Trouble with turning on extruder

Hi everyone,

Just a preface:
I'm very new to the reprap scene, so please bear with me if I'm using nonspecific or incorrect terminology. Also, the machine I'm working with was bought at built by an art professor at my school, and he is kindly letting me use it. He's never actually attempted to print anything on it yet, so I'm in charge of getting it to actually work. What this means is I have little idea how it is put together and whether or not there is something done incorrectly. I AM sure he is using a GEN6 board from mendel-parts, however.

My problem is this:
I've tried with both a Windows and Mac machine with repsnapper to start the heater on the extruder, but every time the board shuts down and restarts, making me have to reconnect. I have not been able to connect to the machine with any other software, although I haven't tried very hard. Any recommendations for how I should proceed? I've posted my problem in the mendel-parts forum as well, and so far it has only been recommended that I try to use ReplicatorG instead of Repsnapper. However, ReplicatorG seems a lot more complex, so I'm hoping I won't actually have to do that...

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I would check the voltage on the +12V power supply to make sure that it doesn't dip too low when the heater turns on. Perhaps the power supply can't handle the load. It's also possible that you might have a shorted heater which might draw enough current to pull the !2 V supply down to the point where the motherboard would turn off and then come back on when the heater is off.

Hi Ostowe

Have you tried driving the boiard using either the Arduino Serial Monitor, or a terminal program?

Try doing things like:

G1 X10

To see if the head moves then

M104 S190

This should switch the heater on

Then doing M105
Will return the current extruder and platform temperatures

Doing M105 once every 10 seconds or so will show you if the extruder is getting hot.

If this works then the problems lies in Repsnapper. If it does not work then the problem lies in your setup and the 12volt check described above would be a good place to start.

There are problems with running ReplicatorG with GEN6, I have fixed some of them and will be posting fixes once I have fully checked them.

Cheers
Geoff

To my experience, the serial terminal built into the Arduino IDE doesn't work well. You want a real thing, like HyperTerminal (part of Windows), GtkTerm (Debian/Ubuntu) or CoolTerm (Mac OS X). CoolTerm isn't stable enough for whole prints, though, I ended up using "screen" on the CLI.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

I was not suggesting that it be used for production, just to eliminate one complex variable to see if the setup works, or crashes, when fed commands directly.

I've never found a problem with it for simple commands to test out the setup, drive then head so I can set platform height etc.

I had to use it originally because like Ostowe, ReplicatorG and Repsnapper would not talk to my GEN6 electronics and I needed to determine where the problem lay. I've fixed ReplicatorG, but Repsnapper still crashes.

Cheers
Geoff