Hi, I recently picked up a Zonestar Z9V5-MK3 for too much money, too far from my house but what's done is done. I bought another hot end on eBay off a MK5 or 6 but spares seem to be few and far between though it looks like I can still get parts new. I found some info on a Facebook group for these things and their GitHub looks like it has a decent amount of info. I'm really looking for opinions or experience, what are their quirks, etc. Ultimately I want to replace the belts, trade the glass bed for magnetic, and upgrade the extruders but all that needs to wait until I've actually powered this thing on. In the near term I need to replace all the missing hardware on the machine (8 screws and a rubber foot), hook up the electrics, fire it up and see what happens.

In my previous post I explained how I acquired an Ender 3 v1, v2, and v3 over the course of a week after not owning any 3d printers, well, it's been a couple more weeks and I got a couple more printers. I spent several days trying to troubleshoot the Nebula pad that came on my v3, finally got it unbricked only to have it stick in a sort of boot loop so I gave up, I was going to just buy a screen for $40 but I got a whole nother machine for $70 which is good because I ended up replacing the screen and main board and now I have the rest for parts (the first one has several mods so fixing it rather than using it for parts made sense to me).

I fixed the v2 that I got out of the dump by adjusting the bed and replacing the stepper on the x axis and then gave that one and the v1 to my oldest daughter.

Deciding that I need to unlock the wonders of multi color printing I bought a FlashForge AD5X for $160 that had a bunch of filament caught in the bowden tubes and extruder. After fixing that I gave it a wash and tried printing a benchy but I can't get it to stick. I'm going to play with some settings tonight and see if I can get this one printing as consistently as the Ender 3 v3. I saw glue mentioned a couple of times, would a glue stick do or does it need to be something special?

Also, what type of grease do you all recommend for your machines?

So earlier this week I found an Ender 3v2 at the dump and drug it home. It powers on fine and moves in the z and y axis but not x, I have a stepper motor from an old project that will fit I'm just waiting for a gear that uses set screws vs press fit.

A few days ago my daughter mentioned she wanted to get into 3d printing (coincidentally as I hadn't told her about the dump printer) so today I bought an Ender 3v1, working, and an Ender 3v3 SE, not working for $80. The v1 is going to my daughter and probably the v2 as well once I've replaced the bad stepper and I'll keep the v3 if I can fix it.

All that said, are there common problems with the v2 that I should look for after the stepper is replaced? I can't believe that was the only issue that made someone trash it.

The v3 has the nebula smart kit and I guess freezes while booting, I read that I can reflash the firmware to get it working again but would it be worth sourcing an original screen and taking it back to stock?

Edit: another question I have, looking at the nebula kit pictures there is the pad, a camera, flash drive and something else. I don't have the flash drive for sure and I'm uncertain if the 4th part of the kit is installed or even what it is, how important are those pieces to the kit? Thank you

I have both of these handhelds and am trying to decide which to get rid of and which to keep for emulation. The Go already has custom firmware and a 128gb SD card but it loses connection from time to time because of a poorly connected ribbon cable. The 1001 is on stock firmware and needs a new battery.

This space cadet is preparing to blast off.

Saw this last night in the locker room at work. Remember, flared bases are for cowards.

It's not all bad I guess.

This cat showed up at my place just before a cold snap where it dropped to -3F (-15 with wind chill), I put out food and set up a box with a heat lamp, she's been coming back every night since and last night I was able to pick her up and bring her inside which tells me she's not feral but was probably dumped at my property.