Solved Extruder won't heat up for ABS

I've been printing with PLA for almost a week. No problems with extruder and bed temps. When I set it to ABS, the extruder just doesn't heat up. It starts at whatever it was when I switched from PLA to ABS, and then the temp just drops. I have it set to 240, but it doesn't heat up at all.

And I have the ABS/PLA model. What am I doing wrong?

 

Huh. Weird. I quit that app, restarted and it's heating up now. Bug?

 

Nope. Something still isn't right. The extruder got to temp, but the bed wasn't at 90 yet. While it was waiting for the bed to heat up, the temp on the extruder dropped. From the time I snapped the screenshot to now, it's dropped to 134.7

 

I'd say check your thermistor, if it isn't reading correctly the firmware's sanity check may be turning the extruder off to be safe. If anything, without the ABS setting enabled and just type in the number and see if it holds.

 

I killed the app and restarted it again. Now the bed and extruder are heating up. What gives? It calibrated the bed, and then says it's printing when it's not.

 

Oh, I had the problem with a few prints when I used MatterSlice, try a CaliCube and see if it extrudes ok.

 

What do you mean by "check your thermistor"?

 

CaliCube? Again, have no idea what you're talking about. I've had this 3D printer for 6 days.

 

OK, so what do I do when I click the home button and it goes here? Starting to think this Robo3D is a piece of crap. Or is it the software? So much for working right out of the box. I'm shutting this thing off for the night. I've been at it all day with not a single print.

 

Er! I just couldn't let it go. I moved the z axis down untill it hit the glass. Turned the rods until I could sneak a piece of paper underneath then printed a calibration circle and it came out perfect. Everything just worked. Whats's going on!? Maybe I just need to take a break from this and start over tomorrow!

 

It's just the software, the printer is great, software...not so much.
And sorry CaliCube = Calibration Cube (or Box not certain) should be a stock example print.
If you get adventurous Cura is amazing! More stable in my opinion.

(EDIT) oh and the thermistor stands for Thermal Resistor. As it gets hotter resistance increases and the computer can calculate how hot the extruder is. It is the small wire running to the hot end, if it fails the computer turns the extruder off so you don't burn your printer up (or your house down).

 

I printed the calibration circle and it came out perfectly. Then the next thing I downloaded from Thingiverse tried to print a 1/4 inch off the bed. When it started, the 3 points on the left and center touched the glass. The 3 on the right did not. Is it the model screwing things up?

 

So how do you check it? Although, since the calibration circle printed OK, I think something else is at work here.

 

Oh I saw it, I was just clearing up what I had said, happy to hear the printer is doing good.

 

Three ways:
wiring at the extruder
Wiring at the board
The wire traveling between the two, if it's printing fine now I wouldn't worry about it though, might have been a bug when reading

 

The firmware in the R1 is limited to a bed temp of 85C. In practical terms this means don't set the bed for anything beyond 82-83C.

Anyways when 85 is hit the whole system shuts down.

 

Thanks. So that explains it. Maybe there should be a popup that's displayed when you attempt to set the temperature over 85.

 

That would be handy, when connected, it could run through the firmware and look for limits and warn you of them. Or the robo could come with a sticker with the high and low temps warned out on them.

At least if they want it to be accessible. But then again, open hardware/firmware... not always for the non-adventurous. Mac vs Linux box situation.