MakerGear Forum

I made a big mistake and removed the lower bed fan to try and do sequential printing with S3D. I let it run and in the morning the entire nozzle was covered in PLA filament.
I manually removed what I could and then soaked the affected hot end portion in acetone to fully remove all PLA. When I tried to print again after cleaning and adding back lower fan I could not get any heat (won't recognize the temperate setting change on graph) or motion when using it in manual mode to prepare it for a print job. The power supply appeared to be working and the upper fan but nothing else. I checked the 3 fuses and they are working.

I was thinking I may have messed up the hot end while soaking it in acetone but that does not explain the stage not being able to move by manual commands.

Any idea on what I can try next?

Do you mean you can't get ANY of the steppers to move ?

Does anything work?
Can you turn on the bed fan with the slider?
Can you raise the bed?
Can you bring the nozzle up to temp?
If not.... Are you sure your connected to the computer still?

OR

It just won't extrude filament anymore ?

Is the hot end up to temp? if it's not over 170° it won't allow the stepper to turn at all.

-Steve

The only thing that appears to be working is the small fan shown in picture I attached and the power supply is on and "humming" as usual.

I tried "jogging" the bed around and it will not move. When I click to warm-up the extruder temperature the icon turns red but when I look at the temperature graph it does not show the target temperature line like I would expect and does not heat up.

Since some things appear to be working I assume it is connected properly to the computer.

To start with, you'll need a new hotend. I'm not sure you can soak the V3bs in acetone to clean them. That, or the molten lava bath, likely damaged the thermistor. (I did the same thing to one once - buried it to the hilt in PLA. I just replaced the hotend with a spare and everything went back to working okay.)

You're not going to see any temperature changes on the graph with a damaged thermistor.

As to why it's not moving around anymore, Fan 1 needs to be connected to the Extruder fan, Fan 0 is connected to the Bed fan. If you have those switched, the extruder fan won't come on, and if that isn't on, the jog controls don't work. Turn off the machine, check to make sure you have those connected correctly, and reconnect with S3d.

If the extruder fan is running okay, but it still won't move, try turning off the printer and reconnect with S3D anyway. Sometimes it will drop the connection.

And if that doesn't work, try replacing the hotend and see if that completes the necessary circuits.

Beyond that, you need the electrical experts on the forum. (Not me! )

Good luck with it though - I've done that. Sux!

This is just conjecture, but it's possible that soaking it in acetone melted the insulator on the wires to the hot-end and/or the thermistor, causing them to short to the heater block. If so, that short might pull down the power supply on the board and cause the electronics to stop working, which it could possibly do without blowing a fuse. You'd have to check the resistance across the wires and between the thermistor and heater wires.

Acetone doesn't really work on PLA. Your best bet with any mess like this is first to try melting it off, then clean it up while it's still melted with a Q-tip. I don't think that with acetone you will do any significant damage to the hot-end, though, unless, as I said, it damages the wire insulation.

In the communication window what is it saying? Usualy after anything in the hot end has been disconnected you need to send an M999 command to the printer but it should say that in the window.

Thanks for all the great comments and information!

I did have a spare nozzle assembly and swapped it out and it seemed to work fine. Must have been the thermister which I had forgotten about when I soaked in acetone.

majerdave wrote:Thanks for all the great comments and information!

I did have a spare nozzle assembly and swapped it out and it seemed to work fine. Must have been the thermister which I had forgotten about when I soaked in acetone.

Glad you got it working again!