Trying to get ahead

Last night after work I changed and threw on my work boots to go out and weed whack the yard.  I wanted to get the roughly 90 minute task off my list of to dos for the weekend.  The standing water that has inundated the property for a good portion of the last month or two has finally dried up, allowing me to complete the job without being coated in mud. I didn’t return inside to eat dinner until almost 7:30.

After eating instead of playing Classic WoW, which I have done most nights this week, I instead turned my attention to the one I3 Mega that I had partially disassembled on a table in the hobby room.  My hope was to remove the X axis stepper motor that appeared to be problematic and then replace it with one of the brand new spares I bought a long time ago but never used.

Getting the motor off was ridiculous.  AnyCubic obviously never intended for this repair to be something most users would do else it would have not been so tedious.  After a ton of futzing I finally got the motor off.  The weird thing was it seemed to turn normally, both by hand and when hooked up to the controller wire harness.  To make things more frustrating, the brand new motor I tried would not spin when connected to the wire harness, it only buzzed.

I partially reassembled the printer enough that I could again try to move the X axis under power.  It did move back and forth when power was applied however when unplugged the print head carriage would stick repeatedly, requiring great force to move it which is not how it should be.  I have two other identical printers on the bench that I could compare against.

I turned off the light frustrated and came to the conclusion that it is probably not worth any further effort.  I can get a brand new printer of the same model for $200 if I wanted to.  However what I think I want to do is keep the troubled unit for spare parts and buy another Prusa (a preassembled one  this time) once I have earned enough money in my 3D store to pay for it.  I LOVE the way the MK3S prints and upgrading my print farm to include more of them in the future would be great.

This morning I was back at the med center donating more blood and urine.  We are doing another heavy metal test to see if the high thallium level is up, down or the same.  They also are doing some additional testosterone testing and some other stuff which I don’t recall.  My medical procedures and testing of the last year have been so numerous it’s all one blur.

This weekend has various tasks on the agenda but for the next few months most Sunday afternoons will be consumed by Eagles football which starts this weekend against the Redskins.  Unfortunately that means part of my Saturday needs to be consumed by the annual headache of getting Directv to reactivate my Sunday Ticket only subscription.  I don’t think I have ever been able to complete the task in under an hour of phone time.