I've had my printer for over a year and the other day thermal runaway tripped on the heated bed. I took a look around and saw my connector had melted down (Picture). Is it possible to alter pins.h of Marlin to use a spare pin that to trigger a DC SSR with a heatsink (Link) connected to a typical PCB heater? Or would it be better to replace the whole ramps board? Thanks in Advanceby gmckee - General
Connect the end fan to 12v power. Anywhere with a constant 12v and ground will work. I have mine directly to psu. The fan you want software controllable is currently on d9 which has a mosfet that controls 12v power to the 12v fan while being switched by the 5v arduino. To add a second hotend and continue to use a software fan you would need an custom setup.by gmckee - General
You can have 3 heaters on a Ramps. The heated bed can be used for heating a hotend. However, Ramps only supports 2 stepper drivers for extrudes natively. You would have to wire up a 3rd stepper driver to use a 3rd hotend.by gmckee - General
Power supply is a 30a 12v supply. Input there reads 12.13v. I removed lcd and got the same result. I have attached another graph with the Temps without lcd. It hopped from 205 to 225 twice and 208 to 216 once. What is strange is that I did a 5.5hr print yesterday and Temps looked fine. The problem seems to last only in the 1st few minutes of heat up (second graph).by gmckee - General
I have been running a E3D lite6 for a while now. Lately it has been acting very strange during heatups when it gets to 180c (see graph). One second it will be at 180c, then 230c. I have ran PID autotune and have the correct thermistor in Marlin. I want to change the thermistor input in Marlin to make sure its not an issue with T0. I believe it is in the "pins_RAMPS_13.h" section of the firmware,by gmckee - General
First don't plug anything in or out with the power on. What I have done is connect the USB cable to the mega, and then turned on power supply. Having both plugged in isn't a problem.by gmckee - RAMPS Electronics
What controller are you using? Are you trying to upload formate or connect for a print?by gmckee - Reprappers
Assuming I understand theCreative Commons-Attribution-Non Commercial license on the MPCNC you have no right to sell the machine. I understand you plan to add some extra functionality but the underlying motion platform remains the same. Building a custom machine is not a problem but it appears selling them is.by gmckee - General
If you are using a pcb heated bed for the i3 that draws up to 13a. A heater cartridge at 40w is 3.5ish amps, other motors a few amps. 20amps is about the lowest I would consider. Watch your temperatures on the power supply and you should be fine.by gmckee - Reprappers
Sorry to be rude, but make sure if you are going to ask a question to include printer make, mechanics, or other relevant info. Assuming you have a Cartesian machine such as the prusa i3 you could have insufficient belt tension, a loose drive pulley, or a improperly tuned driver.by gmckee - Reprappers
The stepper driver. When your drivers are not calibrated correctly for the load, or the load is more than what your driver can push out, the driver will overheat. An overheated driver will not step a motor correctly or give proper torque. Are you using drv8825 or A4988 drivers. The latter may be too weak for your motors power requirement. Your voltage may also be too low. This would result in noby gmckee - General
To begin, yes you can use a endstop for leveling but you will need a servo to deploy it. For the heated bed you will need a compatible controller and power supply. After making sure your powersupply can supply 12v at 20a you will need to modify it to pow?er the controller. Connect the green wire to ground and expose a 12v and ground for the controller. Connect the 12v to controller and plug thby gmckee - General
Look at this video.by gmckee - RAMPS Electronics
First check under the stepper motor driver that the 3 jumpers are present thus enabling microstepping. Plug back in the driver and try again. If the motor still moves away from the endstop unplug the motor, rotate it 180 degrees, and plug it in again. This will reverse the direction of the homing operation.by gmckee - Prusa i3 and variants
Here'sa good video on compiling the firmware and uploading it yourself. I believe Repetier has there on online config tool so you don't have to risk messing up the firmware as easily.by gmckee - General
