3D Printing Forum

LAST [EDIT] : 07.29.2016 1205 EST

Here is mine and others experience at assembly of the HICTOP Reprap Prusa i3 3D printer, for short I call it the HIC i3. After assembly, well I tore it back down and fixed all the issues that was overlooked and re-assembled the kit. Hope this helps some to not go though what we went through in our local group, we have purchase quite a few of these kits.

First, a link to actual China supplied HIC i3 printer kit here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HICTOP-RepRap-P ... SwXshWrz-9

They now have a newer model with filament sensor and upgraded Z-axis lead screws being offered. The lead screw upgrade is available from China for current printers for just $20 US, not bad.

Printer Assembly:
OK, now on with assembly. Assume you have the China supplied .pdf manual as you will need that,however there are some steps that are not very clear. If you are of the engineering/tech type you will figure it out. Will mention some of the main problems in the .pdf here to save you some time.

Basic tools needed for proper assembly:
o 12" digital caliper that reads in mm and inch (cheap Harbor Freight is great for this)
o square
o rigid/metal ruler in mm/inch. I have a 36" machinist ruler, again a bargain one will work fine
o oil/lube for linear bearings. I use a mixture of machine oil, a little moly grease and Teflon base Break Free lubricant
o medium thread locker. Use some type of thread locking compound on ALL nuts. I use blue Loctite, or in a pinch at least some finger nail polish
o not a tool, but patience is a true virtue here = take your time, double check everything before first run
o favorite beverage of choice

General guidelines for a new assembly:
1) Square it Up : make sure you take your time and use a level build surface. Double check especially when assembling the frame that everything is a square as possible. Tighten all the fasteners without over tightening, then pick up the frame and re-check all your measurements and again insure it is as square as possible, corner-to-corner, lengths, fit of extruded aluminum frame, t-nuts are properly seated and tightened (they are a bear to move/change later!). I finally achieved ~1mm accuracy on the frame assembly.

2) Those 5mm 't-nuts' : insure the bottom nut is properly in the channel before tightening, it can be a pain at first however I modified a flat blade screwdriver to hold the nuts in place while tightening the 5mm hex screws. Again, insure the location/fit-up of the assembly is correct BEFORE final tightening the screws or it WILL be a PITA to fix later after all is assembled, trust me on that!

3) The linear bearings and rods MUST be lubricated prior to running the machine. Failure to do that will result in pre-mature bearing failures and improper friction free axis travel!

4) A big WARNING here. If you do not use a thread locking compound on the machine screw nuts, I can guarantee you will be picking up nuts and hardware from underneath your printer after running it for a while as the supplied fasteners do not include lock washers. Main reason, wait until your end-stop switch falls off during a print, then the controller on next print crashes your axis into the hard-stop. If you are not there, expect a destroyed stepper motor and/or control board (or fire)! Again, trust me on this.

Suggested Pre-assembly Mods and Upgrades:
Due to personal experience, input from fellow HIC i3 owners and research, the following upgrades and modifications to the original China supplied parts, etc. are HIGHLY recommended PRIOR to initial assembly of this printer. Yes I know, you want to assemble it and get it up and running. Trust me, if you perform the following BEFORE you completely assemble the kit, you will save time and effort in the long run. In no particular order:
1) The OEM liner bearings will not last very long as they will start to run rough an have a severe impact on travel and print quality in the long run. I had a few ball bearings actually fall out of one of the bearing housings. Highly suggest you order a set of quality bearings from a reputable supplier. You will need 10 each LM8UU bearings. Changing these out later can be problematic!
Preform a search for: <Sprite Science™ 12 LM8UU Linear Bearings for 3D Printer>. Got 12 each from Amazon (Prime 2-day shipping) for $12.99.

2) THROW AWAY : the wire supplied to hook up the PSU output to the control board. Get you some good 12AWG stranded wire, cut to length and tinned on the ends, or you will wind up even with a proper PSU at least a 0.6volt drop at the control board. Trust me.

3) Z-axis threaded rods : well the OEM were warped, not very straight, and had all kinds of print quality issues, Z travel noise, etc. I currently have perfectly straight stainless steel rods supplied by a machinist friend and updated Z-axis motor couplers. Cannot stress how much difference this made. Specifications for the stock Z-axis rod: 300mm long x 8mm wide with a metric thread pitch of 1.25mm. You could get a printer upgrade kit from the OEM for true lead screws, followers (bearings) and updated X-axis end blocks from supplier for $20. If upgrade to lead screws the thread pitch will no longer be 1.25mm and will require you to modify your firmware (configuration.h) and re-flash the controller.

