Hemera on Anet A8

For this upgrade, you’ll need:

an Anet A8,

a Hemera kit,

four M3x5 or M3x6 screws and two M3x10 screws (or similar)

and either a soldering iron or a spare three-pin Dupont connector housing.

You’ll also need a Phillips 2 screwdriver, a 7mm, 10mm and 16mm spanner and a few hex keys.

As well as the printed parts from https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/127...

and the firmware from https://toms3d.org/wp-content/uploads/20...

First, let’s disassemble the original toolhead. Undo the locking nut on the original heatbreak

and remove the screw at the bottom that’s holding the extruder body in place.

Unplug the motor, we will be reusing the original motor cable.

Also remove the part cooling fan, but we will be reusing that, too.

If you have any bed leveling sensor mounted to the back of the carriage, unscrew that before unbolting the carriage from the bearing blocks.

Once that’s loose, clip off the zip ties holding the belt in place and you should be free to remove the stock carriage from the printer.

For the Hemera itself, rotate the heater block 90°, with the long side facing the stepper motor.

We need this to maintain compatibility with fan shrouds made for the A8.

To rotate it, grab the heater block with a wrench and slightly unscrew the heatbreak from the extruder body.

Then unscrew the nozzle half a turn, making sure you don’t put any bending stress on the heatbreak.

Then rotate the block and tighten up the nozzle against the heatbreak by holding on to the heater block and screwing down the nozzle.

and finally lightly tighten the heatbreak back into the extruder body. Now we’re ready to start mounting the Hemera to the printer.

Start with the new printed carriage and bolt it down onto the bearing blocks using the original screws.

Lightly thread in each screw first, then tighten all of them down.

Next, we can mount the Hemera to the carriage.

Grab the included M3x8 screws

and insert two of the square nuts into the slots of the Hemera’s end plate.

Then screw the Hemera to the carriage from the back.

If you’re having trouble with the square nuts falling out, you can easily put a piece of tape over the slot.

Next, mount the fan adapter plate onto the front side of the Hemera.

Use two more square nuts and shorter M3x5 screws.

Then use the original fan screws and mount the fan to the adapter plate. You may need to push a bit to get the thread started.

Lastly, let’s mount the strain relief wire guide. This can attach to any of the grid points above the extruder if your wiring is different, but I’ve found it to work well all the way to the right.

Use two M3x10 screw or any other screw that fits and bolt it down. By the way, there’s also a few extra grid points on the bottom edge of the carriage plate if you feel like mounting stuff there.

And that’s the carriage assembled! Let’s get it working!

For motion, we need to attach the belt. This is a screwless mount, simply slide the belt in on one side, then grab a pair of needle-nose pliers and slide in the other side under slight tension.

Next up, wiring. We’re reusing the original motor connector and part cooling fan, so they can stay wired in.

The hotend heater can use the same terminal as the stock one.

The Hemera comes with ferrules around its wires, which makes this a really clean install.

The hotend cooling fan is fairly simple, too.

Carefully pull off the white connector shroud from the board,

then plug the connector on the Hemera fan into the pins, making sure you get the polarity right by matching the red and black wires to the orientation of the part cooling fan’s wires.

For the thermistor, you have a few different options. and insert them into the two outermost spots in the three-pin.

If you have a three-pin housing for these “Dupont” style connectors, you can remove the wires from the supplied housing by bending up these tabs,

and insert them into the two outermost spots in the three-pin.

Then peel off the connector shroud on the board

and plug it in. Polarity does not matter here.

Alternatively, you can also cut the connector off and solder on the stock thermistor’s connector.

Now, to get the wires in order, pull two zip ties through the strain relief guide.

Then tie down the wire bundle from the hotend after you’ve wrapped it with the spiral wrap.

At this point, you could start up the printer and start cranking out parts, but it would severely underextrude and the temperatures would be off.

So because the A8 could do with a few more firmware fixes anyway, I’m providing a fresh setup of Marlin 2.0 beta that not only is ready to go for the Hemera and v6 hotend, but also enables all thermal safety features.

You can find the .hex file and Marlin 2.0 beta source code below.

Hex https://toms3d.org/wp-content/uploads/20...

Source https://toms3d.org/wp-content/uploads/20...

And that's the A8 completed. Happy printing!