I was given a Dimension BST that a co-worker damaged under the pretense that if I fix it it keep it.
Originally the ABS backed up and entombed the extruder. (See pic)
I heated it up and pulled the ABS off and ultimately was able to print with it.
No problems
About 3 hours into using my newly acquired printer it stopped mid print and the temperature was reading 89c, not the 269c it prints at.
I pulled the plug, checked the fuses and the heater fuse was blown on the power distribution board.
I replaced it and it blew instantly…
I noticed a 1000 uF 200v cap was a little bubbled on top so I ordered one and replaced it today. (Yellow sticker in pic)
Printer boots up and does all it’s suppose to do except it’s still reading 89c, even from cold start w/ no heat.
I took the head back off today and checked the heater’s resistance and I get 9 ohms.
I’m not sure what voltage the heater sees but if it’s 24v then it’s 2.66 amps, but I’m not sure exactly.
I’d like to know so I can hook up the heater to an independent power supply and see if I can heat it up manually.
I checked the thermocouple and it seems to check out ok too…
Anyone know where I can get a service manual?
Stratasys won’t help and tells me to talk to my vendor who we bought it from… My vendor says it’s out of warrantee and they don’t service them anymore; they tell me to call stratasys.
Literally no one will help so I’m just going on hunches…
They unfortunately keep this crap close to their chest. We’ve got a machine like this at my hackerspace and a very similar problem arose with it. They won’t service it - I’d love to hack it to pieces and bin most of it, but everyone at the space is like “oooh, a real stratasys!” – shit is overrated let me tell ya.
I teach at a public HS and having a reliable printer that prints models when students need them is important.
I have a makerbot rep 2x, and a BFB3000 (junk) and they are not reliable when I have a back log of 70 models to pump out.
The students do it themselves but the troubleshooting and this and that slows down the process to a crawl…
Stratasys really pisses me off when they stick it to Edu…
To put icing on the cake the people who manage my dept know nothing about tech so talking to them is like talking to my coffee cup…
Seems you might have a short somewhere, otherwise the fuse would not have blown immediately. Best try and measure all components that are suppying the heater. might be a small piece of broken insulation. Good luck with mending this beast.
The heater should be connected to 120V AC. You may have damaged the heater cartridge lead insulation which is usually some small ceramic beads. The mechanical parts in them are pretty nice but the software limitations are lame. There’s some good hacking at Haveblue.org, Gnurds, and Stratasysusers.org - which is new and has a lot of info. Stratasysusers has a tutorial on decrypting the eeproms. Stratasysusers also has all the manuals including service manuals. Let me know and I can hook you up with MaracaEX if you would like to change any parameters.
Your board is laid out differently than mine, but I suspect that one of those components is a SSR. Some people have mentioned that they had a capacitor go bad on the thermocouple boards. It seems all your thermocouple components are house in the back - some of mine are on the head.
Measure the voltage across the fuse. If it is 24V then that would be about the right amount of power (P=VV/R = 2424/9=64 watts). If it is 120V then that would be way too much power.
My machine is a similar vintage, but the SSR’s on my power distribution board are easily identified and I do not recall having any capacitors that large.
The heater cartridge should be a 150 Watt heater for 120V 1/4" diameter by 1.25" long. Suitable replacements can be sourced from Watlow or Omega. I just replaced mine and did not realize I had to call in order to specify the BL (beads with leads - see the spec sheet) termination on the HDC00011 I got. http://www.omega.com/pptst/HDC00001_Series.html
Granted some original cartridges may vary so it’s best to verify yours. They usually have some markings on them. This particular machine uses 1 cartridge in 1 large heat block to melt both support and model material.
Once you are sure that your cartridge is working, you may want to try plugging into the other electrical receptacles that would be used for the model material in a two heater system.
I will PM you a link with Maraca - the troubleshooting/calibration software.
