The heat bed! Since last time, we were able to fix the extruder, but we found that the heat bed was it’s own separate problem, temperature not getting past 68 Celsius. We decided to order new thermistors (the thermistors are used to monitor the change in temperature on the bed). We tested the bed with an infrared thermometer gun and saw that it was indeed getting past the 68 Celsius and concluded that there must be something wrong with the thermistor.

0414161217I replaced the old thermistor last week. When I opened the back of the heat bed to reveal it, I saw that it was incased in a plastic tube. At first I put the new thermistor inside that same plastic tube, reattached it, then tried heating the bed again. It still would not get hot enough. I noticed before though that the plastic tube covering the thermistor allowed for heat dissipation to be much quicker because of the air trapped inside. I decided to remove the tube and place the thermistor directly on the bottom of the heat bed and then taped it with Kapton tape (more heat resistant than other tapes). With better direct contact it was able to reach the desired 85 degrees! Unfortunately though, it does take quite a while to heat up to that temperature, at least 10 minutes. But it works! We are excited about that.

Next, since we tested the natural grinded filament, we decided to instead test the new black recycled filament that we had extruded. The diameter of this filament was smaller than the natural filament though, not allowing for enough grip for the head to pull it through (although it did work for the first few layers).

Next up for the TAZ is to optimize the diameter of the recycled filament and get a good print done!