Ready to throw this thing out

They might also be overheating and shutting off, though I think it might be torque stall as well.

Have you lubricated your Z rods?

 

Yes, I did lubricate them, I ran the Z up and down for over an hour with out a problem. I also did another print before I went to bed, it ran for 3:14min last night and came out perfect (it was 0.5mm shorter that expected, but over 120mm high I can live with that).

I will try a larger print tonight again, hopefully the gremlins are out of the machine.

I didn't look but is there a stepper driver for extruder 2, I could have just moved that one. I had a bad jam on the machine that is posted earlier, I'm wondering if that overloaded the Z axis stepper then. I saw that the X stepper was turned down the most of all the stepper pots so figured it used the least amount of power, so swapped that one.

As much of a PITA it has been to get this working at least I learned a lot along the way... Thanks for the continued support.

 

similarly, do I feel perhaps not about throwing it out but at least while replacing most of the parts removing the Robo emblem perhaps more hours of months have I wasted, yet I think many would call your results pretty positive, better than a lot of kickstarter Robo's I've seen, certainly better than mine.

 

I was able to print 3 items with no problems and then today I printed a larger object that tapered to a smaller one, in the larger section it again didn't move up on the Z axis, is it possible that when the Z axis stepper motors are being held for a long period of time the drive is over heating?

Can I just turn pot down on the stepper driver?

When it move to smaller section (increasing Z axis quicker) it doesn't have this problem.

I'm printing a smaller object now and it seems to be printing fine.

temperamental thing...

(guess i have to take it apart again...)

 

Well the problem is the fan on the bottom of the unit is dead.

I tried to remove the arduino board as i have another larger fan but all the cable are too short for it to sit out of the unit.

I think someone should send me a spare box of replacement parts for this unit.

 

Made a bracket for the new fan, printing again...

Going to have to make some feet for the printer.. but the fan is 3x the size of the old one... hopefully this will fix it. for now anyway...

 

Things were going well for a few days, last night started a print, checked it at 3am and OMG disaster.

The wire for the fan cooling the print head body somehow shorted, it melted through the insulation, the zip ties above, the split plastic tube, the stepper motor wires, thermister wires, and then the heater wire. The system then realized that there was a temp problem and stopped printing and shutdown.

WHY is there no thermal protection on the wires or a fuse? This is terrifying as there was obviously a fire in the system.

I have been stripping wires out this morning and will re wire the system with some inline fuses.

Not sure I really trust this thing any more...

 

That seems like a good idea. Here is another one: Sun Systems Flame Defender http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Systems-F...21&sr=8-1&keywords=Sun+Systems+Flame+Defender

 

Thats not funny, so this thing is a known fire hazard! I have been rewiring it all day now, I added fuses to pretty much everything that uses power. But it looks like the board is dead, x, y and z work but the extruder is dead, I rewired the stepper motor, it will work if i plug it in to the x but not the extruder port. I tried changing the stepper driver but that didn't work either, look like I need to replace the board. Will i need to replace both boards or just the one?

I really needed have some parts printed for a job tomorrow and again this thing lets me down.

 

Ok, well I have replaced the ramps board, stepper drivers, arduino board, re flashed it rewired everything i can find and E0 will not "step" if i plug it in to X it will move but I get nothing in E0... Not sure what i'm missing...

What can I check to see how to get E0 working again??

Well I don't see how to add a photo now... so here are the links

http://pic.studio16.ca/3d/fire1.jpg
http://pic.studio16.ca/3d/fire2.jpg
http://pic.studio16.ca/3d/fire3.jpg
http://pic.studio16.ca/3d/fire4.jpg
http://pic.studio16.ca/3d/fire5.jpg
http://pic.studio16.ca/3d/fire6.jpg

 

Any 3d printer is a fire hazard. That's why they come with a warning to not leave unattended

 

I used a spare stepper motor, got my spare 12v psu, isolated just the arduino, ramps, drivers and LCD and the motor will only move in one direction on X & Y, E0 will not move at all and Z will move in both directions, i also tried reversing the wires and the motor on X & Y only move counter clockwise, so it's like a signal isn't going in one direction.

I also replaced the ramps board, each of the drives one at a time and the arduino board and still get the same behavior, I re flashed the boards before using them...

What do you check next?

Do I have 2 fried boards?

Why does it work on Z but only one direction on X & Y and nothing on E0... What kills the boards? how to you trouble shoot the board?

Tired and fed up so I will start again in a few days...

 

I know this does not help much but I have never damaged an Arduino and I have an equivalent of about ten of them at home.

Take a deep breath and try to go through one thing at a time. You could even separate out the Arduino and write a simple program to toggle all the outputs and test them one at a time with a multimeter, LED or whatever test equipment you have.