My hot-end stopped working yesterday in the middle of a print.
I broke out the multimeter and checked the voltage output from the octopus board, which showed 24v. All's well there.
Checked the voltage at the heater cartridge, 0V. Definitely a problem.
Checked at the cartridge to PCB connector, 0V. Checked the 14pin input cable connector on the back of the PCB, again 0v.
Started opening up the cable chain and following the heater cartridge wires all the way along down.
Found the wire broken neatly in half, about halfway down the length of the Y axis cable chain.
The wire is from the stuff that came with the Voronkits.com kit. I believe it is a ptfe coated awg20 copper wire. I'm at 1600 total hours on the Voron. Replacement wiring is cheap enough that i'm going to replace all of them. If one broke at the 1600 hour mark, there is a good chance there are more of them at a similar level of fatigue.
I'm going to give this kit a try:
Sorry to hear you are having cable problems. In the history of Vorons there have been a lot of drag chain related wire failures, many due to using the wrong types of wire in the chains. Three basic problems seem to be at the core - the wire size and stranding, the insulation type, and the routing/anchoring of the wires. These days it has boiled down to two recommended types of insulation - FEP and PTFE. FEP is the preferred type, and PTFE the second choice, perhaps due to cost as FEP is not only very good but often lower in cost. PTFE is premium insulation, and having worked with PTFE cables in the past it does tend to cold flow if not restrained properly.
Make sure there are no cable ties or other constraints inside the chains, and the wires are anchored near the ends of the chains with enough free play so they never get tight. If the chains have rough spots inside they should probably be replaced with better chains. Igus chains are often recommended.
The stranding and flexibility of the wire is also important, flexible wire has many more but smaller strands. Even the history of the wire can be a factor, if it was yanked or suffered from handling during manufacture or installation and a weak spot was created.
Another approach is to go to a bus oriented cabling arrangement so only a very few conductors are needed, and/or go to umbilical style wiring which is less hard on the cables. CanBus or USB are both being used for this. Prusa uses pretty standard wires in the umbilicals and they hold up quite well. Cable chains are a more difficult environment.
Another option is to go with the newer cable setups that use breakout boards on both ends, and the cable has a large plug on both ends so it is much easier to change. This does require cable chains that open to lay in the wires.
Since you were already using PTFE wire one wonders why there was a failure, but there are still many things that could cause it, from too-large strands to an imperfection in the cable chain to a flaw in the wire to insufficient free play in the cable or something else. Cable chain wires do need to be replaced periodically but 1600 hours seems pretty low.
Replacing all of the wires together is the right choice. The product you linked looks decent, though I have no data on it. The price seems low, the kit I bought to make a cable harness was more costly, and that isn't even a finished product.
On a completely different note, the Steve Builds utoob channel recently had a 10k subscriber giveaway. I was on the road at the time and never win anything of note anyway, but my son in law won the LDO Voron V0.2 kit and printed parts to go with it. I gave him his first 3D printer some time back, and this will be his fourth printer and first Voron. He's pretty excited. A lot of people (me included) think the V0.2 is too small, but then it turns out to be their most used printer. It is quick to heat and print and big enough for a lot of things. Big printers are good for big stuff, but they are not as good for small things and quick turnarounds.
We gave away our Artillery X1 and have a Voron 2.4 350 kit on the shelf. We ordered a workbench to replace the small printer table and when that comes in we will have room for the three printers on it downstairs - the Prusa XL, MK3 and Voron 2.4 350. I've prepared a new Octoprint for the MK3 using a Pi02W. It is tiny, and I'm going to mount it right on the Prusa frame when the interconnect cable gets here. So all my printers will be networked. One problem we had with the Artillery X1 was due to cycling the plug bringing in files to print. Don't wear out your printer plugging in and out.
I have a couple of Voron kits to build, but I haven't started any of them yet. Also have a Bear frame for one of the Prusas. Too many interesting projects!
