Thermal Overload

I’ve been running into problems with my Lulzbot Mini, both with the original head and AeroStruder. The problem is the print jobs stop mid way. This started happening with ABS, printing at about 240 C. This weekend its been happening with PLA as well with a print temp of 195 C. The Cura logs don’t have anything in them, however the debug console does. The problem is the debug console in Cura will eventually fill up and crash Cura. So you have to stop it, start it, … Does anyone know of a way to get the debug console output to go to a log file. Here’s the one I did manage to catch. I’m guessing that since it says heater, that its with the filament heater. Problem is I don’t know if this is a bug in Cura or in the printer, I suspect the printer.

I managed to catch it once and it had the following error:

The last temperature before the message was 203.66 /240

Error: Thermal Runaway, system stopped! Heater_ID: 0
Error: Printer halted, kill() called!

If someone has a suggestion I’d appreciate it. The support guys haven’t been able to come up with a fix. Next step looks like sending it back and I’d like to avoid that.

If you are having problems with your aerostruder holding temperature, please contact support. 970-377-1111 ext. 610 or send an e-mail to support@lulzbot.com and we would be happy to help you with this.

I went down the support route and got no where. I need to check my serial number to see if my Aerostruder is one of the ones with a bad thermocouple, I hope to get that done this morning. My only other alternative is sending it back in and I’m really trying to avoid that.

I pulled the Aerostruder head off and it is one of the early units that’s having problems. I opened a ticket with support on it.

You can also try re-crimping the pins with a needle nose plier. Pop the pins out of the mole/JST housing and squeeze the sides with the pliers. Be careful not to damage the tab that holds the pins in the housing… don’t crimp the actual pin area.

Yep I had that problem with the Aerostruder too. It turned out to be a short in the pins of the thermistor’s small 2-wire plastic connector near the nozzle. I just removed the pins from the plastic housing and dropped a tiny bit of solder on the crimp connectors/wires and reinserted the pins into the plastic sleeve. Hooked it back up and problem solved.

I got my Aerostruder back and it worked great with PLA and ABS. Then I started having temperature problems again. This time though I think its with the heater element(s). It won’t heat up past 193 C. I’ve got a message into support waiting for an answer. So far tech support is has been really great, but the printer problems have been horrible. I never could get the standard print head to work with ABS, its fine with PLA. Its out of warranty and I’m seriously thinking about throwing it in the trash and finding some other unit. I’ve wasted a lot of hours on this thing, not to mention the money.

I seem to have a similar problem to OP - Was there ever any solution?

When Printing ABS recently, the print stops after the second layer or so. this happened repeatedly and I then checked the monitor log, and it seems the print head temperature drops off after the first layer.

it gets up to temperature fine, set at 245 for first layer, then supposed to be 240 after that - seems every time it changes to the 240, it cannot hold temp, and it drops off until stopping and giving the thermal runaway code.

I had just done a number of prints varying between PLA and ABS with no issue, then suddenly this.

This is an Aerostruder print head

Thanks for any suggestions on where to start troubleshooting