Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

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MK99
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Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by MK99 »

Hello everybody. I'm new to the forum and 3D printing in general. It's a hobby that I've always been interested in, as I really like electronics and creating things. I made my way to the forum, because I recently ended up with a Rostock Max V2 that needed work in a bad way. It's a bit of a long story, but I'll try to explain so people get the full picture. Basically, what I want to ask about here is some assistance with picking new parts and solving my existing problems. I realize that some of the things that I'm going to list on my purchase list are probably overkill, but I want a working machine that can print consistently well.

I got the machine a couple months ago. I had some friends that were in a club. Their club was given a space to have their meetings and work on club activities. That space used to belong to another club, which turned out to be the 3D printing club. When they were given the space, they were told that anything that was in there became theirs. Among the items found, one was this Rostock Max V2. They had no use for it, and were going to throw it away, so I saved it with the hopes of getting it working again.

It appears that the machine sat locked away in a basement for a few years. It had about 4 to 5 days of print time listed on it only, but the thermistor on the hotend had been removed, and none of the cooling fans on it worked. I didn't know what shape the hotend was in, so I bought a new stock one from SeeMeCNC and two new fans. I replaced the stock power supply with an 850W modular one as well. I made sure everything was wired correctly, installed the new parts, calibrated the machine according to the manual I found online, and made sure that I could extrude filament. Everything seemed to be going OK, so I tried some prints, but this is where I start to have problems.

My first print, I realized that somewhere in it's lifespan the spool arm got broken. I printed one, that came out meh, but solid enough to work, although I had to stand there and manually feed it for an hour or so. At this point I started trying to get my settings correct and get good quality prints, but I could never escape having some kind of issue. I have only tried printing in PLA and silk PLA so far. In no particular order, and continually coming back I would have:
  • misaligned layers- tried making sure towers were super tightened down
  • warping- tried using painters tape, turning up bed temps, keeping room printer is in warm and staying away from temp variations
  • deformed prints- tried turning temps down, calibrating better and more often
  • droopy overhangs- same as above
  • MANY bed adhesion issues- tried painters tape, turning bed heat up
  • filament clogging in nozzle- tried turning temps up, turning down extrusion speed
  • filament jamming and breaking in cold end CONSTANTLY- tried repositioning under spool better to create a gentler angle of travel
  • cold end motor gets hot enough I can't touch it and starts to smell a bit burny- started pointing a desk fan at it during prints
  • A few times it has just stopped printing and froze midprint- restarted it and it didn't happen again
  • One time it homed itself and starting extruding filament as fast as it could until I manually killed power- I have no idea, it only did it once
So, keep in mind, all these issues are probably only three or four days of machine time, trying to print with this thing. Sometimes I'd have multiple at once, etc. But then, it got worse. I tried to start a print, and the hotend would stop 2 to 3 degrees below the target temp and never start a print. I can preheat above that temp, but it won't hit it naturally. If I preheat above and click start, it will start my print, but the hotend temp will drop roughly 20 degrees C below the target and it basically makes the machine unusable.

So, that is the current state of the machine now. At this point, I'm incredibly frustrated, because I basically have a huge paperweight. Where I want to go from here is to do a complete overhaul and upgrade most every part. I realize that it might be cheaper to simply scrap the machine and buy another brand new one, but I have sunk a lot of time into this one and am willing to spend some money upgrading the thing, if it will make it work. I have a parts list put together and I also wanted to ask if these parts will work with the machine and hopefully make things better:
  • Duet 2
  • PT 1000 Thermistor
  • Phaetus Dragon
  • 70W 500C Heaters
  • blTouch Automatic bed leveling sensor
  • Maybe new carriages? Not sure on if there is a better replacement or if it would matter
  • Maybe new arms, again not sure if there is a replacement that is better or if they're needed
  • Probably a new cold end, or new motor, unsure on this one as well
Sorry for the novel, but I just wanted to put out as much info as possible about my issues so that someone might be able to give me some help. Thanks for any help you can provide in advance. Once again, I'm new to printing, so using this machine to learn my way around it and figure out how things work.
Mac The Knife
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Re: Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by Mac The Knife »

