Is Apollo working?

Is Apollo working (the printer on the far left)? Last couple times I tried it, it would not extrude. Problem reports were submitted, but I never saw it red tagged.

@GoodHabits and @Trey1422 might have insight here?

Apollow was clogged a couple weeks ago, it then had thermal overrun hope this helps!

I am not sure if that means it is supposed to working now or not. However, I am at the space now, I turned it on and it started smoking, So I shut it off.

I assumed you guys were working on it since no one was using it!

I’m new here and have not yet had an opportunity to take the requisite intro course, but I have a fair bit of experience maintaining Prusas. I’d be glad to see if I can help today or possibly sometime next week, just not sure what the process would be for getting approved to do that

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Apollo is fixed. The smoke was I guess plastic from the clog. I cleaned the hotend and there’s no thermal runaway anymore

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Thank you Enoch!

Thank you!

I had some problems today getting it to print without sticking to the hot end. Tried running first layer calibration to see if I could make it better, but had middling results. :confused:
Is there a different hotend somewhere or a good way of cleaning the current one?

Was able to swap over to Hermes and start the print successfully.

Interesting. I believe the hot end was replaced not long after my fix stopped working, and this sounds more like a cleaning or calibration issue than a heating issue to me…

We’re discouraging wire brushes, but you could try cleaning it by raising the z axis and turning up the nozzle temperature (settings → temperature → nozzle) to 275. Most of the plastic on/in it will melt off.

Also good to try cleaning the bed with rubbing alcohol. A lot of first layer adhesion issues are due to hand oils on the bed

I’ll run it up to 275 when I check on my print on a bit and see if I can get it working properly.

Thanks! When you did the first layer calibration, did you move it closer to the bed or further from the bed? It feels counter-intuitive, but on a clean bed if the filament it’s sticking to to the nozzle instead of the bed it usually means the nozzle is too far from the bed and the plastic isn’t getting properly pressed down.

This is a much better calibration print than the one installed on the printer. It’ll give you a lot more time to tell what’s going on: https://www.printables.com/model/251587-stress-free-first-layer-calibration-in-less-than-5

When you did the first layer calibration, did you move it closer to the bed or further from the bed?

Both… I have a bit of experience with older TAZes and such, so had a vague recollection of how to get it going.

This is a much better calibration print than the one installed on the printer.

Sweet, will try that!

Got it calibrated fairly well on the Smooth plate. I was using the Satin plate on Hermes at time of writing, so wasn’t able to adjust that one.

Side note - we could probably do with some new Smooth plates, the current ones are a bit worn.