Yeah, well, that’s what happened to me.
Thanks to Steven, this problem was fixed in all of 30 seconds as I reformatted the SD card as a FAT 16!
Yeah, well, that’s what happened to me.
Thanks to Steven, this problem was fixed in all of 30 seconds as I reformatted the SD card as a FAT 16!
I learned a lot this morning! And now you don’t have to learn, as they say, the hard way.
UPDATE: DO NOT USE TILES!!! THEY WILL SHATTER! READ LATEST POST!
The bad news is this is my first clogged extruder. The good news is I have all the spare parts to whip up a new extruder, no problem. That means I can experiment with wild abandon! My backup plan is to slice and dice the PTFE insulator into washers.
Having drilled out most of the plastic clog from the barrel, it’s mostly empty. The PTFE is in pretty good shape with the threads intact, if a little worse for wear. My plan to get the remaining plastic out of the nozzle is to put the nozzle/barrel assembly into the large washer upside down and prop it up on some ceramic tiles.
My hope is that by applying a heat source to the nozzle the plastic will just drip/fall out. The suggestion for using a blow torch to clear out the barrel and nozzle comes from Rick Pollack / MakerGear. Thanks again Rick!
By the way, wicked Google Sketchup skillz, no?
Unfortunately, Bender just stopped working. As I was keeping the nozzle warm while I was working on a new model, I looked up to see a flash of fire/spark shoot out from the nozzle area, ricochet off the build platform, and disappear. Looking at the RepG control panel I discovered that I wasn’t getting any readings from the thermistor. Not good.
The RepG control panel showed 0.0 as the temperature, so I shut the plastruder down, not wanting the heater to burn out of control. I restarted Bender and RepG – but I discovered that while I could control all three axes very slugishly, I could not move the extruder motor or detect temperature. I’m guess I couldn’t have increased the temperature either, but I didn’t want to try it since I couldn’t monitor the temperature. That about covers the symptoms.
In order to diagnose the problem I tried to isolate the various parts. I pulled all of the wires out of the extruder board. Then, while the wires were still out I tested the nichrome for resistance – still around 6ohms. Then I tested the thermistor – no connectivity. Again, not good. I tested the motor for continuity, and it was fine. Since the nichrome and motor seemed fine, that left the thermistor and extruder board. I popped a random resistor into the thermistor ports, but still couldn’t get a reading on it. Unfortunately, after several resets of the motherboard and extruder board, I still couldn’t get the motor to move or a reading from the thermistor. Also, I was getting an error message that the Payload was not big enough.
Rick Pollack of MakerGear suggested on the MakerBot Operators group that I reflash the extruder firmware. After several failed attempts, I finally figured out how to flash my extruder firmware from the Arduino environment by holding down the extruder reset button. This got rid of the payload error message as well as the avrdude errors and let me reflash the extruder.
I pulled the entire extruder apart and did a little maintenance. I flossed the extruder pulley teeth, pulled all the stray bits of plastic out of the idler pulley wheel area, removed the old thermistor, unwrapped the nichrome (which was wound down and then doubled over itself as the original pictures in the wiki suggested) and rewrapped the nichrome (a single layer from the nozzle up the barrel following closely in the threads to make good contact everywhere) as suggested by several people in the MakerBot operators group. I then tested the nichrome again once it had been taped down for the proper resistance, check.
Once I pulled the thermistor out of the heater assembly, I tested the thermistor at its own leads, rather than at the wires soldered to it (in case the thermistor had come apart from the wires). Still nothing. I plugged a random resistor into the thermistor ports and was now able to get a reading off the extruder (as well as move the extruder motor). Concluding my problem was the thermistor, I forged ahead with a plan to replace it.
Luckily, I had placed an order for some PLA and nearly every single part needed for a secondary extruder (or what would be needed to fix a broken extruder) including a new thermistor. If you haven’t picked up backup parts, I highly recommend it.
I clipped the old thermistor off the wires, pulled out the new thermistor and taped it to a white piece of paper immediately, putting the tape across the leads just below the bead. I then bent the leads upwards, tinned them, soldered them to the wires, taped down the wires, pulled up the original piece of tape, and then sandwiched the thermistor in tape as per the instructions. I then plugged the heater, the motor, and the thermistor back into the extruder board – and was able to get a temperature reading, apply a little heat to the barrel, and move the extruder motor. I also noticed that this removed the sluggishness from the 3 axes stepper motors.
With the heater, motor, and thermistor working separately I put everything back together and reassembled the plastruder, plugged it back into the board and tested it again – readings, heat, and extruder motor working. I then popped it back into the dinos, did a test extrusion, and starting printing again.
“Rock on completely with some brand new components”
The opto-endstops marked the very first parts I had to solder for this MakerBot. Not having soldering anything more complicated than two wires together, this was an adventure and learning experience. Here’s what I learned today:
I’ve assembled quite a lot of my MakerBot today. This entailed assembling and putting together the X axis stage, Y axis stage, pulleys, putting gears on stepper motors, mounting gears, putting in the slider rods, Z axis threaded rods, bolting on the motors, and assembling the two “dinos.”
Although I have the CupCake CNC Deluxe kit, there are still some parts and tools required. If you’re getting ready to build your own MakerBot, here’s what else you’d need to build everything in one go: