Solidoodle 2 upgrades (Page 5 of 5)

On your stock hot end the blue connector is the thermistor.  The green wires (white connector) are for the heat cartridge.
On the E3d the red & black with the connector installed is the thermistor.  Just run that to your thermistor pins on the board.  The blue wires on the E3d are the heat cartridge wires and yes you can splice into your existing wires and connector.  We recommend you do that closer to the board to keep your splice from moving and breaking.

The "hook thing" you are referring to has to do with the connectors right at the thermistor to those red and black wires.  Since you have a pre assembled unit this doesn't apply in your situation.

I think that's where I was getting hung up.  I was thinking (hoping?) I wouldn't need to undo all the wires going through that sleeve.  After I worked this out, I see that all the information was on the sites I mentioned.

So I have the wires to the fan working.  I spliced them, soldered them together, taped them up and tested it out, and both fans came on.

Thermosistor already has a connector.

For the heater, I'm going to snip off the connector from the old red wire and solder it onto the blue wires from the E3D.  Does order matter here (positive/negative)?  Or since it is just a heating element (i.e., assuming a big resistor), it doesn't matter?

Okay, so I think I have gotten everything done.  Updated my firmware, set the temperature sensor to 5, and the max temperature to 310.

I've done a test print, and here is what I'm seeing. 

1)  Bed Heater:  The bed does not seem to warm up as fast as before.  In fact, once it gets to 80C, it climbs really slowly to 95-100 where I want.  During the print, it had trouble staying above 90 (although I got a little impatient, and started it around 93).  During the print, the temperature dropped and held to about 83.  I might swap back to the old power supply and see if that makes a difference.

2)  The first layer is weird...It isn't going down as smoothly as before.  (see the white discoloration in the first pic).  I did the PID autotune and stepper calibration.  I set the default extrusion width in slicer to be 0.48, and the first layer to be 0.48, since that is 120% of 0.4, which I believe is the nozzle diameter.

3)  There is a saw toothed pattern on my edges. 

4)  The nozzle as it is going across the print seems to make a scraping sound that the stock extruder did not.  Not sure if that is normal or not.

I'm on an older version of Repetier host, so I want to upgrade that to the latest, though I'd like to ensure I've got what I have right before adding more variables.  Any other suggestions to try to get this thing printing cleanly again?

Thanks for the hardware support to get this thing quasi-functional again.  Let me know if it would be better to post further questions in a different thread.

I'd like a screenshot of you bed heat output during the stage in question also.

Hey WardJr!

Here you go - picture of the front.  I'll be on for the next 30 minutes if you want to chat

adjust your esteps for y axis

eprom if it has it

Adjusting the firmware will be different depending on which board you have. Can you please confirm which one you have?
I am not well versed in Simplify, bu you can download Repetier for free which has on board EEPROM under the "Config" tab. You can make the needed changes there. But for now...

Thanks for compiling these tips! I have recently bought a used Solidoodle 2 Pro with the wooden platform. It came with two spools of ABS and has been driving me up the wall. I think I've taken it apart and rebuilt it about 7 times now with various incremental upgrades over the last two weeks. What's the recommendation for firmware? I think the previous owner upgraded it last Sept. I still have the original ATmega644P but did order a 1284P to pop in soon. Trying to get to the point where I don't want to throw this printer out the window.