Tricked Out Afinia Printer

afinia-tricked-out-detail

Some time ago my 3D printer (Afinia H479) had an issue with a broken internal part. The part was, itself, printed by an Afinia printer. The folks at Afinia “fixed my printer by e-mail”, sending me a file to print a replacement part, and then sending me a physical one by courier as well, in case my printer was incapable of printing the replacement.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I super-glued the broken part together which held well enough for me to print a replacement, which I put into the printer.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are around a dozen or so parts in the Afinia that were printed on the Afinia, many of which are internal and hold the drive belts and other stuff.

But when my fan hood was causing me some issues with the new, larger clips used for the Borosilicate glass I bought, I mentioned it to the guys at Afinia and they sent me the file, and I made some adjustments, and printed the new fan hood – in blue! (Note: I already had the file in .UP3 format, which means I could print it, but I could not edit it. They kindly sent me the .STL version so I could make the necessary changes.)

It got me thinking. The Afinia software installer comes with all of the parts you may ever need to print, so I thought, now that I have so many colors, why not print one of each in as many colors as I can?

Here is the result.

afinia-tricked-out-01

You see here a stock Afinia H479 printer, but with some add-ons I have been using for a while.

  • The protective heat shield I printed in Afinia Premium Yellow.\
  • The fan hood I printed in Afinia Premium Blue
  • The A_O on the hood is a piece which holds an Octave temperature switch which I now use to switch between ABS filaments intended for the Afinia, and other filaments which print at a slightly lower temperature. I printed this in Afinia Premium Red.
  • At the upper left is the modular spool system Octave created, and I updated. The Spool Nipple Base is printed in Orange-Red.
  • The Spool Nipple is printed in Zen Toolworks Silver.
  • The Spool Housing (lower left) is printed in Octave Green. This holds quickly replaceable spool holders.
  • The orange spool holder (holding a reel of Afinia Premium White) is printed in Octave Orange. I modeled this myself to hold several different reel designs without having to swap out holders. It uses increasingly deep gravity dips in order to fit at least 3 different reel sizes.
  • The neon yellow spool holder on the table is designed specifically for a small 1Kg reel (I have only one, the red-orange)
  • The print bed is loaded with a sheet of Afinia Borosilicate Glass which has made my printing life so much easier! It is clipped with four red clips.
  • On the print bed is a trophy my friend and I designed and printed for an internal company competition.
  • I did not replace the main head unit which holds the motor, feeder and nozzle machinery. It remains white.

I apologize that the lighting isn’t great. Detail gets lost. I will try for a better shot later. Particularly the two yellows look almost the same, and they are NOT the same, not the least bit.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *