only amounted to a couple of dollars, if even that. At scale, it would cost less than a dollar to fix it, I'm sure. I won't recommend it to anyone with it's current flaws. But, I wouldn't trade mine for anything... Ok... Maybe a Prusa Mk 3. Definitely a Prusa Mk 3.
Definitely a Prusa.
Thank you for posting this. I had been hemming and hawing about updating my A8's firmware for a year now and this finally gave me the push I needed. The new menu and pushing the center button instead of the right button to select will take some getting used to, but that'll work out in time. The Marlin firmware seems to be better at maintaining the temperature than stock A8. Stock set to 190 tended to run about 185-187. Marlin stays about 188-192.
That said, my experiences with the stock firmware is that if either thermistor, hot end or bed, failed, such as when I overtightened the set screw and crushed the little epoxy ball, both heats are shut off. It'll still run the gcode you're running, but without heat, the filament will just solidify in the nozzle. And both will display an error, so it's hard to track down the problem. This appears to be a safety feature Anet didn't turn off, so that's good
Minor update to my situation. My original A8 board died... I think one of the thermistors stopped working, it's been a while, so no heat anymore. So I've upgraded to a RAMPS board. It's a 1.6, which I know is not a true 1.6 from the current 1.4 (or last I knew it was current) but it was cheap and it works and now my A8 is even more fireproof, like Kirk Cameron.
i've had this happen to mine, the element slipped out. walked into the room and the fucker was glowing bright red hot
Thanks for the information! You helped a lot of people who had Anet A8 to not burn down his House! Safety First! I made the upgrade then i buy a Smoke Alarm.
I posted this to several of my Facebook groups as it's important to get the word out on this one.....I had planned on upgrading my creality 10s firmware anyway but this has just made it a priority
Doh, I forgot to crosspost this on the 3D printing group. Did you get this in the 3D printing group?
I do a lot of multi-day prints and fire is always a concern. I am glad you mentioned the CR-10 thermal runaway, which the community recently commented on. Like you, I just unboxed and started doing prints on my CR-10S and need to determine what version I have and upgrade.
Mine arrives Friday. I was kind of on the fence wether to install marling but happening for sure now. Thank you for the great info.
Thank you for making this video. Have an Anet A8. Think this points out why using open source is so important. If the code is closed, it is hard to see problems. Wish car makers would use open source in there computer software. Wonder how many people could have been saved from runaway cars.
Probably none? Worked in automotive software engineering - while i think engineering practices could be better and produce better verifiability, the software is actually reliable, they just squish the problem by throwing an immense amount of money on testing.
I had upgraded to Skynet V1.1...but I think I will go straight marlin (Skynet V1.1 is working GREAT on my printer...so why futz with it...and I know the runaway is turned on in that because I checked all the configs myself before I flashed)
There is the choice of adapting repeteir using these instructions 3dprint.wiki/reprap/firmware/anet/repetier/install
Or now using marlin with the supplied configuration files. Both will give you thermal protection I actually think the repeteir menus are less clunky than Marlin but use Marlin now due to my bltouch.
One thing i've noticed is the poeple building cabinates out of IKEA. Wood catches on fire ( if i'm not mistaken) , so additional measures need to be added to a wooden frame to make it truly safe . One thing i thought of using is a tile base on top of the wood base at the bottom. The sides & top i haven't quite figured out yet but i'm working on it . I've seen aluminum frames w acrylic panels . In my mind , also not acceptable. Aluminium would melt if a real fire ever got going .It will take a bit of thought but i will come up with somethimg.............
Anet A8 was my first Printer. at the low price i was amazed that it worked out of the box. but with help from community found many upgrades for safety and print quality first few were in place day one. others as skill grew.
Just supersized that firmware would not be updated so many good reasons too
As a general tinkerer I love the fact I get to build and customise these machines. I want to learn and the only way to do that is get stuck in so thanks for this video. I shall upgrade my firmware on Christmas. I got it as a present so I built it to make sure it worked first. I think I got a fake machine because its wood not acrylic and the hot bed frame is wood not aluminium. all the other parts seem the same but I don't have some options like my last one had. My last one could put the print head to each corner so the bed could be levelled. This one doesn't have that option so I'm hoping the firmware update will fix that.
