3D Printing

Frustrations of the work 3D Printer

kinney 29 November 2025 No Comments

Nothing like getting the work 3D printer working almost as perfect as it can get, then the next day the SKR mini E3 3.01 main board blows randomly when turning it back on, after just 2 months.

In the last 6 weeks the original Y-stop also broke and whatever was used to push against it originally had fallen off or was misaligned so had to improvise a quick solution (hello sticky cable holder pad) which has worked well so far.

I’ve also replaced the glass bed as it had a small chunk missing out of it (not all the way through) near the middle underneath, I’m assuming the hot end melted through it (!?) at some point and it had problems with prints staying stuck to it around that area.

I’m still to get the BL Touch working, I may leave this for a little while as it’s working well without it ……….. for now!

Some may say we would have been better off just buying a new, fancier 3D printer but it’s been a nice little project to get going again when I’ve had some spare time here and there.

Wanhao i3 Duplicator 3D printer upgrade to BIGTREETECH SKR Mini E3 V3.01 with TFT35 – Marlin Config Files / firmware

kinney 9 October 2025 No Comments

I’ve been rebuilding work’s 3D printer after the original 3D printer was stripped for working parts to get another printer working which has now been transferred elsewhere. Upon finding 3 broken Melzi boards in a box, I opted to purchase the Big Tree Tech SKR Mini E3 (version 3.01) to upgrade it along with a nice new touch screen.

Due to the state of the other parts, I also ordered two new fans, a new hotend, thermistor, ceramic cartridge heater and a Micro-Swiss All Metal Hotend with Slotted Cooling Block.

Upon connecting everything to the new board (and having to create some new JST connectors) I found the 3D printer didn’t work straight off and needed flashing with a new Marlin configuration. I opted to use the Creality 3D Ender3 SKR Mini E3 configuration example as the base config.

The first problem was that when I tried to home the printer, the X axis would move to the right a little and the Z axis would rise slightly and do nothing else. I had to invert the X Y and Z axis to get them to function correctly, changing the following from False to True in configuration.h

#define X_MIN_ENDSTOP_INVERTING true // Set to true to invert the logic of the endstop.
#define Y_MIN_ENDSTOP_INVERTING true // Set to true to invert the logic of the endstop.
#define Z_MIN_ENDSTOP_INVERTING true // Set to true to invert the logic of the endstop.

The next problem was getting the fans to work. I connected the Extruder fan to Fan 0, the board fan to Fan 1 and set the chamber fan to Fan 2. I had to change the pin variables to get these to work. These are set in configuration_adv.h.

#define E0_AUTO_FAN_PIN PC6
#define CHAMBER_AUTO_FAN_PIN PB15
#define CONTROLLER_FAN_PIN PC7 

Finally I set the board size for the X and Y axis. These were set in configuration.h. I also amended the printer profile in my 3D printing software to match in Ultimaker Cura.

#define X_BED_SIZE 220
#define Y_BED_SIZE 220

Once compiled, I copied the updated firmware to the printer, leveled the bed and ran off three Benchy boat models to test. The first two didn’t come out great but I suspect it was due to the cheap nasty white PLA that I was using. Changing to a decent black PLA and it printed off almost perfectly and subsequent prints I’ve done have come out fine.

In future I’m hoping to get a BL-Touch clone working with it to help get even better prints with better leveling.