Yesterday my printer just stops wanting to heat the bed up. I try a couple things, finding my printer will heat the bed when all the way forward, but not at the back. So, I’m thinking a short or maybe a bad solder join that might be loose after 100’s of print hours heat + momentum might have jostled a wire loose.
So today I pull the printer apart and see the strangest thing, the red wire has almost been completely sawed in half, there’s even a fine powder of dust in it. There’s no noticeable melting if it were a cable overheat (luckily), but it appears that the cable was gradually cut by the friction of the cable against the body of the printer. Super dangerous, lucky I didn’t electrocute myself or have it start a fire.
Going to replace the wire with some spare 12 gauge (~2mm thick) I have left over from a project. Wanted to replace the whole thing, but no one’s selling the replacement for an Ender V3 or compatible in Canada it seems. Can only find standard Enders 3’s which mean I’d have to re-run a bunch of cables and go without the bed alignment screws (one of the best features of the V3). Easier to just run a new cable for the single broken one.
Crazy how it just sliced through the wire from normal use like that, should consider either expanding the diameter of the hole that the hotbed cable goes through or adding some kind of rubber or plastic part attached to the cable that would reduce friction by moving with the cable between it and the case.
I guess I’ll have to design something to protect it myself, probably in TPU 95a or 85a so it has some give.
Considering it was inside the body of the printer when I found it, that would be a seriously tiny mouse. Also a pretty stupid mouse considering all the food in the house that’s way easier to get to than my printers.
There’s also all that dust and an obvious rubbing pattern on the case in the same location. It’s definitely friction burn. Cut was too clean and limited to the area where the cable touched the body, the photo’s after I pulled the wire out, adjusted the wires and blew out all the copper dust to see what I was working with.
I mean this printer ran nearly 24/7 for nearly 6 months, somethings gotta give eventually. It’s a workhorse absolutely fell in love with it, and glad it was fairly simple to fix with a simple soldering iron and some spare quality wire.
My repair job worked btw, simple replacement of the cables. Couldn’t find a replacement V3 style hotbed anywhere except Creality’s US website that appears to offer shipping to the USA, the USA, or the USA. Only options I can seem to find up here are for the old Ender 3 style which lacks the additional pressure sensor cable and the alignment screws. I’m sure they’d work, but I’ve been too spoiled with the KE’s significantly easier alignment I don’t want to go back.
I would suggest future designs perhaps making this hole just a little larger and perhaps some kind of sliding plastic part between the cable and the body so if it does move it doesn’t rub the sensitive bits.
