Hesine M-505/Anet A8 Upgrade Part 2: Bowden Titan Extruder

Welcome to the second part of the Hesine M-505 Upgrade guide. If you followed the first part you should have something extremely like a Anet A8 just more unlikely to become Spencer Storm (aka Human torch).

The guide applies to both printers, you just have to print the right mount part.

Why would you do it?

Nature is a whore – Kurt Cobain

Heavy carriage and not so stable frame, I never liked this setup. The Titan extruder doesn’t mount in direct configuration with the standard Hesine M-505 / Anet A8 hot end. I plan on installing the E3D hotend too but I like to do modular and independent hacks because of Kurt’s teaching (And Murphy’s laws).

Which is better between bowden and direct is an open political discussion on the internet. Choose as you please. My opinion is both party are wrong and filament should be free to organize and govern itself. Since Amazon does not sell anarchy-compliant filament I went for the modular solution.

What do you need

 

• Titan Extruder (I bought a clone because the original one seem wasted on a cheap chinese printer) [Bangood]
• PTFE tube and pneumatic connector (I got mine with the E3D v6 hotend clone I’ll use in next steps) [Bangood]

How do you do it

1. Print the bowden mount for the titan extruder from here (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2959465)
   1. If you have the Anet A8 print the original version (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2253855)
2. Unscrew the fan and the stepper from the x carriage
3. Screw the pneumatic bolt from the e3d v6 hotend in the filament hole 
4. Follow the manufacturer instruction to build the Titan extruder (Remember to mount the part you printed before)
5. Use the software you like to change in the EEPROM the extruder step/mm to 418.5 or follow the substeps to flash again Marlin
   1. Go into the Marlin source with a terminal

   2. cd Marlin/example_configuration
      git clone https://github.com/AxelTB/Hesine-M505-Marlin.git
      cd ..
      cp example_configuration/Hesine-M505-Marlin/TitanExtruderVersion/configuration.h .
      cp example_configuration/Hesine-M505-Marlin/TitanExtruderVersion/configuration_adv.h .

   3. Open Arduino and flash as usual
6. Calibrate the extruder

Random Tips

• The titan extruder might need more pressure on the filament gear than the original one. Check if filament slips and untighten the screw
• After screwing the extruder unscrew the extruder gear screw for a quarter of a turn if extruder locks

That’s all for the titan extruder. Most of my problems of filament locking went away with this mod. I’ve never tried it with the original firmware (Because I don’t fancy my house busting into flames) and I did made a lot of little mods.

In the next post I’ll explain how to mount the e3d v6 hot-end on a Hesine m505/Anet A8. I should have posted a summary of all the little modifications but recently a mechanic friend of mine made me notice I screwed up bad the anti-z wobbel so it’s back to the drawing board…