Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

I have seen alot of hotends burned up and belts lost , what are some things to avoid when building the H-1

Those are generally what I call growing pains. I don't know of anyone who has built a machine without at least some problems. Just the nature of the beast. I don't have an H-1, but a Prusa and several other shop made cnc machines. I am relating this so that you know you can expect some problems and some are even preventable if you read all you can in the build log section here. There are a few to read through.
Hopefully others will chime in with some other do's and don'ts for ya. Good luck with it and I'll keep an eye out for your progress.

It's all part of the fun, Tom!

The major ones I can think of are:

• * Make sure thermistor is secure and will not come out - this could cause catastrophic hot end melt down (run-away heating).
  * Check and double check that your hot end is not going to crash into the bed, without end stops, this is a potential problem and can damage the bed.
  * Never connect/disconnect any component when the electronics are energized. This will definitely cause unwanted feedback/spikes in the power lines potentially damaging drivers or other IC's.
  * Check your wiring against wiring diagrams before applying power to your rig. This is a simple suggestion that has saved me countless and expensive blowouts.

If I think of others, I will post them.

Maybe this is overkill but I am planning on building an Arduino-based backup temperature controller for the extruder. I plan to add another thermistor to the extruder and the arduino will drive a few 7 segment LED displays to show current temperature and a 'max cutoff temperature' where it will open a relay removing the power to the the Velleman temperature controller. Hopefully this will perpetually keep me in the group of people who have 'Not yet had an extruder overtemp'

Best Wishes,
Z

zaphod wrote:Maybe this is overkill but I am planning on building an Arduino-based backup temperature controller for the extruder. I plan to add another thermistor to the extruder and the arduino will drive a few 7 segment LED displays to show current temperature and a 'max cutoff temperature' where it will open a relay removing the power to the the Velleman temperature controller. Hopefully this will perpetually keep me in the group of people who have 'Not yet had an extruder overtemp'

Best Wishes,
Z

Couldn't you just use the Makerbot Generation 4 Kit w/LCD instead of all that?

You could get better control over all of your stuff and a complete solution.

I guess I could always throw away all of the electronics components with the H1 and buy a whole new set of electronics for $370. I think I'll just add another $25 worth of arduino/thermister/LED/relay and call it good.

Nice i might do that with mine(lcd display) its a good idea.

P.s We are legion

tom10122 wrote:Nice i might do that with mine(lcd display) its a good idea.

P.s We are legion

Technicially anyone who has ever logged into a public computer is anonymous.


Anyways, you should just hook up an arduino + lcd screen and process text through a small program. Cheaper.

1. some people are actually active in anonymous
2. i have a graphical and text lcd i can use with my arduino