4) Power Supply : The OEM is seriously underrated. The supplied power supply (PSU) is rated 12volts @ 20 amps, this is NOT enough power to properly run this printer. As soon as pre-heat on the the bed and nozzle is performed the output on mine with stock supplied wire dropped to 9.4 volts!, you could here the X-axis fan slow down, not good if you want constant temp's on the nozzle and bed. Upgraded with a 12 volt 30 amp PSU along with using 12AWG wire, and now will full load and heat on and printing the voltage only drops to 11.92 volts. Nozzle and bed temp curves improved. NOTE: you can use the OEM supply to get your printer running, however do not expect optimum performance.
Perform a search for: "eTopxizu 12v 30a Dc Universal Regulated Switching Power Supply 360w for CCTV, Radio, Computer Project". Again, through Amazon, 2 day shipping $23.97 and money well spent.

Assembly manual clarifications:
Step 14 : will show a 'sensor' for the Y-axis. It is one of the micro-switches (end-stop switches) in the plastic bag. You will have to separate the leads as they are shipped together. Install the switch along with wires as shown in diagram. NOTE: I had wires that came off the end-stop switches and found the factory solder job was horrible. SAVE SOME TIME and re-solder all end-stop switches before installation to save to headaches later on. OF NOTE: on ALL those small 2mm (and other screws) insure you use some type of thread locking compound on those nuts, they will come loose from vibrations and your switch will fall off = not good because your stepper motor will crash the axis into the hard stop and burn up the motor or control board if you are not there when it happens. Again - trust me.
Step 23 : [EDIT] incorrect measurement shown from the rear of the lower main frame to FRONT of the RIGHT vertical Z frame. Back at step 19, it was showed the right vertical Z frame is located by measuring 165mm from the rear of the lower main frame to the REAR of the right vertical Z frame. I installed both vertical Z frames measuring as per step 19, 165mm from the rear of main frame to the REAR of both the verticals. You may try installing them both measured from the rear main frame to the FRONT as shown in Step 23 as my print center is a little forward of center, however has not been verified as the cause (fixed it in firmware). Let me know if you come up with something different.

Now, after proper assembly you are wanting to print your first object like I did, well it was a waste of filament. There are some basic print calibrations to perform first and some important software/EEPROM settings that will be required to get that print working to the best of the machines ability. These topics will summarized under the General Questions sub-forum soon.

More to come soon... again, it's a great kit for the money... just take your time and research!

Finished assembling the printer and working printing test print now. Took my time and spent a good 20 hours and a lot of time in-between thinking about things and re-doing stuff I assembled incorrectly the first time.

Chip's information here is great. Upgraded to a Mean Well 325 W Power Supply. Upgraded the wire from the PSU to the motherboard. Got a 0.1 V drop with no load.

Two items I would add is about the heated bed wiring and the extruder. The heated bed I got had a six wire connector and the wiring diagrams are worse than useless for the bed. Finally looked under the bed to see which wire is which and figured it out from the available connectors on the motherboard. Being that this is my first 3D Printer, I had problems feeding the filament into the extruder with the pwoer on. Mostly, it looked like the filament wasn't making it into the hot end. Finally, I turned of the power and fed the filament in. Took a couple tries to verify it was going in correctly. This isn't a failure of the system, just my inexperience.

The LCD Display works fine, and the SD card reading worked as well. Just pay attention to the instructions that say it won't take anything bigger than 16 GB. It was hard finding anything as low as 16 GB at Staples.

Will be doing a bit of printing before upgrading to dual extrusion. Got some idea I need to fully explore.

@NotMe999 : glad the information helped. Yes, you did it right and took your time, I was less fortunate and dove in and had to re-build after I found all the above issues out.

Understand about the filament insertion as I had the same issue, I now can insert mine into a pre-heated hot end with no problems. It was finicky at first and it helps to cut the end of the filament with a pair of small side cutters at a angle like a 'V' and then insert it. You will get the hang of it after a while. BEWARE: do not get burned by the nozzle, you should grab the bottom of the extruder assembly and the top filament 'clamp' and squeeze while feeding filament. I have done that twice, but not again! Also, get used to feeding it hot as you will need to do that when you are printing and have to change filament.

The default print and travel speeds in firmware is way too fast for this printer, at least on my version. I have now set the defaults in EEPROM/firmware after a lot of testing and research. Set default print and acceleration speeds, set you nozzle temp, calibrate your extruder, bed diameter, etc. before burning through a lot of filament. And.. the default speeds will really tax this particular printer, it is 'factory rated' at max 120mm/sec print rate. I will be updating links in near future.

