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The physical resistance is low. The LCD adapter board may have had soldering errors, but seemed to work until I used the SD card. The motor wiring is fine because it worked prior to the SD card. The motor current should probably be ok because the home Z causes all 3 motors to move down "10".

When I get home tonight, I will define a debug_beeps variable in configuration.h and place some code in various places which will check for it and beep when it is turned on and the code is called. This should help me figure out what is going on. I have been asking a number of people about this stuff and they all seem stumped so far.

ApacheXMD wrote:

nathanstenzel wrote:Yes, I soldered the adapter board to the rambo board as the video you posted. 7:38 shows him confirming that the adapter board is securely soldered onto the rambo board.

No it doesnt. It shows the adapter's circuit board being soldered to the headers which are temporarily plugged into the rambo. Notice how Gene is able to unplug the adapter board from the rambo when he's done soldering.

Ok. You were right. The headers that were not in the kit should have been soldered to the bottom of the adapter board. I thought this was a kit adjustment, but it was really poor quality control. Not everything that was supposed to be shipped was shipped. This resulted in difficulty soldering which led to some soldering mistakes which led to what was evidently a fried RAMBO. I now need a fresh RAMBO, adapter card and all the parts that are supposed to go with the adapter card.

My RAMBO board is shipped back to SeeMeCNC. He said he will go ahead and replace it. I think he was also sending an adapter board which he might even presolder for me so I can't screw it up.

My 2nd RAMBO board came in with the adapter board. I managed to do a decent solder job this time and yes, I can unplug the adapter card from the RAMBO.

My LCD controller does not know when a card is put in it. It simply won't detect the card. Not surprising. It must have gotten quite a shock the last time. This sounds like another part to send back to SeeMeCNC. At least the base system seems to work.

Used Pronterface and Skeinforge to test the movement of my printer since under Linux, the RepeteirHost stuff does not work so well.

I may have a little bit too much wobble in the position of the part which will hold the hotend.

nathanstenzel wrote:
My LCD controller does not know when a card is put in it. It simply won't detect the card. Not surprising. It must have gotten quite a shock the last time. This sounds like another part to send back to SeeMeCNC. At least the base system seems to work.

Did you try going through the menus in the LCD controller to mount the card? Nothing happens automatically when inserting a card.
Also note that file names must be in 8.3 naming convention. And some folks mentioned that only all capital letters worked, although lowercase works fine for me.

John said something about downloading the most recent firmware and flashing it. I found a dev copy of the firmware and that worked. So did simply turning on the sdsupport flag in configuration.h. I don't know why the firmware would be off. You would think that if it was going to be off for the online copy (where people make the machines by more than just buying the kit) that there would be a CD or something (like the SD card) with the proper firmware on it. Oh well. Whatever. The SD card support works 80% now. Not the best, but it can sometimes do what it should.

I notice the instructions mention a 14 AWG 2 connector wire which I can't find. It is supposed to be for the heat bed. I see 22 AWG and 18 AWG 4 connector wire. I suppose that I could twist the ends of some of the wires together to make 2 double-path wires (white with black and colored with colored) to get the current carrying ability, but I would rather wait to see what John says about it.

The instuctions also mention PTFE tubing in a few spots and at one time says there should be some included for the thermister for the hotend. It mentions two different 1" lengths for the thermister leads. I heard some people use kapton tape for that, but once again I want to see what John says about it.

I am being really careful to not assume any of the instructions are wrong since my adapter board issues were a real pain in the ass....probably for me and for John of SeeMeCNC. At any rate, any descrepencies need to be resolved for the kits if SeeMeCNC is to have good luck with their business and I like supporting the manufacturers of my country. Outsourcing is bad.

My hotend now has its kapton tape around part of the resistor leads and keeping the PEET plastic attached to the metal and wrapped around the area with the resistors for consistent appearance. My Onyx heated bed is now pretinned and waiting for the 14 AWG wire.

"18-24” of 14ga wire for the Onyx heated bed power."

It's the last item on the list of additional materials in the manual.

I've used just kapton tape with my E3D hotend. With the hotend I did exactly what the manual said and used the PTFE with Kapton tape support. Mine were included in the folded up sticky note. They are tiny tubes.

Not having the 14 AWG wire or the kapton tape or shrink wrap tubing makes the kit sound like it is not complete. It is labeled as one though.

There is 18 AWG wire included in the kit. I wonder if that was intended to be used for both the hotend and the heatbed of if perhaps the double path idea with the 22AWG wire (of which I have plenty left) was the intended way to get it done.

I found a 14 AWG wire at Wal-Mart. It looks like it was an extension cord for a washer/dryer/AC unit. The thing is thick.

I have some wires to hook up to the board and a little fan that I could not find instructions for yet. There is some firmware stuff that may need to be done. My SD card support is not 100%. I think I managed to get it almost finished though.

My hot bed did not heat up when I tested a preheat but that may be firmware or it might try to heat the extruder some first. I dunno yet.

Ah. The fan is for cooling the peek tube so the filament does not creep. I will be printing abs. I used the white and black wire from the 18awg wire for my thermistor. It won't hurt to have a bigger wire, will it? I can always adjust things later. I may do dual extrusion later on and may use another 16 awg wire or two white sets or my spare 22awg wire when adjusting things. I may even do quick disconnects like geneb suggested.

The instructions clearly state that you use the four conductor 18ga wire to power the hot end and the fan. You're to use the wires included with the RAMBo for the hot end thermistor (this is clearly stated on page 127). If you're never going to print PLA, you can use the 18ga fan wires for a layer fan instead of a PEEK fan.

From everything I've read here, 99% of the problems you're having are directly caused by not reading the manual or making assumptions about "changes" that haven't actually been made.

g.

geneb wrote: From everything I've read here, 99% of the problems you're having are directly caused by not reading the manual or making assumptions about "changes" that haven't actually been made.

g.

Maybe a little bit of being tired too. I assembled the last bit at midnight. At any rate, if I get some quick disconnect cabled, it would be a good time to install them and make it so my build goes with the instructions.

I had to use the search feature in the PDF to find the bit about the fan. Looking at it, I could not find it. Ok....maybe I am too newb for your instructions. It happens. On the plus side, I am managing to figure out a few of the times that I mess up....although sometimes annoyingly late. The mistakes I don't catch are the ones that worry me. hahaha

Finished the wiring. Placed a spare endstop plug that was leftover on the wires that I used for the thermister (the ones that the instructions say are for the peek fan, but that does not really matter much to me right now). Confirmed that Pronterface can heat and cool the hotend and hotbed. Will calibrate tomorrow or sometime.

I did the PID tuning cycles for my hot end and hot bed. I think the temperatures were off. John said that the one wire for the hotbed should have been 18AWG and not the 14AWG that geneb said. I don't know if that was an error on geneb's part or if geneb thought 18AWG was insufficient. I notice that my hotbed...even after the PID calibration takes a really long time to get up to ABS temperatures. This may have to do with doing the PID temperatures using geneb's PLA temperature setting. It seems all of his temperature settings were based on his needs of printing PLA and that you need to calibrate for ABS as well or instead if printing ABS. I may be wrong there.

It seems my hotend temperature is different from what the reading says. This may be a side-effect of using a wire else than the one provided for the specific purpose. If anyone else decides to not use the wire meant for the thermisters, you should take the temperatures of the hotend and the heatbed and make sure they are the same and perhaps use a thermometer or other pre-calibrated temperature measuring device so you can figure out how far off your settings are. I would not be surprised if there was something in the firmware for setting an offset of the temperature reading.

I attempted a test print while I thought my towers were about right. My nozzle was still too close to the bed. The hot end was probably too hot. I heard what I can only imagine was the ABS cooking. The nozzle got jammed and then I back the jam into the bowden tube and got it stuck there. I will try soaking it in hot water and blowing or sucking the stuff out of the tube when I get home.

Assuming I get the jam cleared, I will recalibrate my endstops and height, do a squirt test and try the calibration tube again. The good news is, I doubt I lost more than 3 feet of filament so far.

(revised for clarity on the 1st paragraph)

14awg is a bigger wire than 18awg.

ApacheXMD wrote:14awg is a bigger wire than 18awg.

