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Retracts are a behavior controlled by the slicer software. Each layer consists of many movements of the hot end. Movements may or may not include extrusion of material, depending on whether the nozzle should print or is just being repositioned. Because of gravity and/or thermal expansion, the nozzle...

I tried printing one (in PLA) last night and it looks usable. The bridging across the tops of the ducts is ambitious, particularly on the diagonals. It dropped quite a few threads on the first couple of bridging layers, but there are enough solid layers above to close it up. You might consider addin...

Yep. Read it and did not retain that part.

When the RTV has cured, wrap the wide part of the hot end (where the resistors and thermistor are) with kapton tape to provide some protection for the thermistor. The RTV has almost no adhesive property once it is cured, so it doesn't take much force to dislodge the thermistor if only RTV is holding...

Common name for this is "stringing". Try a different slicer - in my limited experience, MatterControl/MatterSlice gave me much better results than Repetier-Host/Slic3r. It may be that the initial tuning settings for each slicer are different and one worked better for me. Adjust the hot end...

Regarding the change from aluminum u-joints to acetal plastic u-joints... The parts inspection (chapter 2) shows/lists the new acetal parts. When you get to assembling the cheapskates (chapter 8) the "parts needed" lists aluminum, and all assembly pics show aluminum. Probably no need to re...

Gene,

On the first page of chapter 6, the captions for the multi-cables need attention. You've got one marked as 24ga and none as 18ga.

Could be a rough solder joint on the underside of the heated bed piercing the insulation of wiring passing under it. Keeping the soldered areas low profile, smooth, and covered with a layer of kapton tape helps. Also pays to make the wiring that passes from heated bed into the Max's base extremely t...

How about adding a warning about wiring the RAMBo power connector (and its heat output terminals, too in later chapter). I have read several threads where people thought they were doing a good thing by tinning the leads, which usually results in heat damage to the terminals and/or PCB down the road....

I really like the addition of the melamine parts identification pics. I'm sure that was a bunch of work, but I think it will be very helpful to future builders.

I'd encourage you to add something early in chapter 2 about painting edges of melamine parts. I agree it is not necessary, but if builder wants to do so it is much easier to do so if parts are removed from laser cut panels and edges get painted before removal of masking material.

If you have a multimeter, you can check the thermistor circuit by unplugging the lead from the RAMBo and reading the thermistor's resistance which should be about 100kohm.

Check the thermistor wiring. RAMBo can't read extruder temp so won't turn on heat.

Wandering Z calibration could be loose belts or loose drive pulleys on the stepper motors. Did the idlers on the top of the towers get tightened? They are easy to overlook. Drive pulley set screws should be on the flatted face of the motor shaft, and must be installed with thread locking compound.

Reset button on Max's control panel does nothing, as far as I can tell. Maybe it was enabled in an earlier version of firmware, or maybe there are a large number of defective switches.

Welcome. There are quite a few of these in the PNW now.

I'm liking that design a lot.

I missed getting the little the red/black wires into the mesh on the first try, too. But in Gene's defense, the instructions (pg 147) show them and the text just says "hot end wires" which meant heater, thermistor, and fan wires. I also made the mistake you show in your first post, with th...

My fault for not stating that this would work - in theory - , but that I had not actually tried it. All of the changes to pins.h are correct. I dug around and realize that there is one thing I overlooked. All of the pin assignments are related to how the microcontroller is connected to the stepper d...

That looks like it would do the trick. Sure think that SeeMeCNC should add some slots on those side panels at the very least. I think Apollo will have to make something else...

+1 for the Astrosyn motor mounts. Do not consider the PEEK fan to be optional. You don't need the LAYER fan for printing ABS, but it won't hurt. Using a desk fan will blow air everywhere, not just where you need it. It may cool the hot end and make temperature control more erratic. The all-metal hot...

Seems I have tripped over the overheating issue myself. Have been printing only PLA since relocating Apollo (my RMV2). Today I switched back to ABS and had two mysterious shutdowns mid-print. It occurred to me that the higher temps for ABS were pushing the power supply harder and that there was less...

Start by locating the pin.h file and make a backup copy pinsOld.h before we create any new chaos. Then open Repetier.ino in the Arduino IDE. To reassign steppers for RAMBo, scroll down to line 1448 in pins.h, where you'll see * RAMBo Pin Assignments . We're concerned with the lines just below that (...

The RAMBo has 5 stepper drivers (for X/Y/Z and dual extruders). You could get into the firmware files and re-task the spare driver (E1) to handle Z axis duties.

Try reloading firmware. If still wonky, try erasing the EEPROM and then reloading the firmware again. If the spark did not damage the circuitry, it may still have corrupted flash or EEPROM.