Here is the RepRap.org calibration guide I use all the time and links to the test print .stl files, I highly recommend you follow it to the 'T' to save you some more time:
http://reprap.org/wiki/Triffid_Hunter's ... tion_Guide

At minimum go under the LCD menu: Control -> Motion -> Acceleration (actually the feedrate) and set it to maximum 1200 to start (it defaulted to 3000). Then when during an actual print, we had to then adjust: (on LCD) Tune -> Feedrate down to 70 max or even 50 max on small or detail parts. After tweaking and updating my firmware, I no longer have to do this, just power on, load file and print. I have a HIC i3 spreadsheet with all my slicer settings and firmware default (configuration.h) variables listed for easy reference. If you would like my default EEPROM/firmware setting I would be glad to share with you, let me know. Or, once you are comfortable re-flashing your firmware is not difficult and I can walk you through it. See post in another HIC i3 thread.

Happy printing

Also, if you have not installed Cura yet I recommend downloading and installing the Arduino IDE software as it's USB drivers to communicate with the printer are more stable than the ones that came on the DVD supplied by HICTOP. I had a bear of a time installing the drivers from the Cura directory on Windows 7 64 bit. The IDE development package drivers worked fine for me, however your mileage may vary. Once you can communicate with your printer over USB, you will be ready to control and print with your printer using a PC based host program (I used Repetier host and Slic3r). For long prints I use a SD.

Chip Luck wrote:4) Power Supply : The OEM is seriously underrated. The supplied power supply (PSU) is rated 12volts @ 20 amps, this is NOT enough power to properly run this printer. As soon as pre-heat on the the bed and nozzle is performed the output on mine with stock supplied wire dropped to 9.4 volts!, you could here the X-axis fan slow down, not good if you want constant temp's on the nozzle and bed. Upgraded with a 12 volt 30 amp PSU along with using 12AWG wire, and now will full load and heat on and printing the voltage only drops to 11.92 volts. Nozzle and bed temp curves improved. NOTE: you can use the OEM supply to get your printer running, however do not expect optimum performance.
Perform a search for: "eTopxizu 12v 30a Dc Universal Regulated Switching Power Supply 360w for CCTV, Radio, Computer Project". Again, through Amazon, 2 day shipping $23.97 and money well spent.

Good quality power supplies seem to be thin on the ground over here in the UK - I'd rather not take my chances with eBay - so I plan to use an ATX power supply I've got spare. It's a fairly high-end Thermaltake SmartSE 630W PSU with a single 49A 12V rail. The molex connectors are only rated at about 6A per pin though, so that kinda scuppers my plan to use only one 12V pin. I may make some sort of power distribution PCB to plug everything into, I want to avoid modifying the PSU if possible. There are only two 12V pins on the 24-pin ATX connector, but this PSU has the 8-pin EPS12V connector, giving me another 4 12V pins; in theory that's up to 36A without having to use any other cables - handy, since this PSU has modular cabling... Plus the 5V standby line can output up to 3A even when the PSU is switched off, so that'll be handy for running a Raspberry Pi...

Your PSU appears to have plenty of output/watts. Just make sure you use at least 12AWG wire feed from PSU to controller. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Chip Luck wrote:Your PSU appears to have plenty of output/watts. Just make sure you use at least 12AWG wire feed from PSU to controller. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Yeah that's part of the problem. The PSU isn't designed to put such a high load on just two wires so it has quite small gauge wire: typically it's around 16-18AWG in an ATX PSU (although it does vary). High-load devices like graphics cards use one or two additional power connections with mutliple pins; my GTX970 uses an 8-pin connector which has 3 12v lines, and that connector is only officially rated for up to 150W. Hence the need for binding multiple cables together, because I'd like to avoid modifying the PSU.

The multiple taps for the 12V are *probably* from the same internal PSU source, you could splice and add a single 12AWG feed wire if that is true. You of course would have to absolutely make sure that is the case. A check on the connector/PSU spec's on-line would tell the story as PC type PSU's are built to a standard. I know the 'disc drive' connectors have separate amp ratings on the 12V, but the 'main 12V rail' should be tied together.

I guess you do not have access to Amazon?

Chip Luck wrote:The multiple taps for the 12V are *probably* from the same internal PSU source, you could splice and add a single 12AWG feed wire if that is true. You of course would have to absolutely make sure that is the case. A check on the connector/PSU spec's on-line would tell the story as PC type PSU's are built to a standard. I know the 'disc drive' connectors have separate amp ratings on the 12V, but the 'main 12V rail' should be tied together.

I guess you do not have access to Amazon?

