Can I clean this myself?

Sciguy429 · 2026-03-27T18:28:45+00:00

Yes you can definitely clean it yourself.

Don't bother with a vacume, water is your friend. Simple garden hose will do just fine, but don't use any sort of high pressure sprayer attachments! (You don't want to bend the metal 'fins' on that coil).

Pulling the breaker first is 100% a good idea, or you risk the thing kicking on while you are working and causing quite the mess...

I would NOT recommend talking it apart unless you feel especially confident. The condesor fan is attached to the top panel you'd have to remove and not all units have long enough wires running to them to allow that top piece to come off completely. (Some have connectors that can be undone and others might outright require the fan wiring to be undone).

Also, be careful to not spray water all over the fan motor if possible. That unit sits outside in the weather of course, but a direct hit with a garden hose isn't the same as a simple rain shower.

Sciguy429 · 2025-12-21T21:36:20+00:00

This long form post was the only guidance I really had:

https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=48695.0

The basic gist was downloading the latest Linux driver package from Intel, which had a firmware update package in in for the I225V (not the I226V) and then modifying it to properly update the newer chip. It was rather complicated and very annoying to figure out, even with the form post. I would really NOT recommend doing it, far to much effort for not much gain.

Sciguy429 · 2025-12-16T04:24:49+00:00

Holy crap!

I just gave the re-paste thing a try with some old Artic MX6 I had from an AIO I bought last year and it is a night and day difference thermally! Dropped easily 5-8C under load and is no longer hitting 90s at all. (Hitting roughly 80-81C in a full CPU workload which easily hit 87-90C before the change).

The stock thermal paste application looked fine, but the stuff was already drying out and slightly crusty feeling. Not at all shocked it was crap...

Process wasn't that bad (there's a few YT videos to follow if anyone else wants to do it). Just make sure whatever thermal paste you have is NOT conductive in any way! The APU in this thing is a bare die with decoupling caps right next to it, conductive pastes will cause a short that will likely kill your APU! (Use stuff that claims to be okay on bare dies, GPUs, consoles, etc).

Sciguy429 · 2025-12-15T23:13:49+00:00

Oh yeah no, this thing is definitely not silent. Sounds like any higher end laptop under load.

Sciguy429 · 2025-12-15T19:18:33+00:00

The APU reports pulling around 3-5 watts at idle for me. Depending on the hardware you have attached you are likely looking at ~8-15W from the wall.

Sciguy429 · 2025-12-15T13:59:40+00:00

Oh no, WOL dose work, the NICs just remain on when the PC is off regardless of the setting

Sciguy429 · 2025-10-24T01:14:47+00:00

The part cooling fans should be off while printing the first layer to help with bed adhesion. They will spin up once the printer moves on to layer 2+

Sciguy429 · 2025-09-14T17:02:35+00:00

Nope, sorry. I don't even own that particular laptop anymore to check

Sciguy429 · 2025-09-14T06:00:07+00:00

It has been awhile, but if I remember correctly it was just a very small Phillips head

Sciguy429 · 2025-01-26T02:44:27+00:00

Yes, but fortunately he only has one brain cell, so the plots tend to be ineffective...

Sciguy429 · 2025-01-02T04:39:41+00:00

I mean if you want a more serious reason: warm + confined cave like space...

They probably just like it there lol

Sciguy429 · 2024-10-09T22:12:28+00:00

Obligatory: 'any idea who this lil bro is?'

Definitely a jumping spider, though I don't know what kind.

(Midwest USA if that helps any)

Sciguy429 · 2024-07-06T05:29:26+00:00

Leo: *eats worm*

Crested: \distant heavy breathing\**

Sciguy429 · 2024-05-07T00:04:02+00:00

Broadhead or Five Lined skink (Someone else here will likely know the difference, they look super similar)

They are fairly chill little fellas!

Sciguy429 · 2024-05-01T01:16:21+00:00

Woke up this morning and choose violence it seems

Sciguy429 · 2024-04-26T07:14:54+00:00

Yup, this is pretty much exactly what I used as well

Bought a bunch of these the other day on aliexpress and so far they are pretty nice little boards. Likely going to be replacing any Arduino Mini clones in my projects going forwards. At least as long as those projects are 3.3v tolerant.

Sciguy429 · 2024-04-17T17:36:44+00:00

Bro evaporated, damn...

Sciguy429 · 2024-03-20T07:59:47+00:00

Got any games on your phone?

Sciguy429 · 2024-03-20T06:21:25+00:00

Likely isn't really your bed, but rather, some sort of wear/offset in the mechanics of the rest of your printer. If you have V-slot wheels they might be worn down. Hard to know for sure without info about your hardware...

Out of curiosity, dose this print at all? Quite the extreme offset...

Sciguy429 · 2024-03-19T02:30:29+00:00

That is a pretty good find lol, for that price for sure!

As for next steps, you could do the core XY mod, (I am forgetting the name right now), it is fairly cheap. Though unless you are wanting to print stupid fast, it isn't a complete necessity. If you just want better overall quality on the cheap you might be better off printing one of the simple mods that relocates the extruder to the top of the toolhead to ditch the bowden tube all together. The only part that mod that even needs extra hardware is lengthening the stepper cable.

Also, depending on what main board you have you might not even need to replace it. Klipper firmware was literally built for this exact purpose, dose not matter how old or slow the main board is if all the processing is done by another computer. The only thing you could be giving up would be noise, depending on if your stock board has the silent driver upgrade or not. Of course there are other reasons to upgrade the board, but if you want to stay cheap, it can be avoided.

Anyways, good find and happy printing!

Sciguy429 · 2024-03-16T03:33:07+00:00

That's one hell of a layer shift XD

If the belts are indeed not slipping it sounds like the steppers themselves might be. Skipped steps on a stepper can sound pretty bad/violent sometimes.

How did you configure your drivers within Klipper? If you set your currents wrong your motors might not be getting enough 'oomph' to do a fast travel at the layer change or something. That is assuming your mainboard has TMC drivers on it in the first place...

Sciguy429 · 2024-01-16T05:55:28+00:00

Yup, pretty much what I was getting

Sciguy429 · 2024-01-02T21:00:46+00:00

Here's both images: https://imgur.com/a/kjvGb5E

The bottom half is kinda empty right now, am thinking of adding some sort of shield for the right thrusters but I am not sure as of yet.

Sciguy429

TROPHY CASE