What kind of preventative maintenance can I perform on my RepRap (specifically, a Portabee) to prevent further problems down the line?
With so many moving parts, things are bound to fail sooner or later. I've been mounting and demounting my extruder motor lately, which I think is causing a lot of stress on the motor's wires where they enter the motor housing. I read that intermittent connections on the stepper motor can cause the driver board to become permanently damaged (https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,629760,629790#msg-629790). Since the extruder motor is mounted on the X-carriage and is constantly moving left and right, this motor's wires are particularly prone to repeated flexing and possible damage. Do you perform preventative maintenance to check if the stepper motor wires are still in good order? If so, how?
Also, the Y axis controls the bed movement, and the bed is a heated bed, so it also has wires coming off of it for the bed heater and the bed thermistor. These wires are also subject to constant motion. I suppose the worst thing that could happen here is that there is some problem with the bed heating, so periodic maintenance could consist of simply always watching the bed temperature values via software and ensuring that they change reasonably (and don't get stuck at some fixed value, which could indicate a broken wire).
And obviously, all of the mechanical moving parts need to be periodically checked to prevent mechanical failure (tight screws, belts, etc.).
Are there any other preventative maintenance measures that should be taken on a regular basis? Any non-obvious failure modes?
