Hit another snag tonight, the nichrome wire does not have continuity any more. Somewhere between testing it and bolting it up the wire must have come loose. I'm going to solder them them time, I've been just twisting them together but the nichrome wire often seems to kink and break. It may need a new length of wire cut and rewrapped in there.by jkelso - Reprappers
With the extruder body bolted back on now, I'm finding that the opto endstop for the Z axis is too long so I cut it using a pair of needle nose pliers to hold it just above the cut and a pair of side cutters with a side to side motion until the piece falls off. Now I'm using the Home button in the reprap console to find the 0 for the Z axis. It came down against the platform slightly so now I'lby jkelso - Reprappers
At last, with the wires taped into there more carefully I now have a nozzle that heats up and displays the proper temp value. Now it should just be a matter of bolting things back up and giving it another try.by jkelso - Reprappers
After tearing down the extruder halfway and getting the thermistor tape off I could see that wires were touching power supply wires that shouldn't have been. I retaped the thermistor on there and finally got an accurate reading. However, the heat would not ramp up so now I took it all apart and with the multimeter I can see that there is a broken connection somewhere in the tape, I'm getting noby jkelso - Reprappers
I've got the extruder taken apart and getting ready to try another thermistor. The connect plug for the power supply had been sticking a lot and finally it just stuck together and would not budge apart. After yanking on it a bunch of times one of the wires pulled loose out of there. The whole apparatus was janky so I took out the connector and hardwired the power supply into the terminal conneby jkelso - Reprappers
With everything bolted up and ready to try again, I now have good motor control but the temp value is showing 158C at room temp and when I try to ramp it starts flashing between 875C and 158C. I think I'll try wrapping another thermistor around there with new wires to the extruder board after I unbolt the extruder body once again.by jkelso - Reprappers
that is good advice to know but too late for me to use now. I'll have to try that on the next one. I'm gonna get a new extruder body soon. For now I think this will be OK. I wound the nichrome wire around the nozzle about halfway down from the top and taped it. Then I wrapped the thermistor around and taped it more. I think this will work just as good as having that copper tube but we'll haby jkelso - Reprappers
It didn't seem to fit with 2 bolts, I'm hoping the fire cement will do the trick. One bolt puts the nozzle in there snug, the second bolt starts to push the nozzle into a bad angle and it seems like things are cracking using the 2nd bolt. I've not applied any more cement and it looks like it's holding very nicely so far. I cut another length of nichrome wire to 12 inches to achieve 6 ohms andby jkelso - Reprappers
Well, since my last post I've reconsidered rushing into things, the cement still felt semi pliable. I put the bolt in the side and the nozzle shifted slightly but the hole through looks fine. I've decided that it needed more cement around there to hold the nozzle in better and give it more strength. I've spent more than 10 minutes holding a hair dryer over the cement as it's applied on. I'm gby jkelso - Reprappers
I've decided to try it again this time with the cement more carefully applied and now that it's drying I can see a clear hole through the tube. This apparatus may have gotten very hot for a long period during my testing phase when the temp value was disconnected. I believe that the high temps left on for a long time warped the nozzle. I'm wondering if the bolt that goes through the side is neceby jkelso - Reprappers
After peeling off the tape, it is evident that the bend is the cause of this problem and that the nozzle is trash. I'll have one here in the next few days and I'm hopeful that this could be the last of my problems to work out and I'm ready to print..by jkelso - Reprappers
The thermistor wire came loose so I had to peel off all the tape holding it and resolder the wire on there and retape it. I got it ramped up to about 230C and used one pair of pliers to hold the nozzle and another pair to force the filament in there. It took great pressure and I could only see the slightest extrusion at first, then it jammed and nothing would come through. After looking more cby jkelso - Reprappers
With the extruder now apart, I could find no cement clogging that inner hole. I've got the extruder heat ramping up right now and I'm going to hold the nozzle with some pliers and try to feed some filament down in there to see if it's a clog in the nozzle that's causing the problem.by jkelso - Reprappers
With the bearing cover off, I tried feeding the filament down into the extuder nozzle at 250C. Nothing ever came out the bottom end. Then the extruder started pushing out of the hole I cemented it into last night. I'm thinking that some of the cement may have clogged the hole, I was hoping it didn't when I applied it in there but it possibly could have.by jkelso - Reprappers
What I'm realizing now is that it's never going to feed the filament through the hole underneath where the bearing meets the hobbed bolt unless I take off the bearing cap and get the filament through that inner hole before putting it back together.by jkelso - Reprappers
Now with all systems go, I've been trying for the last hour to get the filament to move through the nozzle again. Finally, I had to take a hacksaw blade and cut off a bolt that was coming through too long to allow me to take off the bearing cap from the extruder. With the cap removed, I could see that there was a bent piece of chewed up filament stuck in there. Now I'm going to put it all backby jkelso - Reprappers
For some reason I've become addicted to watching this music video over and over. Just now, I finally realized that the shapes in the background form the letters "laroux". I had never noticed this before. I thought of repraps when I saw this because the answers never seem to be there until suddenly you figure it out and the answer was there all the time.by jkelso - Reprappers
I took some time out this morning to ship back the old circuit board to techzone. I'd say that as of now I have 100 percent satisfaction. Since I don't have a job and I'm on a break from school until the 18th I have been taking time to relish the build and relax. After I finally roll out of bed and watch TV I usually take a nap again then finally try to start building this again. Today I've rby jkelso - Reprappers
I pulled out the inner tube with some pliers and there was a length of filament which was attached to a melted puddle of plastic at the bottom of the inside of the outer beige tube. The inner tube would only go in about halfway. So I put the outer tube in the vise and drilled out the black plastic until I could see that I was drilling into the beige plastic. At the bottom I could see the holeby jkelso - Reprappers
I am looking at the plastic part of the nozzle and there is a small white plastic tube inside of a larger beige plastic tube. When I installed it the smaller white tube was pushed down inside of the beige tube and there was a metal clip that held fit down inside of there. Now I see that the clip came out and the smaller white plastic tube is coming out of there. Maybe when it heats up I can moby jkelso - Reprappers
I took apart the nozzle from underneath the extruder body and realized that it wasn't black plastic leaking from the tape, the nozzle was melting one of the plastic brackets that it had pushed against when it slipped out of the hole. I realize now that I never did put cement in there to hold it in place. I was thinking that the bolt going through the side would be enough to hold it, but apparenby jkelso - Reprappers
As I continued to try extruding some more plastic, it seemed like suddenly there was no more coming out. So I kept pressing the extrude button and it seemed to be going in at the top, then I realized that there was black plastic coming out of the side of the tape and that the filament had also pushed the extruder nozzle out of the base. Looks like I have some more work to do to get this extrudeby jkelso - Reprappers
After watching the gears turn for some time, I unplugged everything and took it to the work bench and removed all the twist nuts with springs and finally got enough room so that I could wedge the filament down in there. Once in, I put it all back together and tightened it down. I got the heat ramped up past 250C and tried extruding again, but the motor only turned and didn't grab on to the filaby jkelso - Reprappers
Preparing now for my first extrusion. The nozzle is ramped up to about 180 C and I've got my 5lb roll of plastic ready to go on the chair for now. Once things get rolling I'm going to build the holder that goes on top of the machine for the plastic . I've got the blue tape on there and I've set home in the upper left corner of the build platform if the square shaped dump area is at the bottomby jkelso - Reprappers
With the thermistor now giving me a temp reading, I have now been able to switch on the heat and feel the nozzle getting warm. At times during this process of building the reprap I've felt that maybe this could turn out to be one more of life's cruel jokes and that this will never work. I've yet to print anything, but I've made some major progress on this now. Today I kept getting visited by tby jkelso - Reprappers
I restarted the console and, magically, I'm now getting a close to accurate reading putting a thermistor on the temp pins 39C.by jkelso - Reprappers
I switched the wires for the nichrome wire to the A +/- terminals and powered up the electronics and the extruder nozzle got hot right away. So I know that it potentially could work if I can get it to. I changed the wires back to the C terminals and now I've got a reading in the reprap console of about 875 C. When I touch the K thermocouple temp sensing wires to the temp pins I get the readinby jkelso - Reprappers
I changed the firmware back to use thermistor on both the motherboard and extruder board .pde files. Now, I am back to a reading of 0 in the reprap software. Still no heat. I'm wondering, which cable on here is activating the C+/- terminal voltage? There's the 2 wire ribbon cable for temp, is this the same cable?by jkelso - Reprappers
Thank you, now I won't have to go looking for that resistor at radio shack. I'm pretty sure the AD595 chip is blown again so I may be ordering another one now. I tried reversing the 2 wire ribbon cable that connects from the motherboard to the extruder board and finally got my first positive reading in the reprap console. There was no signal coming in for it to measure, but I'm now hopeful thaby jkelso - Reprappers