Your issues with the filament sounds like you're dealing with old, wet PLA. I'm assuming the filament came with the printer?
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MK99
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Re: Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by MK99 »

No, I actually bought the pla with the new hotend from SeeMeCNC and the silk pla within the last month or so.
geneb
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Re: Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by geneb »

If you're going to go the Duet route, I would highly recommend you go with either a Duet Smart Effector or go with an SE300 hot end assembly & a wiring whip. The SE300 and Duet Smart Effector use the same strain gauge circuit for detecting the nozzle touching the bed. The calibration using a Duet in combination with a strain gauge-based touch sensor is so good it's basically witchcraft at this point. ;)

If you've got the old melamine carriages, I would recommend you upgrade to the injection molded versions. If you've got the injection molded version, but it's still using "U" joint arms, I'd upgrade to the ball & socket arm set.

The hot end problem you describe might be due to a bad heating resistor in the hot end, especially if it's old enough to be using the original resistor heaters.

The hot extruder drive is due to it being over driven. The previous owner probably jacked up the current in the firmware, but if you're going to a Duet, don't worry about it. :)

The "easy button" path for doing an upgrade like this is to go with an SE300 (they're pre-assembled) and a wiring whip (also pre-assembled - make sure to tell them you're doing a v2 so you get the right length). When you are ready to configure the firmware on the Duet, use the configuration for the Rostock MAX v3.2 as your baseline. It's the closest example mechanically to the v2.

g.
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MK99
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Re: Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by MK99 »

Thanks for all the tips. So the smart effector allows for auto bed leveling? It looks good, and I would buy the whole hotend setup, but my problem is that I want to be able to print high temp filaments like nylon and nylon mixed with carbon fiber and that hotend assembly doesn't look like it can do that.

How do I know the difference between the melamine and injection molded? Everything is stock at this point, so I'm assuming I have the oldest version of everything. I don't think the previous owner really understood what they were doing with this thing.

I also had that thought, of it being a bad heating resistor. I replaced the old one with a "new" one, same thing that it should have had stock from the day it shipped from SeeMeCNC, but it didn't last very long if that's the case.

I haven't touched the firmware, so it's possible they did something I don't know about. And considering the other stuff that they did (terrible, unnecessary wire splices, poor cable management) I wouldn't put it past them to have touched something in the firmware that they didn't know what it did.

The se300 looks good, but unfortunately I want something that can get a bit hotter.
geneb
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Re: Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by geneb »

Yes, both the Duet Smart Effector and the SE300 have a built-in strain gauge circuit that's used for auto-calibration.
As far as I know, the SE300 is good to 300C, but you should confirm that with SeeMeCNC directly.

This is what the injection molded carriage set looks like: https://www.seemecnc.com/products/injec ... a73f&_ss=r

The original v2 hot end used two resistors packed in RTV as the heater - if your hot end looks like the one shown below, it's an HE280 and not the original hot end. The resistors used by the original hot end wouldn't last long if they weren't properly encased in RTV to keep them from burning up.

https://www.seemecnc.com/products/repai ... 5031&_ss=r

g.
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MK99
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Re: Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by MK99 »

The SE300 says that it can survive heaters up to 40W and I plan on using 60W heaters, so that option doesn't look like it's going to work. The other accelerometer and probing boards say that they aren't compatible with a duet, so I probably won't be going with SeeMeCNC components there.

It does appear that the machine has the injection molded carriages and arms, so I won't worry about changing those out.

No, I know my hotend is the original one. It has the gunky red stuff and the sketchy heating resistors. That's why I wanted to upgrade to a more solid cartridge heater option.
geneb
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Re: Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by geneb »

You're looking at something custom built around a Duet Smart Effector then.

g.
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pennakira
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Re: Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by pennakira »

your problems sound like firmware, I would redo Repetier 1.60 and do an auto PID for temperature.
geneb
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Re: Rostock Max V2 Upgrades

Post by geneb »

Um, no.

g.
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