I've had thermal runaway on my Prusa MK2 twice in the nearly 2 years I've owned it. The first one occurred when the hot end thermister wire broke. The second time was due to the heatbed cable breaking. In both cases, the controller reported the thermal runaway conditions and shut down. I lost prints, but my house is still standing. I prefer this outcome. This is why I strongly recommend Prusa to noobies wanting to get into 3D printing. Besides, Prusa actually has online support staff.
Thank you so much. Ordered an Ender 3 and been looking up upgrade features and glad you mentioned this. Going to upgrade marlin just to be safe once my machine arrives.
Joe, this is probably the best "for dummies" explanation of thermal runaway I've seen -- really neat job! Thanks for everything man!
Anet A8 by default has a temperature protection system, the person’s fire in the news was because someone silly put in a new board without properly setting up marlin, worst still, he didn’t tighten the screw to his heater cartridge nor test it with a good tug so it fell out mid print, know this everyone, upgrade your printer safely and always test things before leaving your printer alone :P
Strain relief is a MUST as well...physically attach the heater wires to the hot end carriage...so it doesn't pop out the heater or thermistor
Agreed. I'd add a few fuses inline with the power input and power outputs which can also help prevent electrical fires caused by accidental shorts. The cheapest and easiest is probably the inline automotive blade fuse (either the mini or standard size). The fuses and fuse holders can be bought online or at nearly any automotive store for just a few of your local monetary units, and have various styles ranging from inline and splice varieties to dedicated fuse boxes.
I'm always a fan of multiple, overlapping protection methods. If one fails, hopefully one of the others will catch the problem before it becomes a disaster.
I upgraded the firmware on my A8 a week or two after getting it becuase the stock firmware didn't support calibration codes from a remote host and there were some scaling issues with the steppers. A few weeks of printing after that, I had a loose heater element and got to discover the joys of mechanical debugging. I'm fairly certain that the runaway heat detection has saved me more than once. That element hit probably 400-500 degrees.
One fix other than upgrading the firmware, by the way, is to make certain the heater block is properly assembled. Check every screw, and while you're in there, stick a bit of PTFE tubing under the extruder gears to make reloading the filament less of a pain. Maybe I just suck at it. For accuracy, put some super glue or Loctite on all of the screws that aren't exposed to heat and aren't the ones holding the extruder fan on. They have an annoying habit of vibrating loose, and if you're like me then boy howdy will you be pulling that extruder apart a few times.
Great video, I'm going to update the firmware before my next print.
This sounds like something that could make a good plug-in for octoprint, the temperature failsafe plug-in will prevent the sensed temperature from exceeding set temperatures but it doesn't appear to have the logic to shut down the heater if say the sensor was loose and just measuring air temperature.
The safety features need to be built into the machine but a backup via octoprint would be that much safer.
I don't know how to write plug-in's or I would be working on that right now.
Already done. Here: github.com/jneilliii/OctoPrint-TPLinkSmartplug/issues/59#issuecomment-420474368
I also made an arduino which does the same thing but isn't reliant on a router/internet connection. Mine uses a 433mhz socket but a relay would do just as well.
3D Printing Professor, great video! I feel that anyone who is going to get into the hobby owes it to themselves to do a bit of research before making the plunge into 3D printing. That said, I agree that Anet should not leave it in the hands of the consumer the upgrade the firmware of the bot to ensure some pretty serious safety parameters on turned on by default. The quickest solution since the Anet A8 uses a modified version of Marlin is to ship bots with the open source software modified to there liking with the safety features turn on. Thanks!
when I got my a8 well over a year ago I didnt like what I had seen and stopped assembling it until I did the following: removed the power connectors on the Anet v1.0 board and replace them with short 14 AWG wires connected to XT60 connectors for portability reasons, I removed the connector on the hotbed and wired 2 pair of 16 AWG silicons cable for the heated bed connected to an external mosfet, there are 6 pins on the end of the bed but only 4 were being used, now all 6 contact points are, another thing I didnt like was the fact that the springs that support the hotbed rest again the bottom of it and are free to scratch through to the traces of the heating element causing a short, but to be fair there are other printers out there that are shipped like this, but the fix is easy, I used 4 wide m3 steel washers with home made cardboard ones underneath them against the bed, I have been running skynet on it for over a year, it prints pretty well, I have had no issues with it in the time I have had it but its hardly a stock printer now...
Awareness... Thank you... We need more of this info for the folks getting into fdm by way of cheap kits. It's alarming how many people are going that route with no bcakground or understanding of hardware and software.
I think you can't compare the Anet A8 to the CR-10S when it comes to fire hazard. In fact there are multiple factors which in combinator lead to the A8 fire hazard: The A8 hotend uses a very simple mechanism to keep the heater from falling out (a screw from the bottom, that most people are not even aware of, untill the heater starts getting loose, If people were to tighten that screw from time to time, the danger would not be there.) Then the A8 doesn't have a silicone sock or kapton tape wrapped around the heater / thermistor assembly. If some kapton was wrapped aound that part, the danger would also go away, because if the heater would get loose, it couldn't fall out because of the tape. Then, the A8 hat got the cable that goes to the heater not being attached to the extruder sled. So for every move of the x-axis, it will pull on the heater. Fixing the cable to the sled, preferrably as close as possible to the hotend assembly would also make sure the heater doesn't fall out. If any of these measures would have been implemented properly they might have avoided the fires as well. If you look at the CR10 stock extruder assembly, it is really difficult for the heater to fall out because of the metal cage around the hot end. Also, the CR10 has a metal frame and a metal electronics case that is not connected to the frame. So even in case of a fire on the hotend or the electronics, there is not so much plastics to catch fire as with the Anet A8 and its acrylic frame. In my opinion even though the CR10 doesn't have the thermal runaway protection activated in its firmware, it is a much safer printer than the A8. But if you are using a 3D printer you should always try to make it as safe as possible, so you should update to Marlin with thermal runaway protection activated, but you should also fix the cables to your x-axis sled, you should tighten the screw that holds your heater cartridge, put some kapton tape around you hotend to fix your heater, and maybe revisit some of the changes to the hotend /extruder assembly and see if they introduce additional risk.
A Great Video Professor.. I hope people take this information and understand it... Thank you.
Thank you very match for telling me i am new in 3d printing and watch a lot of video s to keep my printer save but havent heard ore readed about this again thank you for telling me
i have 2 anets one of them did start on fire. thank god i was sitting right there
It's Repetier Firmware on the Anet and it defaults to protection disabled, and it's not quite so trivial to enable it, might not have crossed their minds, and it might not even work properly, judging by developers' conduct on github issue tracker.
However of course many ship with Marlin with protection disabled. That's difficult to even begin to justify.
Regardless, none of these should be left running like that.
Perhaps we need a grand database of 3D printers which lists
* whether they are flashable without additional equipment, i.e. have bootloader via USB
* whether they are compatible with open-source firmware and whether actively maintained distributions exist
* whether they ship an open-source firmware legally or under a GPL violation
* whether they have any of the numerous known safety features - i.e. individual bed fuse, individual hot-end fuse, thermal runaway protection in default firmware, flyback diodes on MOSFET outputs. Anet doesn't have any of those, not a single one.
* whether they have known severe construction defects like unsuitable connectors or unproven and suspicious MOSFETs. The heated bed connector on Anet for example is more than a bit suspicious. Geeetech has shipped unknown MOSFETs in some iterations of GT2560 board.
Also people need to be made aware that cable management and strain relief is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, especially in kits that you build yourself or printers that you modify. The heater and bed wires need to be tied down in a kink-free manner where they terminate into the moving part and at a stationary point, this is non-negotiable. Chances are, none of the fires would have happened if everything was just affixed properly.
I must stand in defense of the A8 because it has been an excellent low cost tinker kit of a 3D printer, of course I believe it is very much an adult kit so kids have no right playing with wiring, that fire was unfortunate but it was because someone was making changes to their machine without understanding the changes they were making and it was because they changed the firmware irresponsibly to remove the current safety temperature system of the A8, I know this because when I had my thermistor fall out mid print, the machine turned off the cartidge and did not burn down my house
2 things you can do to make the heater block safer # 1 add a thermal fuse to the block #2 add a second heat sender to an independent non soft ware based control circuit that will shut off if it reads a tempura outside the set range of the secondary controller ..
I think PSA type videos like this one is probably the best thing that can be done. Maybe ask retailers to put warning labels on the product listings so people are aware of the situation. At least then they can make the decision of whether they want to go through the process of fixing it or steer clear in the first place. Honestly, I'm starting to think that, unless you have a good reason not to, the first thing anyone should do with a new printer is upgrade the firmware to the latest version.
Fern Moore I mean yes, PSAs help. Though maybe if the community stopped encouraging people to buy machines that are known to have critical, potentially deadly design flaws we wouldn't be in this position.
I don't think anyone encourages people to buy machines that are known to have design flaws. We encourage people to buy things that work, and then discover later the hidden evils.
Many thanks for that Informationen. I have an Anet and I will know Update to the latest Marlin Software. A very good and important Video.
it is up to you as and owner of a 3d printer to make sure you set it up properly because if you make a mistake in setting up the profile and get the heat temps wrong and start a fire that's your own fault
Gosh. Now I cant sleep anymore. You really scared me off. My neighbour recently got one of these ticking bombs. :-(
just watched your video on the a8, I was about to buy one, thank you for changing my mind and the safety advice. thanks again so much. with your advice I still have my funds my home and my health not in any order there . I figured it was to good a thing to be true. great advice. keep it coming. very informative.
Fred Wilson
Dude thats absolute nonsense, everything in life catch fire, toasters microwaves cars, televisions iphones, you name it, there has been only two reported cases of this printer catching fire, and people had made a big thing about it, all electrics including the most expensive ones also catch fire in larger percentage numbers, this is very easy to prevent by a dummy proof free upgrade, and even if you dont make the upgrade dont mean ur printer is going to catch fire , thats just simply stupid, is just a precaution to minimise any possibility of the printer catching fire. the Value of the annet a8 is amazing, not only for the price and the quality of the prints, but because you get to build it yourself and learn on the process why and how things are printed valuable information to get the most quality results, things that you dont learn on ready made printers, I been using anet a8 for 2 years, I have also 500 dollar printers, and I get nearly the same result and quality, after doing some adjustments and free upgrades, my printer has never caught fire and had it run it on dailiy bases the first year with no upgrades, I did all the upgrades afterwards cause I love building and creating. in my opinion this printer is a must for beginners of 3d printing and forget about people trying to scare you about fire, is nonsense,. just do an easy upgrade for your peace of mindf simple
I have a anet a8,it was printing really good but all of a sudden my prints are rubbish. I’ve levelled the bed,changed the nozzle,I’ve made sure screws and belts are tight. I’m at a loss 🤷♂️
A picture of what exactly "rubbish" prints look like would be worth 1000 words here. Can you jump on my discord and post a question in #troubleshootung? discord.gg/rpwXqE5
Did this day one with my tevo tarantula... a must
I would just like to say that some anet a 8 do ship with that safety code turned on my printer was like that but I agree you should update your firmware just to be safe
I have been an embedded engineer for the last 20+ years. Working on thing like fire alarms and car braking system, also HA systems, safety systems are built in to the code, and how every much the end user asks, it would be unethical, for us to allow, the default setup, to be unsafe, so unsafe options can not be “saved” so every time the system boots, it should be in a safe mode. So should Marlin’s firmware be changed to stop the boot state having these option disabled, and if this option need to be disabled (only time I can think of, if for safety testing of some kin, calibration of the systems) can only be done until next reboot or power cycle by some gCode, menu option.
I know for a fact one of the A8s that was in the news for catching on fire had a re purposed computer power supply running it that fried. Not a stock power supply.
I bought some super cheap heat blocks for the anet A8 and they have three grub screws 2 for the heat cart and one for the thermistor they probably cost an extra 1 cent more than the dodgy oney Anet supply.
My personal opinion on this.
The Anet A8 is NOT a bad printer. It, in itself, is not dangerous.
IF.. And it is a big if. If it is well maintained.
You do not drive a car without having it serviced occasionally.
Changing the brake discs and pads. Changing the oil etc.
Same needs to be done with a 3D printer A8 or any other printer.
I have an A8.
I check it before each print.
I see it like driving a car from 1950 when compared one from 2018.
Modern cars have Anti lock brakes ,Air bags, Side impact protection systems, Seat belts and some have traction control.
A 1950's car does not have these. But it does not make them inherently dangerous. Just less safe.
