29 November 2012

Minimum temp woes


I have been having the most annoying problems printing. During a print, part way through it just stops. I have tracked this down to two causes. The first was dodgy connectors supplied with my original printer and the second appears to be the dodgy power supply that came with my original printer.

The faulty connections would break contact with the hot end thermistor. This would make it think that the thermistor was cold and stop extruding plastic reporting “cold extrusion prevented”. At other times it would report something like “Min temp exceeded, Kill();”. This motivated me to replace all the connectors and re-wire my printer which was a big job.

The power supply had no evidence I have observed other than changing it makes prints finish. After a while I gave it another shot and sure enough it failed again.