Sintron Kossel Hotend Heater Cartridge?

I've been printing away on my Kossel pretty much every day, and although all cabling is spiral wrapped etc one of the wires broke off the heater cartridge on the hotend. I happened to have a spare new 12v 40w one so put that in, but is takes forever to get up to 128 degrees and then sticks there?

Does anyone know the spec that Sintron supply, eg is it a 12v 25w, 30w, 40w etc? I can't see any marking on the original and there is nothing anywhere on the web that I can see.

Do I need to run Autopid if I install a new heater, if it is a different spec to the old one?

Sorry for the dumb questions, it's late, and I am puzzled.... am I in possession of a faulty heater I wonder....?

Even if it's a different spec it should still heat up OK past 128° unless you are maxing out your power supply. Perhaps your RAMPS isn't up to scratch but usually Sintron boards can handle decent loads. I'd check to make sure you have a decent connection to the cartridge then check to make sure your thermistor is working properly. Is it measuring room temperature properly? Don't rely on an infrared thermometer as they cannot measure shiny surfaces.

The RAMPS is a fan cooled board, it doesn't always need one but it might be good to see if anything is getting too warm.

Try to not leave the printer unattended even for short periods if your hot end starts to behave oddly, the heater cartridges don't always fail gracefully when left on full power. They can become hot enough to melt out of the aluminium block and set anything it touches on fire in milliseconds. This includes anything around it if this happens when the printer is running.

Edit: The stock heater Sintron supplies is 40w so it shouldn't be any different.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2017 12:10AM by ohfurryone.

Well I got up this morning, sleep does wonderful things. I suddenly remembered that I had an old hotend in a cupboard that had a new cartridge in it. I pulled it out, swapped it into the Kossel, and presto! the printer is now working perfectly again.

It seems that the 'new' spare cartridge that I had used is indeed faulty, so that can go in the bin.

I asked Sintron for the spec on the supplied cartridge and they have told me that it is 12v 40w. The one I am using is 25w, and heated up as fast as the original.

Something that I have never figured out is that I have two printers, both are Arduino/Ramps, both have the same heater cartridges. Yet the Kossel hits operating temp in a couple of minutes, but the other one takes significantly longer?