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Adding a Second Extruder

Discussion in 'General Questions' started by Myah Garcia, May 13, 2020.

  1. Myah Garcia

    Myah Garcia New Member

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    Hi. I have a Robo R2, and I have started the process of adding a second extruder.

    After a few bumps in the road, I finally bought a new extruder and got my Robo R2 to list the second one. I plugged it in and noticed an issue. The second extruder read as 0.0*C.

    Is there any way I can fix this? I obviously can’t 3D print with this extruder without the printer reading the temperature. Please help!
     
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Myah Garcia likes this.
  3. Myah Garcia

    Myah Garcia New Member

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    Thank you! I’ll check it out!
     
  4. Myah Garcia

    Myah Garcia New Member

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    So I looked at my control board this morning. In another thread, I saw something about E0 and E1 both needing to be plugged in. On my R2, neither of those are plugged in.

    Besides that, everything seems to be plugged in. I open up the extruder assembly because one of the screws is stripped, but all of the wires are where they should be on the outside.
     

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  5. Myah Garcia

    Myah Garcia New Member

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    Here are pictures of the extruder wires.
     

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  6. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    I suspect the thermistor is NOT run back to the control board. On mine I had to add the wiring for that if I recall correctly.
    I certainly had to add all of the wiring internal to the extruder I assumed that would already be in place for the R2.
     
  7. Myah Garcia

    Myah Garcia New Member

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    Do you think it could be a problem with one of the boards (Uptown, Downtown, Main, etc)? I checked all of the wires from the uptown board to the downtown board, and they all seem to be working. I just don’t know which board it would be.
     
  8. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Well, it could be anywhere in that chain. I doubt it is the boards themselves.
    Probably the easiest (heh...) way to test this is to read resistance to the thermistor from the connectors starting with the uptown board.
    Read the resistance towards the thermistor from the uptown board connections. It you do not get 100k (or close to 100k ohms) then you have a bad wire to the downtown board or the thermistor itself. If you do get the approximate 100k ohm reading then the wiring from the uptown board to the controller is the problem.
     
  9. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    P.S. obviously this would be done with the power removed completely ...
     
  10. Myah Garcia

    Myah Garcia New Member

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    I have never done this before... Where and how do I read the resistance?
     
  11. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    I would have to go over my disassembly photos again.
    The thermistor plugs into the downtown board and then is wired to the uptown board (connectors at both ends and there is a small board buried in the middle with connectors as well). Then it runs back to the controller (connector there too). About the best you could do would be to start at one end and work your way towards the other checking for resistance of the thermistor at each connector. Or at least verify the wires are installed. My C2 did not have the second extruder wiring run from the controller to the uptown board and none for the second extruder from the uptown to the downtown board either. I can't speak for the R2, but I noted in my thread that I assumed the R2 would have that wiring installed... I just do not know that. Perhaps @Geof or @tkoco or @WheresWaldo (one of the R2 folks) can confirm if the wiring is even there. The connectors were, but no wiring harness wires were on mine.
     
  12. Geof

    Geof Volunteer Moderator
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    No wiring on mine but it was a very early model connections appeared there fwiw
     
  13. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    That would be my suspicion... that some or all of the units did not come internally wired for the 2nd hotend. Otherwise the C2 units would have had them... there is no real difference in the two extruder heads/mounts that I can see. Manufacturing two different sets would have been not really cost-effective. What make identical parts that vary only by a few wires?
     
  14. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    If that is true you can use the thread I did for the C2 to see where the wiring needs to be added into the extruder/print head with relation to the uptown and downtown boards.
     
  15. tiagomaricate

    tiagomaricate Member

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    Do you have any tutorials? I'm looking to add a second extruder also.
     
  16. tkoco

    tkoco - -.- --- -.-. ---
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    You will need a multimeter to do resistance readings. Search on Amazon or Ebay using the term "multimeter".
     

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