Sometimes there are multiple rails for 12v, but not in this case. Like I said, I don't really want to modify the PSU internally if I can avoid it; I'd like it to be a modular solution, since pretty much any ATX PSU over 300-350W should be sufficient for this printer. Just means it's not quite the plug and play solution I had in mind, it's not a show stopper

Amazon operates in the UK, but there are fewer products available; where we tend to lose out are third-party retailers that sell via Amazon, they often won't ship over here. EBay is a total gamble, I wouldn't trust some random eBay seller I don't know when it comes to things I have to plug into the mains.

I was having some strange issues with my z axis motors. After upgrading power plug to one with a ground and power cable between psu and mks board it seems to have corrected the issue. Might should add a sticky for these upgrades.

Sure, we can sticky anything that you guys think is most helpful (Chip, let me know!)

thanks so much for these suggestions and mods.
I took your advice and bought new bearing and upgraded the PSU wire. I will most likely buy a new PSU as well. I bought new z axis threaded rods and brass nuts since one of the nuts was effectively useless due to pretty much no threads inside.

Upon first calibration I found that the position of the vertical (z axis) spacing from the front or rear was wrong. Your measure position in step 23, if I followed it right, showed measuring 165mm from the front of the machine. I did this and found that the build plate would be all the way to the rear of the machine during auto calibration and when the z axis would calibrate the inductance sensor would not be near the bed and go to the bottom and not stop. My version has the SN04 z axis endstop which is an inductance sensor from what I've found and took a few minutes to calibrate so that the nozzle was "paper sheet" close to the bed.

AndrewJLLeather wrote:thanks so much for these suggestions and mods.
I took your advice and bought new bearing and upgraded the PSU wire. I will most likely buy a new PSU as well. I bought new z axis threaded rods and brass nuts since one of the nuts was effectively useless due to pretty much no threads inside.

Upon first calibration I found that the position of the vertical (z axis) spacing from the front or rear was wrong. Your measure position in step 23, if I followed it right, showed measuring 165mm from the front of the machine. I did this and found that the build plate would be all the way to the rear of the machine during auto calibration and when the z axis would calibrate the inductance sensor would not be near the bed and go to the bottom and not stop. My version has the SN04 z axis endstop which is an inductance sensor from what I've found and took a few minutes to calibrate so that the nozzle was "paper sheet" close to the bed.

Aye!!! Did not notice that, it should have shown 165mm from the rear of the printer to the rear of the vertical Z rail. At least that is where mine is measured at as shown on step 19 of the manual. At step 23, the manual shows measuring from the rear of the printer rail to the front of the left vertical z rail. Again, it was just the assembly manual was confusing, measure to the rear of the right vertical on step 19 then measure to the front of left vertical in step 23. Mine are all at 165mm from the rear rail to the rear of the verticals. Removed the reference picture up there, my bad.

After spending a lot of time troubleshooting a problem with one of the z-axis motors, test the connectivity of all the wires supplied. Turned out the blue wire for the far side (from the motherboard) z-axis motor did not have a good connection at the connector to the motherboard. Ending up with chattering on that stepper motor. (HICTOP's only answer was to adjust the voltage at the motherboard). Since I don't have the tools to work on connectors, I spliced into the same color wire going to the near z-axis motor. After some tweaking of the voltage, it works fine now.

I just bought and built my first 3D printer; the Hictop 3DP-17. I would like to point out that most of the above suggestions appear to have been heard by the manufacturer, as I had no issues with the bearings, the power supply is 24v (not 12v), and the wiring is higher quality than what I would expect (I work in electronics and have seen a lot of utter garbage).

They still have a bit of room for improvement, mainly on the manual, but over all I am happy. yes, I have printed my share of wasted plastic blobs, but I chock that up to learning (a lot of the issues I had were just my own fiddling with the Cura settings).

Having a fully level work surface to start with is probably the biggest issue I faced. I built mine on an old folding office table, not realizing that the 25 year old MDF had warped. I found a scrap piece of heavy gauge steel that I shimmed to level, and put the printer on top of that before going about releveling the printer. Works much better now.

Mine came with an auto level sensor for the Z axis. This is where the documentation is really poor. Before I had it dialed in correctly, it would do auto-home ok, but when I started printing, the head started engraving on the plate. Fortunately, the little bit of aluminum that it dug up was easily scraped off and masking tape makes it disappear (the line is not as deep as my hand etcher can do, so no worries).

Another suggestion on the first prints, if you use the supplied filament, you will need some way of keeping it on the spool holder, or you will end up with a mess. I do NOT recommend using a couple of the wife's 'Disco Resurrection' cd's, no matter how much you don't care about them getting scratched. Use a couple of blanks, they're cheaper than the headache you will get otherwise.