So I'm pretty sure I borked my extruder board, any thoughts?

[myddrn]

The situation:
My extruder (and possibly other pieces) of my recently completed
Cupcake seem to have taken on a mind of their own when it comes to
printing.

Using:
ReplicatorG 0018
Cupcake is from batch 15

The machine will:
Stop moving (but keep extruding, sometimes) early into builds, but
always after the raft has been printed.
- this happened twice with the makerbot coin at the exact same place
Stop moving and extruding when printing circles
Start printing WITHOUT moving the Z-stage back down after doing a the
test extrusion
The extruder refuses to take a firmware update from a windows machine
(works fine in linux [Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition])

Note:
I have been printing calibration squares and a couple MakerBot coins
without incident before yesterday. Using ReplicatorG 0017 and then
ReplicatorG 0018.

If any additional information would be useful, please let me know, I'm
a little new at this.

[Adam Sheesley]

Printing from the SD card seems to produce the same types of errors.  Specifically on the makerbot coin model the printer stops, extruding and moving, after the first circle layer after it finishes the raft.  

I have noticed a trend in that it seems to be OK with printing straight lines, but circles make it stop.  I say this because it went through about five layers of the lego brick (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:591) and stopped while printing one of the holes.  But that may have just been happenstance.

I will do more testing tonight and see if I can replicate the problems on the linux netbook.

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Mark Cohen <markc...@gmail.com> wrote:

did you try printing from sd?
did you use the non windows pc to print?

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[ddurant]

If it happens with an SD card, the problem probably isn't your OS or
USBTTL cable.

Have you rechecked all your wiring to make sure things are nicely
plugged in? Tried a different port on the mobo for the extruder cable?
Tried a different cable?

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[Adam Sheesley]

Thanks for all the advice! I will try these suggestions and report back.

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Mark Cohen <markc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Try redoing the motherboard firmware
try checking the cables on the steppers even switch some of your boards with different axis
try increasing the voltage slowly on the steppers

On Jul 23, 2010 10:26 AM, "Adam Sheesley" <myd...@gmail.com> wrote:

Printing from the SD card seems to produce the same types of errors.  Specifically on the makerbot coin model the printer stops, extruding and moving, after the first circle layer after it finishes the raft.  

I have noticed a trend in that it seems to be OK with printing straight lines, but circles make it stop.  I say this because it went through about five layers of the lego brick (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:591) and stopped while printing one of the holes.  But that may have just been happenstance.

I will do more testing tonight and see if I can replicate the problems on the linux netbook.

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Mark Cohen <markc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> did you try printing from sd?
> did you use the non windows pc to print?

>>
>> On Jul 23, 2010 5:56 AM, "myddrn" <myd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The situation:

>> My extrude...

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[Adam Sheesley]

So I ended up switching the cable that runs from the motherboard to the extruder board from the bottom slot on the motherboard to the second from the top.  This eliminated the "aversion to circles" problem, as well as most, but not all, of the general wonkiness.

After doing a number of test prints with this new configuration I noticed a growing flange of ABS oozing out from where the PTFE insulator barrel meets the big washer.  I dissembled the extruder from the insulator retainer down and pulled off the collar of leaking ABS.  It appears that the ABS leaked out of space between the threads and the barrel.  From what I can gather, this is because I assembled the barrel incorrectly (put the nut a little too close to the PTFE cylinder, didn't screw the cylinder down quite enough, etc).

So my question is, can anyone give me some insight as to why a semi-deformable plastic is used for the insulator barrel?

I understand that if I was doing it right, it shouldn't do that, but I'm curious none the less about the line of reasoning so that I don't re-invent a broken wheel while I'm trying to think of new configurations for the print head.

[ddurant]

MBI blogged about that recently.. http://blog.makerbot.com/2010/07/14/barriers-barrels-ptfe-oh-my/

> So my question is, can anyone give me some insight as to why a
> semi-deformable plastic is used for the insulator barrel?

Probably because it's relatively cheap and they're not too worried
when it leaks a bit..

On Jul 24, 2:55 pm, Adam Sheesley <myd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So I ended up switching the cable that runs from the motherboard to the
> extruder board from the bottom slot on the motherboard to the second from
> the top.  This eliminated the "aversion to circles" problem, as well as
> most, but not all, of the general wonkiness.
>
> After doing a number of test prints with this new configuration I noticed a
> growing flange of ABS oozing out from where the PTFE insulator barrel meets
> the big washer.  I dissembled the extruder from the insulator retainer down
> and pulled off the collar of leaking ABS.  It appears that the ABS leaked
> out of space between the threads and the barrel.  From what I can gather,
> this is because I assembled the barrel incorrectly (put the nut a little too
> close to the PTFE cylinder, didn't screw the cylinder down quite enough,
> etc).
>
> So my question is, can anyone give me some insight as to why a
> semi-deformable plastic is used for the insulator barrel?
>
> I understand that if I was doing it right, it shouldn't do that, but I'm
> curious none the less about the line of reasoning so that I don't re-invent
> a broken wheel while I'm trying to think of new configurations for the print
> head.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Adam Sheesley <myd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks for all the advice! I will try these suggestions and report back.
>

> > On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Mark Cohen <markcoh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Try redoing the motherboard firmware
> >> try checking the cables on the steppers even switch some of your boards
> >> with different axis
> >> try increasing the voltage slowly on the steppers
>
> >> On Jul 23, 2010 10:26 AM, "Adam Sheesley" <myd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Printing from the SD card seems to produce the same types of errors.
> >>  Specifically on the makerbot coin model the printer stops, extruding and
> >> moving, after the first circle layer after it finishes the raft.
>
> >> I have noticed a trend in that it seems to be OK with printing straight
> >> lines, but circles make it stop.  I say this because it went through about
> >> five layers of the lego brick (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:591) and
> >> stopped while printing one of the holes.  But that may have just been
> >> happenstance.
>
> >> I will do more testing tonight and see if I can replicate the problems on
> >> the linux netbook.
>

> >> On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Mark Cohen <markcoh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> > did you try printing from sd?
> >>> > did you use the non windows pc to print?
>
> >>> >> On Jul 23, 2010 5:56 AM, "myddrn" <myd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> >> The situation:
> >>> >> My extrude...
>
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> >>> Groups "MakerBot Operators" gro...
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[Adam Sheesley]

Perfect!  Thank you for the pointer. A few iterations from that posting I found this: http://www.reprapstores.com/catalog/extruder-parts/parts-kits-0.  Which is more or less exactly what I was looking for.  Thanks!

Does anyone have experience with things purchased from reprapstores for use on the Cupcake?

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[ddurant]

> Does anyone have experience with things purchased from reprapstores for use on the Cupcake?

I don't. Most people have nothing-but-good to say about makergear.com
- check out their operators packs.. MBI also sells some of those items
but last I heard, they were out of stock.

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[Jordan Miller]

grab a PEEK insulator from makergear.com for ABS or wait a couple more weeks for Rick's new insulator that can print ABS and PLA. you won't be disappointed.

jordan

[Gian Pablo]

That's interesting...

I have also had a situation where prints stop after 1 or 2 layers,
always in the same place. However, I thought it was something wrong
with the skeinforge settings, since regenerating the G-Code with
default settings did work.

I'll try switching to another port and see if that helps.