Tuesday, December 21, 2010

UP! was Down! :'(




Yesterday during a 3 hour print the printer just stopped mid print having made 3/4 of the whole print. In the UP! software status bar there was the message "nozzle too cool". Not fun at all.
But during the hunt for the error I took some photos of the heating element and the thermocoupler.
(And yes it´s alive again!)

Measuring the resistance with the voltmeter gave me 150 kOhm on the heater meaning that it would need something of a few kV to get that hot. So here was something fishy.




Here you can see that it has got PTFE tubing covering the solder joints.



It´says 24V 80W, so the resistance should be around
7.2Ohm.



Yes it took me a minute to notice the set screw holding the heater :)



Once I got off the tubing one of the joints just fell off. And it seems like
this was the problem. Measuring at the heater wires it measured 7.3 Ohm
which sounds more reasonable than 150 kOhm.



This is my try at soldering it back., didn't get that nice but works ok for now.
I think the heating  wire  needs to be crimped and not 
soldered for long term stability.

And the printer prints again!
Now I just need to find a good solution to get a better connection to the heater, soldering with "normal" solder doesnt seem to work. Any ideas?

6 comments:

  1. Check out the soldering recommendations for the MakerBot MK5 Plastruder for high temperature applications: http://wiki.makerbot.com/thingomatic-doc:plastruder-mk5-build-instructions#toc68
    MakerBlock

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  2. get some high temp solder....check ebay for some.

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  3. Happy new year 2011 Chris E. to you and family and thanks for all in this 2010.
    J.

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  4. Happy new year to you too José! :)

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  5. You should use ferrules. Heating element fabricators as well as mendel-parts use ferrules. I love them too. No problems so far...

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