An accident: The responsibility of the PINDA Probe?
I was running a 20-hour printing and checked the first few layers were printed well . Then in the morning, I found the followings:
1. The hotend was touching the printed objects. It was there as if the extruder system could not go up along the z-axis. It seemed that the hotend has been at the same height (the same z-coordinate) for hours so very dense layer was formed. It was like a worm building the cocoon. The hotend was scratching the dense surface making grinding noise from the motors. It was so devastating 😮
2. The part which holds PINDA Probe was broken. So the probe was tilted and shifted from the designed position (I am glad that they have improved the design of the part holding the probe!). Please refer to the picture from the following link:
http://goo.gl/photos/ywacqAcKUaHcnx3V9
3. I am sorry that I forgot to check the exact height , but I am sure the probe and the hotend were far enough from the heatbed, like 10 mm apart from it. By investigating the 'cocoon', I found that first tens of layers were printed well (about 4-5 mm high), the the mess was built on the top of it.
So, my question is, DO YOU THINK THE BROKEN PROBE CAUSED THE 'COCOONING' EVEN IF THE FIRST TENS OF LAYERS WERE PRINTED WELL? (In other words, is it possible that the probe could affect printing after mesh leveling and printing the first few layers?)
I assume that the printing would go well regardless of the status of the probe after mesh leveling. After the probe lets the system understand the z-coordination, the rest would be up to the z-motors increasing the extruder by the specified layer heights.
I wonder the broken probe caused the accident or it was an independent accident.
Re: An accident: The responsibility of the PINDA Probe?
As you wrote, the probe is only used for the "automatic mesh bed leveling" routine. After the extruder assembly moves up, there is no metal for the probe to sense.
I would suspect your print went wrong and the probe crashed into the print and broke the holder. Difficult to say why your print failed without seeing it ... possibly some warping that caught the probe?
I'm still fairly new to all of this - don't have my printer yet, but I've been following these forums daily for a couple of months (lots of very helpful members and great info in these forums). I've seen some pictures of failed prints that look really terrible - large blobs of plastic partially encasing the extruder assembly.
You may be lucky if you only suffered a broken probe holder.
-Kevin