Also that heated bed says it will draw up to 18a@12v. Assuming you are running a traditional controller the bed probably would need an SSR with heatsink to control the power. 18A is over what most of the connectors, fuses, MOSFETs, and other electronics on controllers can handle. You may also need to get a larger power supply rated at 30a@12v to power bed and electronics.by gmckee - General
Unfortunately I have a bit of a mess on my hands after having a filament leak from my Lite6 that resulted in a heater block covered in PLA. Are there any know ways to dissolve PLA out of the threads. With my crappy knock off hotend would jam I would heat it with the propane torch and burn it out but would rather not do that with the E3d. I believe it is stainless steel so the heat wouldn't mess wby gmckee - General
When you connected everything did you connect all motors, endstops, themistors etc? Did you plug in the arduino to the computer with a USB cable and without the Ramps or did you power the arduino using the ramps while not connected to the computer?by gmckee - RAMPS Electronics
Why 160? Are your steps per mm wrong or you need to scale the part. Fix the firmware if the steps are wrong using the prusa calculator and print from SD. It's more reliable anyway.by gmckee - General
All of the controllers you linked to are 120-240v AC. You could use these tl externally control a heated bed if you wanted to but only on AC voltage. To be able to switch 18.3A@12v of current you would need a DC ssr with a rather large heatsink. You could hook the heated bed output to the input of the ssr and the heater to the output powered directly by the powersupply. Plug in your thermistor aby gmckee - Reprappers
I have the lite6 and have been using it on my Prusa i3 for a while now. I print at 45mm/s but have done twice that as a test. Keep in mind that you will mostly print at the top speed on straight long movements as acceleration takes a good bit of distance for most printers. The biggest limiting factor is the length of the melt zone which can be compensated for by increasing the temperature you priby gmckee - Reprappers
Standard PCB heaters are 214mm between mounting holes, you can get 150ish mm beds but that sounds too small. You probably will have to use a silicon heater with adhesive applied to aluminum plate with glass on top.by gmckee - Reprappers
Honestly I would avoid the Folger Tech. Some people have had great experiences, some haven't. Look around in the forum and see what kind of problems people have. Also Repraps can all be modified. However, the ease of finding modifications differs.by gmckee - General
See the Prusa i3 forum. That 2020 kit has 3100+ posts of people with issues or people helping with issues. Although there are postive posts are there keep that in mind. Frame construction is probably one of the most important portions of your printer. The more rigid the frame in general the better the prints. Remember you get what you pay for...by gmckee - General
Look at orginal Prusa from Josef Prusa himself. Comes with an E3d hotend and heated bed. Comes in at about $600.by gmckee - General
Extruder Calibration YouTubeby gmckee - RAMPS Electronics
So if I understand correctly the voltage read from the D8 output of the RAMPS is 3-4 volts? If your meter is reading that correctly than yes you have a problem. Your output should hover at around 12v at the bed. I'm not too familiar the electronics of the RAMPS but it sounds to be a blown MOSFET assuming it is receiving 12vby gmckee - RAMPS Electronics
I have had my Prusa i3 running for 8 months or so now and have been printing things off Thingiverse and a few things I drew up in 123D design. 123D seems fairly basic and I am willing to put in the time to learn another program but am for the large part unaware of what software is out there. I'm looking for something free or free for students I could use to use my 3D printer for what I intended tby gmckee - Reprappers
Many firmware do a fast and then slower homing of the axis. They go quickly to the limit switch, back up, and then hit the switch again. It may be that the motor goes to go in reverse (the pause) and then goes to find the limit again. Perhaps your acceleration is too high in the reverse direction? Just out of curiosity why are you using Sprinter? You may want to try to see if Marlin will fix anyby gmckee - General
My full graphic LCD panel scrolls through the menus quickly it sounds to probably be your Arduino perhaps the 5 volt regulator on the Arduino that powers the lcd or something else in the Arduinoby gmckee - General