Yep. Since you posted about that, I noticed I typed the wrong number up above. I have revised the first paragraph of my previous post.

Clearing my bowden tube jam will be an interesting learning experience.

With ABS you can let the jam soak in acetone to dissolve the plastic. Depends on your patience level if you want to let it fully disolve or just soften is up.

The thermistors used are all uncalibrated until you do so. Some types/manufacturers may be more consistant than others which is why there are multiple profiles for the thermistor conversion in the calibration.h file. It has been recommended in the forum several times that using a thermocouple (with links to inexpensive products) to calibrate or at least know what to offset your temperature by is good practice if not necessary.

The hot bed does take awhile to warm up. The easiest way to speed this up is to place an insulator on top of the plate while it warms, such as some cloth (use cotton if your unsure what's appropriate) or the cooking mats meant for you to place hot pans on, silicone ones are likely very convienent. The other way to speed up heating times is the use a 24V power supply for the heating bed. These topics can be found in the forum.

I said 14ga and I MEANT 14ga. I also know what I'm talking about. A single 18ga wire to your heated bed won't permit the bed to heat up to the temperatures recommended for ABS. At least not within a reasonable time frame.

The wire gauge connecting the thermistor has no bearing on the reading you're getting from it.

You're welcome to second guess me as much as you like, but considering your 0% success rate at it so far, you might want to reconsider.

g.

geneb wrote:I said 14ga and I MEANT 14ga. I also know what I'm talking about. A single 18ga wire to your heated bed won't permit the bed to heat up to the temperatures recommended for ABS. At least not within a reasonable time frame.

The wire gauge connecting the thermistor has no bearing on the reading you're getting from it.

You're welcome to second guess me as much as you like, but considering your 0% success rate at it so far, you might want to reconsider.

g.

Alright. So it is confirmed then. You and John disagree about the design specs for the heat bed wire. Good to know.

There's a reason why geneb wrote the 'official' construction manual. Follow it first, deviate later if you so desire.

nathanstenzel wrote:

geneb wrote:I said 14ga and I MEANT 14ga. I also know what I'm talking about. A single 18ga wire to your heated bed won't permit the bed to heat up to the temperatures recommended for ABS. At least not within a reasonable time frame.

The wire gauge connecting the thermistor has no bearing on the reading you're getting from it.

You're welcome to second guess me as much as you like, but considering your 0% success rate at it so far, you might want to reconsider.

g.

Alright. So it is confirmed then. You and John disagree about the design specs for the heat bed wire. Good to know.

Are you sure something wasn't miscommunicated between John and yourself. I can see no reason to disagree with the larger wire being more capable of carrying the current the bed needs. What is supplied with the machine is the base recommendation for the machine, what geneb recommends works very well in speeding up beat heat times. I'm actually a little concerned if John is pointing folks away from the real world changes that have put into the manual by geneb.

There was no miscommunication between me and John. He thought 18awg was fine for the heat bed.

Good news! I figured out what the hell was wrong with my printer! The repetier host calls to the slic3r software resulted in using the preset slic3r settings and not the ones I saved as "default" as per the manual. I am now using slic3r and pronterface (seperately) and there are no problems. My prints look sweeeeeeeeet. Doing another calibration cube now to test the top part of the cube and overhang. The top was not 100% right and may need more support material.

lordbinky wrote:With ABS you can let the jam soak in acetone to dissolve the plastic. Depends on your patience level if you want to let it fully disolve or just soften is up.

The thermistors used are all uncalibrated until you do so. Some types/manufacturers may be more consistant than others which is why there are multiple profiles for the thermistor conversion in the calibration.h file. It has been recommended in the forum several times that using a thermocouple (with links to inexpensive products) to calibrate or at least know what to offset your temperature by is good practice if not necessary.

The hot bed does take awhile to warm up. The easiest way to speed this up is to place an insulator on top of the plate while it warms, such as some cloth (use cotton if your unsure what's appropriate) or the cooking mats meant for you to place hot pans on, silicone ones are likely very convienent. The other way to speed up heating times is the use a 24V power supply for the heating bed. These topics can be found in the forum.

Thanks for the tips.