Broken Printer - What to check?

[Matsubaa]

No such luck, no bed clips in use here.

I suspect the strain relief at the back of the bed isn't installed quite right, it seems like there's more play than there ought to be in terms of pulling the wire in an in-out direction than I would expect and with having testing the VIN->GND resistance at 0.2 Ohms I'm guessing it's truly dead now unless there's some random wire jammed in it.

[Matsubaa]

I changed the fuse and reassembled everything.

I've observed the printer now and watched the print job get interrupted and the whole thing freeze up when the hotend started sparking.

Everything I know how to fix is already tightened down so now I think I'm down to a fault in the heater cartridge. I don't relish the thought of taking that all apart again and again for maintenance though.

Any recommendations for a printable hotend mount with less tweaky wire routing than that little cage? I imagine PETG run on my other printer would work if I have the right models.

[William]

Hi,Can you describe exactly what your current problem is?
So that we can solve the problem better.
If you need to replace the hot end, you need to remove the hot end cover and replace it.
The printing range for PETG consumables is: Bed temperature: 75-90 °C,
Extruder temperature: 230-250 °C, you can refer to this: https://www.simplify3d.com/support/mate ... uide/petg/

[Matsubaa]

In short - something inside the hot-end is now generating sparks and shutting down the whole machine in the first couple layers of a test print. I assume the heater cartridge is broken/damaged because it should be the only part with enough current to make a spark.

Chances are that I broke it myself because the wiring routes in the stock assembly are pretty unforgiving so while I have it taken apart, I'm looking at this kind of rebuild too: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2984898

What kind of heat cartridge should I be getting (24v, 40W but apparently there are different mechanical sizes too)? Is it more practical to just do an E3D V6 (or clone) hot-end upgrade while I have it taken apart?

[William]

Hi, Depending on the link you provide, build the cover.
For the hot end, you need to buy the hot end of your own model.

[Matsubaa]

I pulled it apart again this morning in preparation for installing the replacement parts and I think I found the source of the sparking.

IMG_20190901_085709.jpg (140.75 KiB) Viewed 5673 times

[Matsubaa]

The undocumented cable routing has to be threaded through a very particular way so nothing rubs on the X-axis, that's turned out to be my baseline issue.

My new replacement part immediately burned through the insulation rubbing on that same edge. I figured out what was wrong, re-routed the cords and shrink-tubed the bare wire spot. Currently I'm printing a new mount for that extension board so nothing has to thread through/around the carriage and it'll all plug in on the front side.

When it's done, it'll look something more like this:

a10 board working.jpg (47.63 KiB) Viewed 5657 times

[William]

Thanks for your feedback.