I had some setbacks, but I am making progress. The new print head arrived and if you own a Printrbot and you don't have the v2 Alu head, get one. This is a much nicer design and on a totally unrelated not to this project I can now print NinjaFlex!

Last week I received the new print head, installed it and started doing some test prints. The printer was printing a little "louder" than usual. I know know this was due to the Y-axis belt being a little loose. the backlash on Y-axis change is a lot louder if the belt is not nice and tight.

Now this is where I freely admit there are somethings with my home shop setup that are not ideal. 1) I have the printer setup in our living room, which doubles as desk for my wife and me as well as for our oldest kid. The printer lives up on the mantle over a never used fireplace. and on the hearth I have a large Rubbermaid full of spools of filament and other boxes next to that.

I was getting our little one ready for his nap in the other room when I heard the crash. My heart sank, my stomach turned and I sprinted down the hall... there is was, my beautiful printer, upside down on the floor, leaning against the Rubbermaid container, a long trail of filament going back up to the spool. I gingerly lifted it back up, inspecting it, fighting back tears.

Much to my surprise it physically looked fine. I plugged it all back in, but alas it would not talk to the RasPi OctoPrint server. I was leaving in a few hours and so left it to sit and tried to not let thoughts of it ruin my weekend. Over the week I played with it some more, got it to work for a few min, then nothing. Finally I ordered a replacement board from Printrbot. I kept playing with it though and found I could get it working while direct connected to my PC, but only with a different USB cable. I have since gotten it working with the RasPi again, but occasionally I have to reboot everything to get them all to talk. I have not lost anything mid print though. We will see if I decide to replace the board when it arrives.

I was also, finally, able to get a print done with the new transparent filament. I printed a new wall bracket and printing at 210 C and 30 mm/s it worked perfectly.

Oh, yes, don't ask me why I did not have anything in place to stop it from shimmying itself off the mantel, call it a mental lapse on my part. I have since fixed that situation as well as tightened up everything on my printer. It is printing even better than before, hopefully it stays that way.