Anet A6 3D printer

Not ABS Simon, I found, like you, that anything over about 3" long warps and pulls off the build plate. I'll have another try later once I've finished with all my modifications.
As for removing and replacing the micro plugs, I ground an old pair of pliers to firmly grip the body of the mostly JST types. I use them any time I want to fiddle with anything. One of my earliest problems was the fan plug for the Extruder wasn't making reliable contact, due to (I think) using the wires to remove it.

The print for the box was 17hrs, not anything I would have attempted with the Anet firmware.

The Marlin firmware has a power failure restart function so you don't lose a long print. I found a huge step up in print reliability when I changed all the Acceleration parameters to half of what's supplied. 1,000 down to 500. With closed loop drives you need to have the gain as high as possible for positioning accuracy, with stepper motors the accuracy is there no matter how low your gain/acceleration is.

While Simon has been printing up a storm! I decided to go a different route and seriously upgrade. The move was kicked off by a continuous failure to print a filament that I finally noticed was ABS and not PLA!

I now have Glass fibre drive belts.
A PEI build plate (It's magnetic and can be removed and bent to release the print)
A Titan extruder that can go to 285^oC
A Bowden cable feed for the Filament to get the Extruder stepper motor off the X axis.
An Auto home Inductive sensor
A new main board with replaceable plug in stepper drivers and 512k of memory.
A new screen with 2 modes, one old style and a new style touch screen. (waste of money, I leave it on the old style)
A firmware upgrade to Marlin 2.0.9.1 which gives me all kinds of fun extras like backlash compensation, mesh bed leveling and a lot more.

It's taken me around 5 weeks! I've learned a lot, would I do it again, probably not.
Now all I have to do is learn how to use or draw in 3D cad!

I did it more to get the weight off the X axis, but, you're exactly right, I have noticed a bit of stringing that I didn't get before. However getting that weight away has improved my print quality no end.

Success! I feel as though I've finally come of age, this is my first large ABS print

The brim still has to be broken off and fettled.
As part of my Bowden cable modification the original was printed in PLA which tended to deform on very long prints (>10hours) because the Extruder stepper gets very hot.
The secret with ABS is, for me, Heat, the bed is 100^oC and the extruder at 235^oC. NO fan cooling of the work piece. Any fan cooling causes warping and the base of the object must be roughly square, 70/30 is about the limit otherwise it warps and pulls off the build plate anyway!

The black marks are leftovers of PLA from the outside of the nozzle, I haven't yet found a way to clean the nozzle effectively and I don't want to use a new nozzle every print, although these days leveling is a doddle.

Hi Simon, I'm going to town next week, would you like my old A6 board? I can preload the correct Firmware for you. One of the reasons I fitted separate MosFet drivers was precisely what seems to have happened to your new board.

I've previously failed to print this component


I had to scale slightly which is why the second try.
I do like Cura, it's so powerful!

Hi Simon, I think about a Fiver should cover it, what is your cut off point? And remember, you also get the A6 screen and rotary panel switch.