How big a PITA will it be to replace the power switch

According to the shipping manifest, 2.1.5

 

Just received the new board last night. It looks like:

1) Raise the bed (which involves powering it on)
2) remove the hatch
3) transfer all the cables/plugs from the old one to the new one
4) remove old board. I'm assuming screws through the board to posts underneath?
5) screw in the new board?
Close up and done?

Am I missing anything?

I will mention that any strategy that involves me using things like screwdrivers is fundamentally flawed.

 

I've actually done a couple stepper board replacements (long story, 60% my fault) on my old FlashForge Dreamer, getting both right on the first try, so this isn't exactly new to me. Only scares the crap out of me, that's all.

 

the farther I get into this, the more it's turning into an advertisement for an i3. As a particularly mechanically ept friend keeps reminding me, the most important feature is how easy it will be to fix. I thought I was covered here with the hot end that comes out with one screw and the use of industry standard(-ish) firmware, and even that little hatch that lets you at the hardware. And the fact that at least one board looks like a generic RPi didn't hurt. But... LITTLE Hatch.

1. Open the thing up by removing the hatch. One by one, I pick cables off the still-mounted original board and plug them into the same place on the new board. I don't even like letting go of the cable, lest I get the orientation wrong plugging into the new board. I know most are keyed, but not very well.

2. I get to the point to where I'm going to have to move the original board out and mount the new one, even though most of the cables up the right side of the original are still plugged in. Just not enough slack in the wiring.

Pause here to spend a half-an hour trying to find my iFixit tool kit, which ultimately turned out to be exactly where I thought it was in the first place, but you know, senior moment.

3. Spend several minutes figuring out which Philips head bit was the right one. Hell, I'm guessing it's Philips head in the first place because it's so friggin' dark in there, I can't see clearly. Another senior moment.

4. Spend way too long trying to get the first screw broken loose, because it was put in there by Jack Armstrong and a whole tube of super glue. Turns out, it's the smallest one, but I'm not getting enough purchase to budge the screw and pushing down on a screwdriver in a dark place, then trying to apply enough torque to get it to turn while concentrating on maintaining downward force, and (A) Remember what I said about me and screwdrivers; (B) starting to worry about rounding the head.

5. Finally figure out why the shaft of my screwdriver has a hole through it, and finding a rod of suitable diameter, finally get the front left screw loose. There's some significance to that; I'm just not sure what.

6. Discover that the other 3 screws cannot be addressed by my screwdriver in perpendicular fashion because the lip of the hatch is in the way.

Why does it have to be this hard?

7. Being a programmer, I am not really copacetic with the use of BFI (Brute Force and Ignorance) but by now, my frustration is reaching a crescendo. I manage to get the left rear and right front loose with my screwdriver at a cant, but the right rear is both impossible to reach, and for that matter, impossible to see. I know generally where it is by moving the board around and noting the center of its rotation, by reaching around and under to find the post, but that's still not quite enough to actually place a screwdriver on it. So, I give the plastic piece that surrounds the hatch an excessive yank, and it actually came off without any "You just broke something noises" Except I can't figure out how to get it out of the enclosure so I end up having to work around it.

8) Still can't see the damned screw head so I break my solemn rule and unplug the thing that I think is right in front of it. I find the screw head. I get the screw out. the board came loose without any additional application of BFI

Current status:

1) Absolutely drenched in stress sweat.
2) Left front screw got dropped into the inner recesses of the enclosure, but I'm sure it'll be easy to find once I get a better look.
3) Looking for a teeth-mountable penlight for further work
4) Apparently, I have the onset of some sort of age related movement disorder because trying to aim that screwdriver at the screw head was an excellent demonstration of Heisenberg's assertion, if not evidence of loss of some dopamine receptors.

I'll get back to it later.

 

Yes, that cover was the thing I applied the BFI to.

Just can't understand why they couldn't have either made the hatch wider so you could reach the screws or just reposition the board.

But that inevitably leads to the other design question as to why it's necessary to replace a $60 main board just to fix a burned out switch, even if the parts are under warrantee.

 

I think I'm also going to spend the rest of the evening singing the song of my people before I dive back in.

 

Never easy.

Got the new board in, and did a test power on. All the motor, extruder, and heat controls seemed to work from the LCD. Powered off finished bolting everything back together, turned it back on and attempted to initiate a print.

It said "You haven't set a Z offset." Oh, right. That's obvious in retrospect.

Multiple attempts at running the Z offset wizard all failed the same place: bed lowers to the bottom, X and Y axes recalibrate to what looks like 0,0 then the bed raises to the point to where one would normally get involved. Except that it just sits there, saying "Positioning Z axis. Will proceed to the next step when done." And never proceeds.

Opened it back up and reseated anything I could find labeled "Z", but to no avail. Multiple reboots at each attempt, no go,

Finally got into the eeprom editor and set the z offset from what I remembered it being.

Restarted the print, and it started normally except for completely skipping the whole 9-point bed levelling routine. Looks like I remembered the offset correctly, but WTF?

Could it be that Marlin needs to be updated, because nothing of the sort was even hinted at me.

 

Well, that's what I would have thought, but how would I go about reloading it anyway?

 

Thanks. Yes, the LCD is working. I'll try that.

 

Even with the issues, it's nice to have it printing again