Seeking suggestions for the next upgrade to a Geeetech A20T.

3d Printing / Slicers / Setup / Problems
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Fellow Printers,

After too long, I am finally getting decent, usable prints with a Geeetech A20T. I have 3 Prusa Original 3d printers, and they are dialed in, consistently producing models. I got the A20T due to struggles with multi-material printing. I can now print multi-colored prints as well as print models with consistent mixed colors (minimizing the toothpaste effect). Most of the work is with PLA, but ABS and PETG have also succeeded.

Anyways, I was hoping for some suggestions on what would be the best upgrade to try next. The basic setup of the A20T is below. It’s still a bit loud, and I’m going to make silicone molded vibration dampeners for the feet of the printer and stepper motor mounts. All the fans are under individual speed control, and the A20T lives in an enclosure with the power supply outside.

The printer has stock stepper motors, what would be good replacements in hopes of improving print accuracy?

The extruders are upgraded to dual metal gears, but there are probably better ones out there. What are good, reasonably priced extruders?

I have the stock hot end/carriage setup, but stringing is a problem. What is a good replacement? I tried a diamond hot end, but the stringing seemed worse.

Belt drives, pulleys, tensioners are all stock. Anything better?

I like to tinker, optimize, DIY… as long as I have at lease one functional printer. I just finished designing a fan shroud for the A20T, printed it in polycarbonate on one of the Prusa’s, and it seems to be working well. I like soldering, building electronic components, programming, … Eventually, all the fans in the A20T, the enclosure fans, lighting, and air cleaners will be run off a raspberry PICO.

Much thanks in advance for suggestions!

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I also have the A20t and I did not do any modifications to the hardware, just some to the software in Cura. This allowed me to use any single one of the extruders. I got mine early and the software did not allow you to choose the 2nd extruder. I was interested to Learn you have done multi color models. It was my first printer and I have sort of retired the printer, needing the space. I am now using a JG Maker Artist D. Thanks for the input on the printer. You gave me excuse to bring it out of retirement.

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Dear Lowtech,

I’m bummed that yours was the only response I got. Do you know of any other forums that have a good number of A20T owners?

Anyway, the A20T has been a lot of tinkering. I think if it had been my first printer, it would have been my last. I have 3 Prusa Original printers, and they have spoiled me. I got used to making a model and then printing it. Not so with the A20T (at least not in my hands). I use the Prusa’s to make updated parts for the A20T, seems they print any model or filament I throw at them. I recently finished a fan shroud for the A20T, printed in polycarbonate for heat resistance. I’ve recently gotten multi-color printing to work, both mixing colors to get a uniform resultant color, and using specific filaments to print specific areas of the model. Still a work in progress, but better now than ever before.

I’ve never used Cura. I use PrusaSlicer, and I’ve gotten to know the program quite well. I think there may be only a handful of features that I don’t understand and use. It allows multiple extruders, and you can set an extruder to a specific model. If you had a frog, with a separate model for the body, and a separate model for the eyes, you set an extruder for each to get a two color model. You can also set different extruders to different layers, so if you had a sign with raised letters, you can set different extruders to the base and letters, to get different colors.

PrusaSlicer also allows you to “paint” different colors onto models. I’ve only played with this a bit, but it makes things a lot easier. The A10T needs only minimal purging between colors- much less than the Prusa MMU2s (multi-material unit).

I hope some of this helps… I’d love to find more A20T owners, feels like I keep re-inventing the wheel.

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Yeah, there aren’t a lot of A20T owners in this forum that I know of. You started out much smarter than me. You bought the Prusa. I bought an Ender 5 Pro, then a JG Maker Artist D Pro and, finally, I smartened up and bought a MK3S+. And you’re right, the MK3’s “just work”. I have seen and heard that phrase in many, many places.

I put it down to the steps Prusa took to automate the bed levelling, the axes, etc., plus the fine tuning of the slicer profiles.

No doubt, the MK’s are 1 of the more challenging builds out there but, if a person is careful and patient, they can get it done and be rewarded with excellent results.

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I have not modified except putting a glass bed on mine. Glass beds on both of my printer is the best I can say. I bought an auto leveling module for the A20T but did not put it on because you had to upgrade the marlin software to do so and there is an install program you must download and install before going to the latest marlin for the A20T. I have used Cura and Ideamaker and they both have special features exclusive to them. I have not looked at PrusaSlicer. I recently slowed down on print modeling. I cant get the hang of the CAD programs. I bought my A20T about July of 21 and my Artist D in August. Stay with us, I do not know of a better forum for 3D printers.