well good morning YouTube just to wrap up the ex cable issue I was having number one
the swapping of the cable taking this end out and the the other end there and reversing him
seemed to do the trick I've been printing now for a couple of weeks with no issues and I just
wanted to show you the symptoms so if you have the printer on and this blue LED up here doesn't
come on and if you turn on the heater and that red LED doesn't come on that's a sign that this
cable needs to be reseeded turn the printer on here and you can see this blue power LED comes
on right away and when I have the problem with the cable that wasn't coming on I did end up
ordering a replacement from Taipei machines it was $35 which actually I don't think it's too
bad because just the raw ribbon cable I think when I purchased some for my Raspberry Pi was
on the order of like $25 if I remember right and then these have these positive retention
connectors on the end that click in there a lot of the flat flex cable just goes into a
connector on the circuit board and then you flip down a holder to hold the cable in these have
the actual physical connector attached to the cable I don't know what what these are called
you know what I'm not sure of is if this connector is just attached to the cable and that's the end
of the cable itself or if the cable terminates inside of here and then has its own connections
but I figure it's probably worth getting the spare cable just in case took about a a couple
of days for this to show up and I figure if I'm down and unable to print at some point having a
spare on hand would be handy thing to have and let's see the million cycle number that I found
is on type-a machines they say they've tested this cable to a million cycles although as I showed you
a million cycles even printing apart like that just a simple little cube doesn't take much if
you could hit a million cycles just printing four little cubes a day 1 inch tall and in about a year
and a half that's a million cycles I found one other flex cable manufacturer the specs on the
cable itself they they listed at least a hundred million cycles but even a hundred million if you
start printing parts that have that level of detail so yeah even a small part like that
has a lot of movements in a even a single layer guessing I'm way over a hundred million cycles
because I tend to print parts like that in fact today I'll be printing twelve parts similar to
that this morning and I might print another 12 in the afternoons and I guess one of the
advantages of reversing the cable is that you're changing the direction that it's supporting its
weight so when you flip it around it's now going to be bending up that way so yeah it's
probably a good idea maybe every six months or so just disconnect that connector and swap the
cable ends around just to equalize the force so let me show you the I'll turn up the extruder
here and you can see there's the extruder power light right there so that's your clue that the
extruder is getting power and you'll notice this red light will be on the extruders now heating
up pretty soon the fan will start so there's the extruder cooling fan and then pretty shortly the
red LED will start to flash and that's showing the pulse width modulation I'm going up to 250
C I'm printing ABS plastic so it's got to go pretty high yeah there we go so now it's into
pulse width modulation and let me try to extrude a little filament yeah there we go so got some
plastic coming out now yeah so there's no other lights on there that was one thing I wanted to
check I didn't know if there was a light for the stepper motor driving the extruder right here I
guess that one you can see if it's running so then I'll shut it off and there it goes so yeah
I've got to get this ready get the bed heated up and print some more parts today but so swapping
that around you just take this end out you take this other end out here and you put this end over
here and this end over there and they only go in one one way you can't miss them up if you know
what these connectors are what they're called or if these are something that could be made for a
reasonable price they figure $35 isn't bad but if I could repair that cable for $10 versus buying
a new one that would be worth it if it's going to cost me $30 to buy all the parts and I have
to buy a $200 tool to put those connectors on I guess I'll just buy a few extra premade cables
or if there's a way if you know if there's a way to remove these connectors and then just replace
the cable what I might do is I'll wait till this cable completely fails imagine at some point it's
gonna break you know if one of the connector tracks inside the ribbon cable breaks that's
the end of the cable so at that point I might try tearing one of these apart and seeing if
I can figure out what's going on in there but for now this cable works I've got a spare so
I'm gonna just leave well enough alone I think so yeah if you have any background with these ribbon
cables and these little end connectors for those this is the first time I've seen a connector like
that on a flat flex cable so if you know what these are called or if they're if they're user
serviceable post up in the comment section down below and as always thanks for watching