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Hi guys,
Been working and reading the forums all day. I printed the fan shrouds last night and when they were installed today it reduces the hot end below the calibration threshold. What settings can i change without melting my printer?

Hi, what's your Extr.1 PID max value??

I believe its 205 I hover around 194°.

I had the bed info sorry about that. Still getting used to this whole thing. Thanks for looking at this with me!

I would increase your drive max somewhat, say 230, and if that doesn't do it, start boosting your P-gain until it does. Also wrap the block of the hotend in Kapton tape.

I prefer to wrap the block in self fusing silicone tape available at Amazon and other sources.

The hot end block is taped up already. I will look into the silicon alternative.

With the eeprom settings is there a max value on the Pid Max or Pid Gain I don't want to exceed? (I see posts of people melting stuff and i really don't want to do that)

Thanks guys!

By looking at your picture, the "Extr.1 PID max" value is of 175, bump it up at least to 205. If it doesn't work, increase it more like Xenocrates said.

Do that first, it should work without needing to play with the PID.

I am up and printing now. Thank you guys. I raised the PID max from 175 to 205 on the bed and extruder and seem to be good on the temps now (I ran an auto tune on the hot end). I did get halfway through a pla print last night and the extruder stopped and left a double def error. This happened 2 times at different heights. I'm thinking it has to be a break in the thermistor wires? I see this error often.

It's a fault somewhere. It might be that your thermistor wasn't well potted, and so the leads are either touching each other, or the hotend. It may be that there's an intermittent fault in the wiring harness (anywhere from the bed to the board to the hotend). It might even be some loose soldered strands on the bed or hotend thermistor wires wandering elsewhere. Give it a look, starting with the hotend side (As that has the most motion and fails most often), and if you can, check your resistance at various stages. It should be ~100K at room temp almost all the way along. If it is much higher or lower at the connections for the Rambo, start testing chunks, like across just the thermistor at the solder points, from the solder point to the connector for the board (Not across the thermistor). That way you can find and isolate your failure point relatively quickly.

So the thermistor default issue goes back to the low temp settings. the default issue happened when the temp dropped below 183 for pla set to 210. Im sure the low p max value (205 i reset it to) was not enough to keep up with the extrusion. I have it at 220 now and the temp is still dropping ionto the low 190s while printing. I will raise the p max to 230 and play with the p gain as you suggested. I will also be adding some tape to help help the heat in the hot end. Thanks for the help guys!

Which power supply do you have? Particularly if it's the old computer-style ATX power supply instead of the brick-style, they are subject to delivering less voltage under load. Even with the bed load offloaded to a dedicated power supply through an SSR, my ATX-equipped machine struggles to reach and maintain 225, but it's close enough I can work with it.

I have the Silver brick they are using currently. I did have another fail last night. Not sure if it was a temp drop fail or something else. Ill be looking into it tonight.

I was reading around the forums and I see a threaded thermistor. Any reason I don't want to do this? I figure if I'm taking apart the wiring to chase ghosts its a good time to upgrade? Is it too soon to start that process? I've only had it "working" for a week.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/321341736569?va ... 1497.l2649

Considering my track record, and how little modification that involves, if you've got a drill press, pillar drill, or confidence, I'd say go for it (Do yourself a favor if you do have a drill press, and buy a spring-loaded center for the tapping as well. It helps.). If you've got enough confidence, well, I tapped a M3 hole in the stock hotend with the right size of tap and a pair of pliers, without any tapping compound. Be careful with it, and don't forget the Tap-magic, and you should do fine. Also, pre-fill the hole with thermal compound or something, for better heat transfer.

So I'm giving up. I ordered a 40w heater and a threaded thermistor and will be rebuilding the hot end shortly. My max temps keep getting lower even with the increasing eeprom settings. Has to be a damaged resistor or something. I keep printing and watching the temp drop 20 degrees as soon as the base layer is completed. It takes about a minute then I have to pause and wait 5 mins for the temp to rise and a minute later I'm back down and pausing again. I'm hoping the new gear gets me over this hurtle.

Thanks to all of you that helped. I am learning a lot from your posts and guidance.

Circus621 wrote:So I'm giving up. I ordered a 40w heater and a threaded thermistor and will be rebuilding the hot end shortly. My max temps keep getting lower even with the increasing eeprom settings. Has to be a damaged resistor or something. I keep printing and watching the temp drop 20 degrees as soon as the base layer is completed. It takes about a minute then I have to pause and wait 5 mins for the temp to rise and a minute later I'm back down and pausing again. I'm hoping the new gear gets me over this hurtle.

Thanks to all of you that helped. I am learning a lot from your posts and guidance.

I think that it would be very wise to use the threaded thermistor.
As Xenocrates indicates, it is not that hard to create the threaded hole and I also recommend the use of thermal compound on the threads.
Not to worry, your persistence will payoff and your heating problems will be over.
Take care and I look forward to you telling us that you fixed the problem.

Update***
I bailed on the old head after ordering the wrong (24 V) heat cartridge and just bought an e3d hot end. Best decision ever. I'm up and running and I'm very happy with the performance. The smaller nozzle (.4) clogs a lot but I'm ordering a larger set to play with. All in all things are working out well now. Still climbing the steep learning curve but at least I am climbing again. Thanks guys for all the help and advice. It did turn out that the issue was melted heat resistors.