While I do not agree with your hard stance against the A8 and Anet. I do agree that the safety features should be switched on from the factory. Yes. Maybe there might be a reason to switch them off. An option to do so in the menu system along with suitable 'Are you really sure about this?' message should be available.
Part of the problem is these printets are are DIY build.
So the quality of how these things are built up varies from petson to person.
I've read stories of the printers being built on less than 3 hours.
I built mine over a week. I took my time to learn about how it worked and made sure everything was good.
So a lot of the issues can be avoided.
But yes. I will be upgrading my A8 to the latest version of Marlin and I may look at adding the option to switch the safety features off and on to the firmware myself.
What I found interesting is that the problem is also with the Creality printers and others and not limited to the Anet A8 alone. To leave it to the public to solve is irresponsible and it is just a matter of time when the manufacturer will have a class action lawsuit against it. The public can take precaution but ultimately it is the manufacturers responsibility to ensure that his product is safe.
Anet is unique in this in that their temperature sensor is known to slip out from time-to-time, resulting in opening the loop *and* they disabled the safety meant to catch that. It's a one-two punch that makes Anet machines uniquely dangerous.
Man i haven't had any of these problems. probably because i have ample cooling on it. ram mine for 28 hours strait with no problems several times. I have the original one though, the "omni printer" version. I keep my element and thermister tight and make sure to replace any thermisters that go bad. When one does go bad, the system stops everything. Common sense stuff. I guess i got it early enough or late enough to miss that. I guess the original software had this safety
in it.
How do you center the print? Some of my print printed all over the place
i've never seen a single article on someone's ANET actually catching fire. I've ran my anet a8 stock version for 3 years now. Not a single problem. Well i've had problems....but nothing with my board, power supply, heatbed or anything like that.
Just google "Anet fire".
It's been a couple of years since this happened, and to my memory there were only 3 that were publicly reported on. It's a pretty specific set of failings that need to happen. But, so far it's only been ANets that it happened with. Not to say it couldn't with others.
Also, easy to fix.
I'm thinking getting ant8 3d printer is that a good
I greatly think that the thermal runaway should be better writen and wire tie wrap instead of those plastic spring (so that even if the screw is loose, every thing stay in place)
Hello,
I am looking for ur help.
I have bought anet a8 3d Printer. But y and z axis motor fixed plates are missing in the package.
It will be nice if you can share the parts picture with dimensions. I'll be able to manufacture the parts on my own.
Thank u.
A bit over the top I think. Not just the ANet printers have this issue. ANet machines are no different from a dozen others.
Wondering how long it will be before the victims of the fires get together and bring a class action lawsuit against them for disabling a safety feature that *may* have prevented the fires.
Fantastic!
How hard is it for them to ship these with an upgraded firmware? How hard is it for them to keep up with these upgrades as they sell new ones?
Having worked a temp job updating the firmware of phones one time, I can attest that it only takes a work day to do a couple thousand with enough people, but that's more than rock bottom, which Anet is pricing thermal they themselves for.
The first thing I did to my A8 after I plugged it in was flash it with Marlin. But I am a bit of an advanced user.
At some point criminal/civil liabilities need to apply if these safety checks are intentionally removed and there isn't at least a note as you open your printer indicating that -- and at a minimum a link to a website where you can get a safer firmware. I have always been saying -- stop buying junk, use better hardware, but you can have the best hardware, best wiring, best practices, and something can still fail. I've seen expensive silicone insulated wires fail with no visual indication (silicone insulation will just snap back, and the strands break) - simply from being tugged too hard. So the firmware protections are our safety switch, and they should NEVER be disabled. You can adjust the range for thermal runaway detection to avoid false positives, but NEVER turn them off. This is why GPL compliance is so important. For now I would say if you have a printer, not just an A8, any printer, and you didn't setup the firmware yourself, assume these protections are not on, and go get the latest firmware and turn them on.
Does this apply to the Anet A6 too?
Or they could have one more temperature sensor, a total of 2 temperature sensors for redundancy and increased the price may be few more $$. Would have helped a lot for this kind of mess.
I posted it on the creality cr-10s, maker box and first layer groups
In this video you mention Creality turning off the runaway heat sanity check too.
But then you say no more about it? Do I need to upgrade my CR-10? Is it safe?
