3dguy

Stevie.d, Glad to hear it's working. What kind of heated Bed do you have? What kind of thermistor? I understand being unnerved, I felt the same way after I temporarily bricked my printer, but after building the custom marlin a second time and selecting Ultimaker template and then Ultimaker with custom heated Bed and Ulticontroller and selected the correct thermistor profile and flashed using the arduino IDE the bed works great. Just don't flash using the feature in Cura. Thanks to a anon4321 for helping me with the wiring concept, after that, the hardest part was turning on the heated bed for the 1st time and expecting to see smoke, it was the most wiring I had done in years. If you decide to give it another try double check your connections and rebuild the firmware double checking your selections before clicking build..

Should one of the ground connections on the electronics board be good enough?

stevie.d Is it an UM1? If so: Does the UltiController function? Check to make sure the ribbon cables are connected to the correct connectors. Do you have a heated bed? If so: Did you use the upgrade firmware within Cura or from http://marlinbuilder.robotfuzz.com/ ? If you used the marlin builder did you choose Ultimaker from the "Templates: Select your Machine" dropdown? It will let you build a marlin without making the selection but it will not work. When I first installed my heated bed I upgraded the firmware from within Cura with the heated bed option and it bricked my machine, the Ulticontroller would turn on but it would give a temp error and then the entire display would fill with white blocks. The only way I could fix it was to remove the electronics (after disconnecting the power of course) and carefully removing the Arduino from the main board and using the above link for Marlinbuilder to build the custom marlin and using the Arduino IDE to flash the new firmware with the Arduino board connected directly to my computer via USB.

I put my UM1 on 4 vibration dampening pads, each pad is 6" x 1" square with 1/2" of cork sandwiched between a 1/4" thick piece of ribbed rubber on each side. I also added 16lbs of rubberized flex metal weights to the inside of the frame on the bottom platform, it doesn't shake much now.

Thanks! It could have been done a little less expensively had I not had the pockets milled out of the bottom to reduce the overall weight a bit.

I am actually using copper foil tape, the same kind used to shield guitar electronics cavities, just a lot narrower.

So far for me the biggest improvement was totally replacing the z-stage, build plate and leveling system with a simple aluminum z-stage I designed and had made and the addition of a heated bed with an aluminum base topped with 1/16" ptfe sheet, the PCB heater and a 3/16" clear ceramic glass print surface. My new z-stage is a 1/2" x 8" x 12" aluminum plate with 4 linear no lube guide bearings from IGUS (2 - 2 1/2" on top, and 2 - 1" on the underside), a new acetal trapezoidal nut from DumpsterCNC.com, and 4 micro adjuster screws with 100 threads per inch. I designed the bed to be leveled with either a 3 or 4 point leveling system. Before the upgrade I would have to re-level the print surface before every print, the humidity here fluctuates from 12% to 70% so the wood changed constantly, with my new setup, I have printed 4 items in a row over the period of several days and I have not had to re-level the print surface. I made 2 problems with my upgrades, after the last redesign I accidentally put the leveling holes a 1/2" to far back so my print surface sits a 1/2" back from where it should be, I need to have another set of holes drilled to remedy this. The second mistake I made was making the tolerance a little tight at the back of the stage and it hits the screw heads for the filament mounting bracket, it will be an easy fix, I just need to countersink the screws. The z-stage and aluminum bed upgrade were kind of expensive due to the fact that I do not have access to a mill, nor do I have any experience using a mill and finding a shop here that will do one-off jobs without a large production run is like finding a needle in a hay stack.

I am going to try to shield the fan wires. I ordered a roll of magnetic shielding foil tape and another piece of the plastic spiral wire guide so I can isolate the fan wires from the other wiring, hopefully it will arrive by Thursday so I can test it soon.

When not set to 100%, it changes every second or two, when it is set to 100% it is very stable with the temperature reading going over by 1 degree for a few seconds and back to normal and it will do this every few minutes.

The fans are the same size as the original fan, and 12v, they are blower fans and I created a mount that has a small duct near the print head that reduces the flow through several small holes on the bottom and directs it away from the print head. With the duct the airflow is not overly strong, in fact I may make the holes slightly larger. Here is a picture of the underside of the mount with the duct and the fan mounted. It is the same manufacturer as the stock fan and the only ones I could find that would survive the fan power supply. I think the fluctuations in the temperature display might just be noise interference, as the prints seem to be printing fine.

Antiklesys, here are 2 pictures of the connection.

Thanks for the suggestion anon4321, I'll look into adding a cap.

I still need to do several test prints to make sure the weight does not make a difference in the print. I also just installed a custom aluminum z stage and heated bed so I am testing to see they have effected my print quality as well. After redesigning my z stage several times I made a last minute change and accidently had the holes for the adjusting screws drilled about a half inch to far back so my print surface is a little farther back than it should be.

No they are actually pointed away from the heater block at 20 degree angles.

Mine are wired in parallel, yes, I just soldered a y connector using Deans connectors to the original fan connector.