Thanks Illuminarti,
I will go trought the wiring when I get back to my printer. I already did a visual, but agree that checking for continuity is required to be sure.
Any info on where I can look to get to understand the error log?
Thanks Illuminarti,
I will go trought the wiring when I get back to my printer. I already did a visual, but agree that checking for continuity is required to be sure.
Any info on where I can look to get to understand the error log?
The log doesn't help much. MINTEMP and MAXTEMP are indicators that something is wrong with the temperature reading. This can be serious as if the values reported back are wrong in the low direction, the Marlin would normally add more heat to get it to the correct temperature but this could bring the heater up to 250C and damage/melt your PEEK part (the brown plastic).
The most common error for a 1 year old UM is that due to printing, the wires have been moving around a lot as you print. Now they may be damaged. Usually near the print head. Usually inside the connector.
But there are other possibilities - the small circuit board on the print head can go bad also. Also the fan cable signal can interfere with the temperature reading - especially if you are not at 100% or 0% fan speed (speeds in between turn the fan on and off very fast). So make sure the heater wire is an inch or so away from the temp probe wires before they get to the amplifier board (between the aluminum block and the tiny amp board.
Also your heater itself may have stopped working.
Some things to try - heat your head up to 95C and test with water on a q-tip or similar (or water on a finger) to make sure it doesn't boil at 95C and *does* around 105 to 110C.
Move the print head to the 4 corners of your print area while the head is hot - leave the head in each corner for a second. See if this tugging on the wires generates MINTEMP or MAXTEMP. You don't need to be printing to get these errors - simply having the head set to 180C and then a wiring fault will trigger this and display it on the Ulticontroller. If you don't have an Ulticontroller then I don't know how to test for this - I guess you could print just the skirt of something that just barely fits in the platform.
I'm back in house and have gone through my printer. Measured continuity, checked connections, measured temperature wiggled heater and the thermocouple.
Moving the print head about and checking connections did not give any results.
Could not find any problems.
It may have been a bad connection, electrical interference, earlier Cura models not being compatible....
Started printer and all is well - have printed several different prints and they run through to the end and turn out normal.
Great relief and great frustration not to know what really happened. For the time being I settle for bad connection in screw connector on top of printing head - most probable I think.
I learned one thing though, the temperature measured is about 6% off the real temperature of the Al head/nozzle.
Thanks for your suggestions.
Glad you got it working. I also found that measured independently, the outside of my heater block was about 5% off from the reported temperature. Not sure if that's defect per se, or just the way it is.
The only time I've really found it to matter is when printing PA6 Nylon which is a bit picky about the temperature in order to avoid delamination. I had to set my temperature correspondingly higher than their recommended 265º to get good prints.
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illuminarti 18
Check that the thermocouple wires are firmly attached to the board in the head. Also that the two wires from that board to the electronics are properly attached. If no obvious problems check continuity on the latter two wires, if you can - they may be broken. There's a spare pair of wires and connector intended for second extruder - try swapping in that one (remember to change both ends) for the original.
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