3D Printing Forum

I'm still pretty new to this model of printer, but I'm not new to 3D printing in general.

I experienced an interesting issue this morning when I went to print a new part. I printed a part last night, and everything went very well. Then I changed the filament, went to print another part, the extruder heated to about 200 deg, then I got a heating failed error. Tried it again, same thing. So I tried to remove the filament when I noticed that the extruder motor would not move. I tried manual moving the motor through the controller and through Simplify3D and nothing. So I turned off the printer, switched the plugs on the y-axis motor and extruder motor and the extruder would then move, but the y-axis wouldn't. With that I believe it is the board that is having issues, though there are no obvious shorts or scorch marks on the board and I can't seem to find any obvious shorts using a multimeter.

An additional note, I tried reloading the firmware to see if something odd had happened there, but the issue persists.

I have a second board on order, and it will be here Monday.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

This probably is not a controller board issue. This sounds like a hotend thermistor issue. Are you *sure* the hotend is reaching 200c? In the hictop stock marlin configuration the extruder will not move in either direction until the controller gets a 170c+ thermistor value.

Double check the value shown on the LCD for the actual hotend temperature, I suspect its a negative number, or 0c, which would indicate a bad thermistor reading. Double check the thermistor is connected to the board. If the thermistor is bad you should have a second one from the spares shipped with the printer (I did).

I do have a second thermostat. I tried the preheat multiple times and it always says heating failed either at 200C or just before it hit 200C. The new board came today. I hooked it up, updated the firmware, and everything is running great now. No more heating error. I plan on running a print tonight to see how it goes.

When I have some more time I plan on looking at the old board a little closer. If nothing else, I now have a backup board.

Since you have access to the firmware code, you could also try hooking up the thermistor and hotend to the E1 extruder connections (usually for a second extruder), then just tweak the configuration.h file to point to that. If that works, your board is still usable. Also, if it is under warranty, they will replace it (takes a couple of weeks from China), but they do seem to care, unlike other companies.