Mini IR Z probe Nightmare
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Hello all,
I have a large format cartesian printer that I inherited at work. I was not the one who built this printer, so I was more just going along with what was there. Last week on a print that was running overnight, I came in the next morning and the printer had stopped and had kicked the surge protector. When I started it back up the Z probe was broken, the IR receiver C1 was just gone. I ordered a new one and put it on yesterday and aside from the print bed having weird spikes ( the signal wire was getting interference) it ran fine, and started printing another overnight part. This morning I came in and the printer was ruunning, however it was printing air as it had an error that no tool was selected, and after investigation the IR probe was broken again C1 and D1 gone.
Now my question is, is this an issue from a power surge? is it just that the IR Probe is just not for my application? Would it be a bad Idea to switch to a bl touch? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
T -
post a picture of your hotend assembly with the ir probe
what temperature are you printing at?
is it in an enclosure?
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Here is where the probe is.
Running carbon filled abs, at 270c hotend, 110c build plate (doesn't get up to temp well, average around 95c-103c.
The printer is inside of a pop up canopy with walls because of size
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how hot does the metal plate get during printing that the ir sensor is attached to?
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@Veti The plate doesn't get that hot, the bored itself is mounted to a piece of poly tooling bored so there isn't a lot of heat transfer between the sensor and the plate.
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c1 is not supposed to be fitted. so thats not the problem.
d1 falling of is.
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@Veti here is a picture of the bored itself,
C1 was gone in both cases, this time the diode was gone. -
C1 is not populated so it won't have gone
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@jay_s_uk
It's Q1 that fell off, but C1 is also written close to the pads and can easily lead to confusion. -
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That was my mistake, Q1 is what was missing in both cases.
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@Tpmoses
The PCB to the right looks very toasty. The shrinktube of the large capacitor seems burned? Maybe you could use some silicone to seal the PCB against heat. (don't cover the optics)
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@o_lampe on the first board there was silicone on the board, that was the bored that went bad after a power surge. My main question is if you guys think I should keep with the IR bored or just cut my losses and buy a bl touch.
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@Tpmoses
I can't comment on the BLtouch, but talking about losses Add a USV to your printer or a big battery to avoid power-issues. -
The left-hand board also has the lens of D1 knocked off.
If you are crashing into something, a BLTouch is likely going to get banged up also.
What do you think is going on?
Can you run a camera and take a video of a print to see where things are going wrong? -
My Plan as of right now is to reorder the board, then mount it higher on the printer and recalibrate the target sensing distance. Then as I am waiting on it to be delivered I was going to go through the wiring with my meter. I unfortunately didn't build this printer, and the person who did no longer works here. He also didn't leave any specs for it so I am flying a little blind.
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the bottom of the mount looks like heat damage as well.
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@Tpmoses do you still get the lights flashing on the IR board on startup as expecting? If so, it suggests the chip on the IR board is fine and the power surge itself hasn't damaged the board. Most likely the damage has come from the sensor hitting something, so as the the others have said swapping to a BLTOUCH won't solve your issue.
I'd suggest going through your wiring, but maybe also look at the failed prints to see what went wrong with them. I'm guessing thrbdamage came from the board hitting the print? In which case, either there is a printing issue that has caused the print to lift up, or there is a config/slicing/hardware issue that has caused the nozzle to drop down.
