It is finally time for my old printer to bite the dust, it was really starting to look very sorry for itself.
I also wanted to reuse some of the parts for the new Hadron.
Here is a photo showing the dismantled Prusa i3.
Here are the parts that will be reused on the Hadron
During the dismantling process, based on how loose the frame had become, I was amazed that it was still able to print anything worthwhile at all.
It took quite a while to run all of the various wires through the frame elements and springs.
For many of the sections, I ran some singe cores of wire to make pulling bundles that much easier.
The collection of wires to the heated bed was the toughest, because of the heavy gauge heating wires.
The biggest collection of wires was to the extruder platform
This shot shows the microswitches and wheels behind the extruder carriage.
As you can see from some of these photos, the eccentric nuts and the micro switches had all turned up by this point, so I was able to finish off the physical build as well.
I chose not to wire up the Z axis micro switches as I want to use the serial 1 pins (d18 and d19) for a bluetooth module.
The finished printer
Rear view.
Right side
Left side
Wiring close up
I downloaded the latest version of the Repetier firmware after using their website to generate a suitable configuration.h file, and uploaded the firmware to the ATmega2560 board using the Arduino IDE.
I was then able to connect to the printer via the USB connection.
I powered up the 12V PSU, heard a ‘snap’ and saw a small plume of magic smoke, so quickly turned it off again.
Somehow I had managed to wire up the connections to the 12V PSU backwards, so I had probably just fried one or more of the following items: the protection diode, the voltage regulator, the fuses and possibly even a mosfet.
After correcting the wiring issue, I powered it up again – no more magic smoke, but the board will also not do very much either at this point.
I will have a closer look at the board to see if it is salvageable at some point, in the mean time I have ordered a Ramps 1.6 board which should be a significant upgrade anyway and less prone to having the power contacts melt.