Check your hardware! Or rather, a problem I had and how I fixed it
Hi all,
I wanted to post this just in case any of you are having or have had a similar issue with your printer suddenly ceasing to work.
Background:
I got my Prusa mk3 back in February and while my printing experience with it hasn't been the absolute greatest, Most of it has been my own doing (broken hot end and a few jams due to improper assembly and cleaning, learning by doing is expensive). Until a week or so ago when my printer simply stopped printing and displayed some very concerning symptoms
Mainly:
Intense LCD backlight flicker on startup.
Auto home and attempt to start a print without being sent one.
False crash reports.
TMC overtemp errors.
Absence of usual menu options like "Settings" or "Print from SD".
This suggested to me that some electrical component had died and I either had a faulty board or killed something myself and was going to be out money and time. After contacting support, however, they suggested disconnecting all of the motors and fans and testing each one individually to isolate any bad components. Turns out that the front print fan had its wires shorn off, and the power and ground wires were now shorting together. After clipping the wires and soldering them back onto their respective pads the printer started up normally and all was well.
Re: Check your hardware! Or rather, a problem I had and how I fixed it
Useful information, glad you got sorted 🙂
Re: Check your hardware! Or rather, a problem I had and how I fixed it
I would love to know what happens with these constantly flexing wires on the Prusa print farm printers they run 24/7. I think there has to be an economic decision when a wire fails at say 5,000 hours of use that it is just the normal lifetime of the wire.
The point where solder has flowed back along and into the copper strands of a soldered connection is a known stress riser and having soldered connections in a flexing environment is a bad practice and has been so for over one hundred years... a glance at amateur radio publications from back then will see it crop up time after time.
For example replacing the heat bed wires with high flex silicone fine strand wires that might last 10,000 hours (these are numbers pulled out of the air to have an example.)
https://smile.amazon.com/BNTECHGO-Silicone-Flexible-Strands-Stranded/dp/B00TG1TSUC/ref=pd_sbs_21_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00TG1TSUC&pd_rd_r=53abafb3-e2a2-11e8-bb33-5d4c1ce1f10a&pd_rd_w=yJ005&pd_rd_wg=U9U5I&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=7d5d9c3c-5e01-44ac-97fd-261afd40b865&pf_rd_r=D4QZ9ETV0ZVXHTDB77ST&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=D4QZ9ETV0ZVXHTDB77ST
Re: Check your hardware! Or rather, a problem I had and how I fixed it
Hi all,
I wanted to post this just in case any of you are having or have had a similar issue with your printer suddenly ceasing to work.
Background:
I got my Prusa mk3 back in February and while my printing experience with it hasn't been the absolute greatest, Most of it has been my own doing (broken hot end and a few jams due to improper assembly and cleaning, learning by doing is expensive). Until a week or so ago when my printer simply stopped printing and displayed some very concerning symptoms
Mainly:
Intense LCD backlight flicker on startup.
Auto home and attempt to start a print without being sent one.
False crash reports.
TMC overtemp errors.
Absence of usual menu options like "Settings" or "Print from SD".
This suggested to me that some electrical component had died and I either had a faulty board or killed something myself and was going to be out money and time. After contacting support, however, they suggested disconnecting all of the motors and fans and testing each one individually to isolate any bad components. Turns out that the front print fan had its wires shorn off, and the power and ground wires were now shorting together. After clipping the wires and soldering them back onto their respective pads the printer started up normally and all was well.
Thank you
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