I wouldn't recommend using any 3D printer with thermal runaway protection disabled. All it takes is a thermistor to fail (be it in the heated bed or hotend) for a runaway condition to occur.
At the moment a build of Marlin, either from Creality or the Marlin team, isn't ready to go, so there's nothing to upgrade to yet. Also, remember you'll need a bootloader to update the firmware on a CR-10.
As for if it's safe, just don't let it run unattended. Until the firmware can watch out for problems, that's your job.
I am happy flashing a boot loader - my cr10 is not a creality (it's from Amazon). Is there a way to check if it is disabled?
Mine does give me a MinTemp error if it's really cold - i print in my unheated garage - if the thermistor in the hot end reads below 10C - so that is a good sign.
Is there a real world check I can do? Unplug thermistors from board and see what it does?
Thanks for the answer - I think this is an important topic that needs high visibility/outspoken users - like yourself - to highlight.
I call unplugging the thermister and testing the heat the "poke the hornets nest" technique. But, yes, that is the blackbox method of testing.
Some other big things that people forget, or folks that are new to kit printers is good cable management, and to tighten screws for "preassembled" parts (looking at the hot end here). Every kit I have assembled had the heater cartridge just slid into position, and not tightened down. Couple that with lack of understanding about cable management and keeping all the hot end wires tied down causes a lot of these "burned" printer issues. Most of the burned printer photos/vids I have seen could have been avoided with 1) updated firmware as the easiest 2) some common sense with cable management. Just my 2 cents worth.
Did he say that it will make you safer if you personally name your printer?
Absolutely.
hey 3d printing pro can you do a video on you turning back on the run away heat system for cr-10 users
Just as soon as we have a way to do it that's simple.
Thanks, this issue is actually pretty big. I will watch for the video
Stop treating 3D printers like they are home appliances. They are not.
Excellent diagrams!
Glad you liked them. Wish I had a real graphics department, but for now this worked.
My brand new Creality Ender4 went up in smoke! If I hadn't been sitting by it? I was running a print, the skin didn't look right, I killd the print, went to changing the outer layer settings, heard a noise, looked up the screen said over heat protection and the print head was t 450c and climbing, I grabbed the power plug and yanked It out as the board was catching fire! Creality Is sending a hot end and board.and yes, the heat block melted, run away protection engaged and still running away? Any help?
Now here is the kicker, I replaced the hot end, heater and thermister with exact matches, when I plugged it back in, it ran away instantly as soon as it got power?
#SaveTheSaxyCyborg #Don'tShootAtUA-cam
Alright, Alright, after many pauses? comments.... other things, I finally Made it to the end of the video,
I'm half thinking about clearing all of marlin, then entering #42 and hitting send! What's the worst that can happen? I'm old school and followed Kurt Russel's advise, I have two fire extinguishers
To be fair, anyone buying an Anet A8/A6 **KIT** (emphasis on KIT) should have done a minimum of research on the different kits available from various manufacturers and therefore should ALREADY KNOW the issues that need to be addressed with that printer. As such, failure to address these issues should at least lie EQUALLY as much on the consumer as the manufacturer.
Buying a 3d printer kit that requires assembly says, at a minimum, that the purchaser is competent enough to assemble AND MAINTAIN their device.
That being said, I personally would not recommend to anyone that they purchase an Anet printer kit as their first printer. The number of problems this printer comes with, not the least of which being incorrectly sized/poor quality smooth rods and bearings, make this printer a good learning experience ONLY if you already have another printer with which to begin printing the upgrades and repairs for the Anet.
Also, as far as fire risk goes, upgrading the firmware will not totally obviate the risk if fire. There is another risk of fire with this printer that by the time the software detects a problem, the fire would already be present. I'm referring to the heated bed connector, which is nowhere near sturdy enough for the amount of current that must pass through it. If an Anet owner doesn'y directly solder the wires to the heated bed immediately during assembly, they are risking the connector overheating and burning. How much damage this actually could cause is entirely a matter of the surrounding environment, as the plastic connector itself is fairly small. But if a bit of burning plastic falls onto wood or more plastic, then the fire could grow out of control rather quickly.
Again, I feel that this is the purchaser's responsibility primarily, but it is also something that COULD have been remedied at the manufacturer level.
