Hey all,
TLDR: Took printer to buddy’s house, the item he printed got messed up, took printer home later that night and no longer prints the same. Fan in electrical box sounds different and motors don’t sound as crisp as the once did. Also, during autocalibtation in cura, the hot end buried itself into the stainless washers on the corners, flexing the bed about .25" before I could stop it by switching off the power switch (this issue seemed to resolve itself and prints are decent).
I have searched high and low in google and on the forums and I cannot find a thread or article that helps me out. I received my refurbished mini about two weeks ago and I’ve had a lot of fun. It ran really well out of the box and I started messing around with the expert settings in cura, getting my prints looking pretty darn good for having a week of experience. Out of the box, whenever I started a print in cura or turned the machine on, I noticed that the fan in the electrical box where the board is would ramp up for just a second and then die down. I didn’t think anything of it and it became a ‘normal’ sound of the printer for me. The motors sounded really crisp and had that familiar printer noise we all know.
Here’s where the trouble started. I took my printer to my friends house so he could print a few things out while I was at work. I installed the latest version of the lulzbot cura on his computer and plugged it in. It had the same fan noise and sounded normal, just like the whole week prior; really crisp sounds from the motors and the print was doing well when I left his place. About an hour later, he sends me a video of the print and the hot end is basically stabbing at the print, just mushing a big glob of PLA around.
I took the printer home that night and immediately noticed that the fan in the electrical box was running, but did not ramp up when turning the machine on or during a print. When I tried to print something, it went through the motions of cleaning and autocalibrating, but when it went down to touch the corners of the bed, it bottomed out the hot end on the stainless washers, pushing the bed down approximately .25". I scrambled to stop it and ended up shutting down the machine via the power switch. I looked in the power box thinking something might be loose or fried and everything appears as it should.
I did a fresh reinstall of the drivers and of cura and reflashed the firmware from the option in cura and while the autocalibrating seems to have fixed itself and prints are turning out pretty decently, the machine still doesn’t sound the same. It just doesn’t seem to print like it did before I took it to my buddy’s house.
The machine is a refurbished one and I have an option to send it back the vendor, but can you guys think of anything that might explain what has been going on?
Thanks in advance and I apologize for the long post,
HTiLewis