Last we left our printer saga, everything was quite broken, and I was waiting on parts.  The 625z bearings came in and I put the extruder motor back together.  When I could easily turn it by hand, I knew my extruder problems were solved.  Sure enough, I can extrude PETG at high speeds and no jams.  The hot end was not to blame.  I did develop a new problem though.

That is the status of my end stops.  The printer thinks the inductive sensor is touching the bed even though it is nowhere close.  I had an occasional issue with the inductive sensor reading poorly.  That has become constant now, all my messing with the cables finished off my probe.  I can’t start a print without that probe.  I massaged the cable and found a spot that flipped the 1 to a 0.  Time to troubleshoot.

Ok, so the cable is pretty well shot.  I opened the jacket where the issues was, but couldn’t figure out the exact problem.  They used very thin wire, it could be a break within the jacket.  I just cut most of the cable and redid the wiring.  That got me back up and running.  I printed everything I needed for the upgrade plus spares in both PETG and PLA.

I double checked all the instructions to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and started with the tear down.  On the plus side I am really good at disassembling the whole hot end/extruder!  It looks so naked.

I only ran into one small snag.  The part that holds the x-belt wasn’t accepting the belt on the right hand side.  I printed 3 different versions, and they all had the same issue.  I took that part off and worked around the groove with a hobby knife.  It eventually relented and let the belt seat fully.

After that, the extruder assembly was pretty straight forward.

The bed assembly was a breeze.  I like most of the changes they made to the cable management, and think this will be more robust.  How the rats nest gets handled in the controller box could be a little better though.  Maybe just a bigger box.

I went through the calibration wizard, did some nozzle height testing, then printed a smart looking benchy.  Dimensionally it is great, but course settings mean it isn’t cosmetically the best.

I am thrilled to be over the failures, and proud of myself for solving all the issues.  Given that is almost exactly the 1 year anniversary of getting this printer, I decided to share a few stats.

Printer Stats:

• 380 successful prints (more than a few failures, especially these last 2 weeks)
• 44.7 days spent printing (12% of its life)
• 6.3km of filament