The carnage

Tone

The more I read the more I regret.... I have zero hours of printing on a brand new printer that doesn't print.  I just wanted to say the cable chain is awesome!!!
So the purpose of the printer is to make parts to keep the printer working... Sweet!

If you got into 3d printing thinking it was just a plug it in and go type of thing you did it for the wrong reason. It is a hobby and is not ready for the average Joe to get into and start printing contrary to what much of the advertising and marketing hype says. . You do need to do a lot of tweaking and even some mods sometimes. This is true even for $2500 Makerbots. These printers need work and often come to you damaged from poor packaging or have issue due to poor quality control that you can choose to fix yourslef or attempt to get done through a warranty. If you have the time and knowledge however it will be much faster to do it yourself and with parts on Ebay or Amazon then wait for XYZ to fart around on approval and then allow you to ship the part or even the entire printer back at your cost to be repaired or replaced. For the price of shipping back to Tiawan you could probably do the repair yourslef and more.

This Da Vinci in all honesty once you get the XYZ demons out of will print on par with and in some case better than one of those $2500 Makerbots.

It will still be some time before 3d printers really be come a common consumer product. They are still young and really should only be purchased by those willing to tinker with them and make changes to them. I mean for $500 bucks they ar worth it just for the parts alone. With a few more parts you could completly make another printer from the ground up that would cost you over $1000.

Oh, and the cable chain is cool!

This might be the easy fix.

In my case, this only happens when I print something that is long enough in the y-direction to cause y-translation beyond the dimensions of the handle.  If the print is smaller in the y-direction than the handle recess, then the tie-wrap doesn't get caught up on the handle and I don't get any skipped steps.  So far, I have been printing items that are smaller than the handle width in at least one axis.  So, I always position the prints with the long axis being the x-axis to avoid long travel in the y-axis.

I do plan on fixing the harness eventually, but for now, this print orientation approach has been working for me.

I bought my printer in mid March 2015, and flashed to lucs repetier host within a week.  Shortly after this, I began to loose X steps.  I assumed it was a software issue, and so turned down speeds, accelerations, and more - all to no avail.  Motors were not getting hot, nor were driver chips.  Finally, I found another user who posted that his X harness cable drags on the right side wall and handle of the printer.  He reported that he had traced the problem back to the stepper motor plug, and removing the right side was adequate to rectify his lost steps issue.  I removed the right side, and my printer lost LESS steps, but still made unusable prints (a few errors in a 12 hour print = no fun).  I fiddled with the plug, but this did not help.  I eventually disassembled the stepper motor completely, and spliced the wires directly in to the solder pads on the internal stepper motor board.  My next (14 hour) print was flawless.  I replaced the right side, and my lost steps immediately reappeared, more regularly than ever.  Right now, I can print with the side off, but not with it on.

This leads me to conclude that the actual wiring used in the harness is coming apart internally, and certain angles make the problem worse.  (It drags on the right side when the side is installed.)  I expect that I will have to refab the harness to the X axis stepper, using a higher grade of wire that can handle repeated motion.  A plastic cable guide would also be a big help, instead of letting the harness drag on the side and kink in the x axis mount.

Anyhow - if you are loosing steps, check this location.  Also, I would be curious to note if others are experiencing the same difficulty with printers in the stock configuration...