Burning down the house.

Ahhhhh watch out.... lol sorry. Anyway this morning I woke up to my smoke detectors going off. I had been printing PLA for the past couple of days on my brand spanking new printer, a diy prusa i3. I decided I would switch to trying ABS, well with doing so I had to increase the temp of my heated bed and my extruder. I hammered off a couple of cooling ducts and some parts for my NES pi case, no problems there. So I started an iPhone dock for my brothers car and let it print over night ( having done successfully with PLA for the past week ). From what I can find it looks like the wire from the power supply to the MKS GEN board had melted through and finally failed at the boards connector. I had stupidly trusted every aspect of this printer and the assumed testing the supplier should have done. After closer inspection, the 12v power wire a pears to be no larger than either an 18 or 16 gauge, and considering the power supply is rated at 30A I should have run parallel feeds or up sized the power wire, I should also have supplied fuses (which are mysteriously absent from the kit) anyway just thought I would share the tragedy that befell my poor little printer. And now for some of the aftermath picture




Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2015 04:30PM by ShaolinSolidus.

I don't think ABS had anything to do with it... the short just happened while printing it.

Fuses are good and 18 or 16g should be good to plenty to carry 30amps @ 12v for a couple of feet.

Lots of kits are pretty scary though...

Pretty sweet fire though...

Thanks for sharing.

$1.50 at Lowes or Home Depot
will get you 2ft by 2ft ceramic tile
to put your fire starter -- oh I mean your electronics -- a top
to prevent torching your wood bench

A couple of spacers under tile would make it even more better

All my battery charging is on ceramic tile or cement board

The only thing I have had is the bad smell
from letting magic smoke out of components!!!

I had to up my heated bed wire gauge after I found my plastic wire wrap was melted. Replaced 18GA stranded withe 14 or 16 solid.

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Prusa i3 Rework - Ramps 1.4 - E3d Lite6 - Full Graphic LCD Controller

Dude that is crazy

I wouldn't recommend solid wire. My i3 Prusia clone have hotbed came with thick red 12 guage silicone coated copper stranded wires. Reason why I don't recommend solid wire because it can break over the time after repeated motion of Hotbed (solid wire is stiff and if you bend several time, it breaks off). thicker strand 12 guage is far more than enough and is flexible, So it won't cause fire at all. Use Copper stranded wire, NOT Aluminum stranded one!!

Hotend uses 16 guage braided woven over silicone wire to prevent melting other wires which bounded with wire tie.. ( did that on my printer and had no issue. wire do not feel warm at all when it's set to 230C for long period on Hotend)

Be sure that wires bare end deep in board jack and screwed in tight (don't overtighten the bolt that would get stripped or damaged) to have full contact with jack contact for best electric flow.