My Anet A8 didn't come with a cable. What kind of cable is that?
It's generally called a "Square USB", but it's actually a "A Male to B Male" USB cable.
Do you know if the Anet A9 also has this issue?
ANet promises they've fixed this problem with future 3D printers, but which ones I'm not sure. But, being as they make no effort to stop you from beign able to update your firmware, it's always fixable.
@@3dpprofessor When i get mine, i will contact Anet to see if i can get the source code. since the A9 is not really being sold or has any community support-like mods
I already know of a dozen mods im gonna do.
The first one before even using it will be a glass bed
Excellent video... 👍👍👍
Is this exactly same with A6?
I have had 2 of the anet a8 3d printers. I updated one and not the other. I believe there is a faulty connector where the power enters the board as I have had 1 fire losing the machine and the other connector melted and threw sparks right in front of me. this could also be from the board getting to hot or itself being faulty. I now have a 3rd anet a8 that I have changed out the connector and have installed a fan blowing directly on the board from an outside source. cross your fingers, I have taken some temp readings and have seen them climb as well as taken some readings with my multimeter and have seen spikes. Dont buy this printer.
Anything else with this problem with trigger a product recall....... Why is that not the case??
Because it's not a produce. It' s a box of parts. Once you assemble it you've altered it. They could recall a part, sure, but not the product.
What about the monoprice select mini. Do we know if it has problem?
We do not, because it it closed source. I suppese I could find out by disconnecting the heat sensor and seeing what happens. Hmmm.
exactly. thats the point. it's closed source. off those printers we never know whats going on inside. thats really worth testing.
No, the MP units do not have this problem. They have a different problem: the "emergency stop" only kills the heaters, but the printer keeps on going like nothing's wrong.
Which is better than lighting the house on fire, I suppose.
My first printer was a CTC, purchased in January. It's basically an A8 knockoff. When the runaway heating issue came to the fore, I immediately stopped using it. My new CR-10 arrived today, and I'm much happier with its output. I do plan on upgrading the firmware of my CTC and using it as a tinkering machine, but the CR-10 will be my workhorse, and I won't run the CTC unless I'm in the same room.
Upgrade to Skynet3D and a BLTouch auto-leveler and you'll never go back to stock Marlin!
is the "skynet" firmware save?
Better if you go up to Marlin 1.1.8 Skynet is just a Marlin preconfigure.
Yep. This may help also. I made a standalone Arduino second set of overtemp and smoke sensors which will shut off a cheap, hacked 433mz remote socket. All parts, code and instructions attached. Feel free to improve and share:
ua-cam.com/video/n-JgQ3SaVME/v-deo.html
If you don't fancy going that far, you can configure Octopi to shut off a TP Link Smartplug (or more recently a Wemo socket) by linking the TP Link and Temperature Failsafe plugins and writing a small shell script. Instructions are here:
github.com/jneilliii/OctoPrint-TPLinkSmartplug/issues/59#issuecomment-420474368
It isn't just the Anet. The Tornado is as bad or potentially worse given the 230v unearthed bed and frame with no strain relief.
I would also suggest a 5-6a blade fuse/breaker to the motors, board and hotend and a 15a breaker on a 12v bed power cable. Also offloading current from the mainboard with a bed mosfet.
#SaveTheSexyCyborg joes3dworkbench.blogspot.com/2018/04/anet-a8-fire-risk-and-marlin-upgrade.html
China = cheap = means very poor quality, crap parts and even danger. So if you don’t now how to check everything on the machines don’t buy them. Buy something USA , Europe build . You get always for your money.
This isn't the first time that Vice has crossed lines they promised to honor and bullied sources and interviewees. I'm glad that you're bringing this to light.
The biggest immediate issue for her is her Patreon account being shut down. Boycotting Patreon isn't the answer because it ends up hurting other creators out there. We need a way to pressure them into reinstating her account, I just don't know what that is.
Knarf Sreirb except that every country sources their parts from China. Often they even just private label entire products made in China and you don't even know it till you read the fine print.
I dont think the sexy cyborg influenced the male members of the board I suspect it was those two big bad boys she took in with her LOL, anyway just to point out my CR-10 came with thermal runaway not enabled once you managed to get into the firmware and I know of 4 other friends had the same thing so I suspect there are plenty out there with this problem so Anet is not the only culprit. regards, RobUK
the anet a8 is shipped with repetier not marlin
All the ANets used Repetier still do. And a old old version. And that is really the problem here, the old Repetier and Marlin did not have these fail safes. And not just ANet is still loading old firmware.
With annoying animations and a disappearing homing bug
Quite Frankly this is NOT true. I have ran mine with the original firmware for more than 2 years no with no issues. But you must provide strain relief on the heated bed connector.
Hey Prof, is that why last week she posted saying she wouldn't be posting for awhile? Something to do with all of this? She said they shut down her Patreon page...Seems like more afoot......
be sure to follow the link to the blog post at the top of the comments. Much more details there.
What about her sister, the ANET-A6???
Probably the same, but I don't know as I've never had hands on with one. There are, in fact, a ton of 3D printers this probably applies to. Update your firmware, kids.
This is what the race to the bottom gets you. The Anet couldn't be made any cheaper with almost no corners left to cut, so they started using subpar components that performed so badly the thermal runaway was getting triggered in normal conditions. Ethics be damned, the quick fix was to disable thermal runaway. Companies that violate the law and ethical standards like this deserve huge fines and jail time for the executives to make other think twice before releasing such shoddy products.
It's a push and pull. We raced to the bottom, now we're going to see what we need to put back, then we'll race to the bottom again.
The public at large wants something for nothing. People expecting high wages, yet want high quality products below the manufacturers cost. Thats what's driving the race to the bottom.
nice information professor! but i suggest buy a good camera and microphone, and your subscribers will increase exponentially! believe me! =)
I'm working on it. But I'm not going to stop making videos while I'm scrounging together the funds for a good camera and mic. Those things are expensive.
There will always be a bigger fish... I can't complain about your video quality.
Nah his equipment is just fine. I don't know why snobs on UA-cam are expecting better than broadcast production quality from UA-cam creators.
Camera is fine, microphone is mandatory
Airasol fier spray is not safe get the old classic fier extinguisher
My board won’t to my computer
Hi5!! i sell a8 kits and all that i mount i change the firmware to better control and saftey first!! is a machine!!
Did it.
That happened when is too cheap ⭐⭐⭐🌟🌟
But anyways, I thought the A8 ran on sone skynet firmware? Don’t quote me on that, not something I normally pay attention to
Anet uses an old version of Repetier. Skynet was a Arduino IDE/Marlin roll up to make adding a graphic screen and or bed leveling easy to add to an A8 and A6.
Thanks for explaining that to me! Much appreciated :)
น่าสนจังครับ
A "boycott until the firmware is fixed" won't solve the problem. World (or at least China) is full of shops, that have units for sale with old firmware already installed - you will HAVE to check this manually (or just upgrade firmware anyway) in any case.
If you have issues with false positives, rather than disable this safety feature, you can "relax" the conditions for triggering a bit. Had to do that on my system.
Also, regarding Creality also having this disabled - shouldn't this be rather easy (but slightly dangerous for inexperienced users) to check on most printers? Just disconnect heat probe & start heating WHILE carefully monitoring the hotend with external thermometer to see what will happen. If the heater keeps heating up too long, reset the machine immediately (and let the cold end cooler do its work to prevent filament clogging the system), mark the machine as "dangerous", and do a firmware upgrade.
Maybe you can even query whether these settings are on via USB serial connection? (can'to check right now)
If not, maybe they could at least add a way to store some boolean (on/off) settings in a short hexadecimal string, that you could query from LCD panel. Then, to make things easier, there could be a web page, where you can enter the string, and get "readable" output about what's enabled and what isn't. If using hexadecimal, there could be 4 such on/off values in each character.
I'm not sure I endorse the "poke the hornet net" approach to testing you suggest there, but, yes, that would be a black box method of testing if that feature is enabled.
The menu for marlin is the one thing that's most contentious. It eats up the space pretty good, so they try to keep in minimal.
But why do you access all the control options from the prepare menu, and all the system settings from the control menu? Seriously, this thing makes no sense. I get the sense that they've got a "that's the way it is now" mentality to changing it, like people wouldnt' be able to handle it if the menu were suddenly intuitive.
We call this a runaway heat problem? Who are we?
Me and the mouse in my pocket.