Murphy's Law strikes again (And again (And again)).

[Xenocrates]

So, this week has been a little bit hilarious, or it would have been, if it weren't happening to me. First, we have the berd-air related failure:

Then, partially because of that, the hotend mount came loose (Because I had forgotten to re-tighten the mounts properly (I would blame spending 10 hours each day on campus for a lot of that, because I had to come home and work on the printer on a tight deadline)
Failure number two of two.

Job three went well, because it was a small test job. So with confidence, I went onto the next job. From what I can reconstruct, the chamber cooled enough for significant warping to occur in the ABS, which caused it to catch the nozzle. From there, it kicked the effector out of a known position, at which point it went slightly nuts (I know this because the part did not entirely detach from the bed, and because the lower panels of my enclosure were out of position (I have the blind nuts just slipped in, rather than bonded, so that it can somewhat bump into them for skirts ETC))

So then I took it apart, and cleaned the heater block. Which took some doing, since it was really caked with crap. I got the PT100 lose, but the can on it was deformed enough for it to release once it came partially out. When I tried removing the rest of the can, it cracked. On the bright side, the sensor itself still works, and I had a spare (Because I had a one for each of my heater blocks), so I wasn't down much time.

Then I started heating it this morning for another go, having fixed each issue diligently as it popped up. I planned to watch this whole run, and do a medium sized job (Only 6 hours or so). When it had almost gotten up to temperature ( The bed was taking an eternity, as always), the whole dammed thing blipped off. Including the LED on the switch, which is powered directly from the PSU. So after dis-assembling it slightly, we took a multimeter to the switch, as well as the PSU on cables. Switch good, PS bad. Yay. We'd already voided the warranty installing the rambo connectors to it, so we went ahead and cracked it open. Found the power in fuse, and tested it. No Juice. Damned little thing crisped itself. So we tried taking it out of it's cups. No dice. Soldered in. Wouldn't unsolder from the cups. So now we're looking at getting a replacement hi-temp fuse (12A, rather than 10A, but hey, the board is designed for it (Yes, we checked, the silk-screen agrees with us, and it's a free upgrade for us)) And we're also looking at going to best-buy for a new fully modular power supply for the short term.


So, anyone else with a conga line of failures, don't feel bad. All of us seem to have those weeks. And if you guys have similar stories to tell, post them here.

[Eaglezsoar]

You have had a run of tough luck. I don't believe that I have had such luck bunched up that close together.
It would be funny if it didn't cause you down time, money, and so much frustration.
Here's a vote for better luck, and soon!

[Xenocrates]

Yeah. What's worse is that I've been trying to do demo models for a show in Chicago next week. I don't absolutely need them, nor am I trying to sell anything with them (Except maybe SeeMeCNC's printers, and printers in general)

If we had time to deal with it slowly, total cost would be:
~12$ of ABS filament. These are big, long jobs.
20$ for a new PT100.
10$ for a set of new PSU fuses
~.50$ propane for the torch
~1$ acetone
And a lot of time/frustration. I could deal with that okay. But what really burns is that we want it back in operation soon, so we get to drop money on a new power supply. Yay. Stevo, if you're reading this, I can only imagine what it feels like to not have good parts after so much tinkering with it, considering the frustration I'm getting from just a week of failure after many, many good parts.

[TheRealRocketBurns]

conga line of failures

I'm going to find an excuse to use this phrase now!