Day 455: Update on My 3D Printer

After months of trial and error, waiting for parts to ship, disappointment and general frustration, I finally got this stupid printer working. I ended up replacing every electronic component on the entire printer, but I finally, finally got it working. There were certainly setbacks, and quite a few of them at that, before I got it fixed. When I tried to update the firmware, I bricked the machine. When I tried to replace the PCB, I lost a screw, and now it's only held on by three instead of four. When I replaced the motherboard, I turned the inner workings into complete spaghetti. And the worst part? It turned out that after so much effort, the problem was actually very simple.

The reason I had to do all of this is that one of the fans that cool the system would just not come on no matter what I did. I had to go all the way up the chain to the motherboard to find the issue. On the motherboard are a couple of power supply pins labeled 'FAN +' and 'FAN -.' There are also two wires labeled '+' and '-' leading from these pins, through the control board, and into the fan that wasn't working. After changing over almost every other cable to a new motherboard, guess what I discovered? It was very curious. Those power cables were labeled wrong somehow. Only, I realized, they weren't labeled wrong. They were in the wrong pins!

So yeah. Months of effort. Because two cables had been put in the wrong place at a factory somewhere. Anyway, at least it works! Now just to find something to print ... hmm.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley