The 3D printer needs a new heating element. Steve and I got everything fired up and ready to start singing dubstep, and then had to do a little probing to reveal the cause. Whoever knows what kind to get, can you PM me a link to the specific model required? I'll go ahead and order a new one, or a few if they're cheap.

on Nov 01, 2013, Jake <jake@spaz.org> wrote:

Hol,

you forgot to put any text in your post at all! please be clear of how
you came to this conclusion.

The heating element is a resistor glued into a block of metal on the end
of the extruder. It has two wires which go to a connector a couple inches
from it, and they go back to the machine.

To test the heating element, one can unplug this connector and use a
multimeter to measure its resistance. It should be something like 8 ohms,
i don't know the exact value but 100 is too much and indicates it's bad.

it was replaced a little while ago by a technician from the corporation
that made it.

If the machine is acting up about heating, we need to know whether the
problem is with the heating or the temperature sensing. If the
temperature sensor is reporting ambient temperature, it's probably
working.

if the temp sensor is working but the heating element isn't making it heat
up, it could be the heating element (see test above) or it could be the
connector near it, or the wires from there back to the main board, or
where those wires connect to the brain.

can you give more information about what you tried and what you observed?

-jake