So I decided to buy a 3D printer kit from Aliexpress which is a great site for cheap stuff btw.

My budget was about 200 Euro so I had to choose wisely, making a long story short I selected an Acrylic version of the Prusa i3 with automatic leveling 2 free spools of filament (0.25KG) and a free SD Card the brand name is TronXY.

The product was shipped timely and just short of 2 weeks later it finally came.

3d printer box

So I started assembling (The building instruction could be found on the SD card) the thing and about 3 hours later I flipped the on switch.

So after playing with the motors for a bit I decided to test the heated bed…….BAM sparks everywhere and my iMac was off……Damn.

I still don’t know exactly what happened but something obviously was wrong, after a few days of damage assessment I found that my Melzi board (Printer main board), the LCD of the 3D printer and sadly my iMac had died, the Aliexpress seller was kind enough to send me a replacement Melzi board and I ordered a replacement LCD for about 3 eu myself.

So if you ask me was it worth it? Well, I am an engineer and in my line of duty shit happens and if shit happens we learn from it, so yes I think it was worth it, my printer is happily printing my mac is still broken, but I have gained a lot of knowledge about my iMac, the Melzi board and 3D printing in general.

3d printer setup

Oh and I managed to fix the Melzi board that was broken, by replacing the FTDI and Atmega1284 so now I have a spare one yeay!

3d printed part