Printer worked for 18 hours then died

Initially posted this in troubleshooting, and was told to post it here instead.

My printer arrived yesterday and worked for the first 18 hours... but the heated bed isn't heating anymore and the thermistor on the printing head just quit working as well and is giving a constant reading of 357c. I checked the heated bed connection and it has continuity but no power. The RAMPS board appears to not be putting out any current (I'm assuming it should be getting 12v DC) on the D8 connection.

The heated bed had been working, but died in the middle of a print. I had been printing, and I noticed it had gone silent... The printer LOOKED OK, then I saw that repetier was reporting that it was waiting for the bed to heat. ???! I thought... It was 20 minutes into the print, how did it cool down? That's when I killed the job and started to troubleshoot. The voltmeter seems to indicate that the problem is in the RAMPS. So, I thought I'd try and redo the print without the heated bed... well, it got 4-5 minutes into the job, and then aborted stating that the head was at a critical temp. I looked at the print, and it had only printed a little bit... I guess the rest of the time it was THINKING it was printing, but seems that the print head wasn't hot either as I was able to put my finger on the extruder tip and it was barely warm. I tried swapping the T0 and T1 connections to see if maybe it was the ramps or the thermistor, and it just changed from reporting that the print head was at 357c to reporting that the bed was 357c... so that implies to me that the thermistor died. I swear, I'm not doing anything wacky or trying to mod the printer or anything... just doing a backlog of prints I'd been waiting on the printer to do... and while I admit the printer has been quite busy for these first 18 hours, it has had downtime. I don't know if there is something wrong with the print head itself or what, but there seems to be minor amounts of PLA which have built up under the gold tape on the extruder. This seems to be coming from the head itself, and not from globs from failed prints or something... I could clean it out between prints and it'd be back again next time I looked, even if there was no problems with buildup under the extruder... most of my failed prints thus far had been to adhesion issues until I finally got that (mostly) sorted out.

I don't know what to do at this point. I've only gotten two successful prints thus far... the Mr. Jaws test, and the DTI bed lever... I was in the process of printing a endcap for the filament holder... as there wasn't one, and was getting ready to queue up the next print which was NEMA23 brackets for a CNC router for my buddy. Now I'm completely dead in the water.

Matt in Dripping Springs, TX
Kicker #325

 

Just to provide closure here as a just in case... Jerry got me sorted out with new parts via email support trouble ticket #69.

 

It also seems the Robo support guys were not monitoring the tech support threads as they didn't have access... or at least Jerry didn't. My recommendation would be close this part of the forum and just direct folks to email for support requests.

Having worked in QA and QC for the better part of 20+ years, I can say support ticket tracking is key to a companys success. Stuff like requests for help from the company falling through the cracks can kill a small company. Better to have a single clearly defined support mechanism rather than multiple routes where different folks are responsible (or roles are not CLEARLY defined) so at least it's easy to track who's doing what and where issues are in regard to resolution. Ideally, issues could be tracked in something like a bug tracker. There's an open source one called Mantis (http://www.mantisbt.org/download.php) which is very good and easy to setup. I've impliemented it at a number of startups where budget was low to none and it's been hugely successful. State based issue tracking makes reports easy and trending and tracking a snap. Issues could come in via email, as well as a webpage, and be automatically imported even. Then customers could be directed to the URL for their bug and you would be able to preserve full history, attachments, et all. Anyway, just something to consider. I'd suggest strongly consider. Issues could be tracked with hardware, shipping, software/firmware, et all. Issues can be assigned to anyone with an email address, and there is no need to have direct access to the company network. It's a REALLY slick solution, and other than the time to install/configure it (which is easy) it's free. {shrug} I'd be happy to assist with doing it, as I REALLY want to see RoBo succeed.