Hi guys,
I’d like to get your overall feedback on the printer? does the printer is worth the money?
I’ve seen that a lot of tweak is needed to get it right - so I wonder if buying this one would be ok?
(I do have a CNC at home already, a milling machine and a lathe)
I can potentially get the printer tomorrow,
merci de votre aide 
Quentin.
We definitely recommend to start with PLA.
Also, there is no need to immediately upgrade the nozzle, try it first. It all depends on your requirements.
Hi
I have this printer for a month now, and I’ve used 5 pla reels.
I can say this, stock it’s BAD, LAME.
You need to invest some money to upgrade this printer to get a good printing.
A must, GT2 belts.
2 motors on Z axis with flex coupling, not that original piece of aluminium drilled by “hand”.
New 8mm rods (mine was bent).
I’ve changed all wires, thicker and good quality.
Printed new motor suports (for Z and X).
Printed new stopends.
Printed new belt tensioner.
Changed the PSU with 15v/100w and 24v/150w (good quality). 24v it’s for bed. At 15v the bed needs ~10 min to heat, with 24v needs 2 min. You can also change heatbed with better quality MK2, but also need new psu.
2mm glass over heatbed.
All psu/usb cables have ferrites.
At almost 2 reels of pla (Velleman pla) my nozzle get stuck. Near future upgrade E3D hotend.
My opinion, buy parts (motors, sensors, mb…) and DIY, you get a better result with less headache and superior quality.
At this time I’m thinking to dismantle this printer and get the good parts and make a new one or maybe sell it and DIY new one.
I would say its really good and absolutely worth the money.
I get very good prints and had no issues at all that was related to the printer mechanics, only needed a few firmware tweaks which is understandable.
The motor mount and the coupling needs to be changed though but its no big deal.
I have to agree with Virror.
I have had mine for almost a year and is still stock.
I can’t complain about the prints and have amazed my friends.
You need to remember this is not a $20,000 printer.
I would say it’s a entry level hobbyist level printer.
Depends on what is your objective. If you want to design objects and then just print them there are a lot of ready-to-use printers on the market, some of them are said to print in a quality that is equal or better than the K8200.
I bought mine last year, when affordable printers did not deliver such a good quality and finally I wanted to build one from a kit. For me this was the right decision, I had much fun building the printer, the kit was better than I thought. On the other hand printing itself made more problems than I expected. But to solve all the little problems (mainly by reading the posts in this very nice forum) made me understanding the machine and 3d-printing better than any out-of-the-box solution could have done.
Prices have dropped this year significantly here, so if you like building and tweaking you get even more fun per money. And the fun still goes on: With every improvement the quality gets a bit better, and there still are things to improve.
Perhaps one day I will buy a second printer, but at the moment I’m still happy with my K8200.
If I did’nt buy it last year and had to make my decision now, my choice would be the K8200 again.
regards
walo
I have had my K8200 for three months now, the build was amazingly simple, awesome manual, talk about step by step. I was lucky and purchased my printer off eBay from someone who had purchased it new, looked at the box of bits, panicked and sold it for £300 BARGAIN, I have his hand on the sideboard
I have setup a dedicated XP laptop for it. I am just at the point of doing a few interesting upgrades, first one, auto bed levelling. Have already updated the firmware to v2
Then I plan on up rating the heated bed, followed by a new hotend.
For those who knock this printer, you are entitled to your opinions. As an exercise in building, tinkering and tweaking, bring it on, the Velleman k8200 as it by the bucket load…
I’ve only had it running a day
Still missing a part but it’s in the post (it’s not an important part).
Positive comments - it’s solid, just make sure you do everything up tightly where instructed, it’s so much quieter than my portabee.
Those stop bolts (especially the y one) needs to have the nut tightened right down because you’ll have a hell of a job getting back to it later
Install the z stop bolt upside down so you can adjust the screw from above.
Before even booting my printer I ordered a new z coupler (you can find em on DX, $10 for 2). I haven’t had the urge to install a second motor yet but may.
Definitely needs a glass bed as the pcb based heated bed sinks (fiber glass, heat, humidity - this isn’t really a design problem more a fact of life)
Definitely going to get a 24v power supply for the heated bed, I maxed the temp out on the board at about 63 it won’t go over it on the stock PSU.
Definitely go out and get some small heatsinks and some thermal epoxy (Again, cheap on DX for a bag of 10), I’ll probably still mount a fan over there but I’ll want to
First thing to print is something like this thingiverse.com/thing:161938 so your heat bed cabling isn’t rubbing on belts.
I sheathed all my individual cables - improves the look.
I’m having a hell of a time getting the PLA to stick to the glass, it gets to layer 76 and shakes itself loose (which is why I want to take the bed to 70 deg C)
[quote=“freman”]I’ve only had it running a day
Still missing a part but it’s in the post (it’s not an important part).
Positive comments - it’s solid, just make sure you do everything up tightly where instructed, it’s so much quieter than my portabee.
Those stop bolts (especially the y one) needs to have the nut tightened right down because you’ll have a hell of a job getting back to it later
Install the z stop bolt upside down so you can adjust the screw from above.
Before even booting my printer I ordered a new z coupler (you can find em on DX, $10 for 2). I haven’t had the urge to install a second motor yet but may.
Definitely needs a glass bed as the pcb based heated bed sinks (fiber glass, heat, humidity - this isn’t really a design problem more a fact of life)
Definitely going to get a 24v power supply for the heated bed, I maxed the temp out on the board at about 63 it won’t go over it on the stock PSU.
Definitely go out and get some small heatsinks and some thermal epoxy (Again, cheap on DX for a bag of 10), I’ll probably still mount a fan over there but I’ll want to
First thing to print is something like this thingiverse.com/thing:161938 so your heat bed cabling isn’t rubbing on belts.
I sheathed all my individual cables - improves the look.
I’m having a hell of a time getting the PLA to stick to the glass, it gets to layer 76 and shakes itself loose (which is why I want to take the bed to 70 deg C)[/quote]
You have no need for a hotter heatbed, go out and get Blue painters Tape. I can tell you PLA and an extruder @ 190, heatbed @ 60 with the tape and you literally have to rip it off. Make sure the distance between nozzle and bed is no more than a piece of paper thick.
I have a role of kapton tape that I used on my portabee and it’s very much the same, except I really would rather not do that.
I’m printing on bare glass at 70C for the first layer, then dropping to 60C. I often have problems breaking large parts loose at the end unless I give them a blast of freezer spray or let the bed cool below 50C.
At the TCT show last week, the guys from 3DPunlimited told me their secret to getting prints to stick was to wipe on a little beer and let it evaporate.
Something else to look at is buildtak.eu/