MakerBot Industries

This has been talked about before, but the extruder controller has a safety function that IF anytime the thermistor or the thermcouple go open circuit (AKA disconnected) the board shuts down the heater until the entire bot has been powered off and back on again. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. If you loose feedback any system it "runs away" and thus the heaters could burn up because they would be stuck on. As a tip-if you have the LCD control panel, it might show 24 which means it's really showing 1024 because it only has 3 digits. 1024 being a critical number because that means the 8 bit value is maxed and thus "locked out" until you fix the wiring and reset the entire bot by power cycling. If you ever see 1024 in replicator-g's control panel, then you know the circuit is locked out from a fault in the temperature sensor wiring.

So, what this means is check your wiring between the extruder controller and the heated platform. Many users are breaking this cable from flexing and this would cause the problem. They are available in the MakerBot store for about $8 and I would keep a spare and put one of the many cable connector printable objects to keep it from breaking again.
http://store.makerbot.com/thing-o-matic-abp-hbp-wire-harness.html

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10240
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12341
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16069

Another possibility to check is the connections between the heater board plug and the board itself. This plug is just top soldered to the traces, and it gets a fair amount of flexing. On one of the boards I've used one of the traces lifted and broke away so a connection was lost, causing the board to stop functioning. You can test continuity with cheap a meter that reads ohms or even just a battery/lightbulb setup. Just look carefully at the traces and test that there is continuity between each of the plug connections and the other end of the trace on the board. Note you need to test each of these in front of the surface mounted components on the bottom of the board. If a trace is broken you can try resoldering it, but in my case I added small wires to replace the traces, that seemed more likely to be reliable in the long term.

Also if you've changed software or firmware recently, you might try reverting to the earlier version, upgrading has been known to cause strange problems for some people who previously had stable setups.

Thanks for the posts (where's the "subscribe" setting? I didn't get any emails notifying me that you've replied).

As for the 1024 error, I saw posts about that, but I think my problem is something else because the HBP actually warms up and cools down as expected, it just doesn't register that the temp changes in ReplicatorG. Which leads to another issue, I have to bypass the warm up in the G-code because the G-code calls for a platform temp of 110. But since ReplicatorG always sees the platform as 99-103 (cold, hot, whatever, it's always somewhere in that range) it waits and waits and never starts the build (because it thinks the platform never reached 110). But the platform has reached 110, it just isn't registering.

After a print completes my nozzle temp returns to cool, and so does my platform temp. But while it's cool to the touch it still says it's at 99-103 in ReplicatorG.

I have the G4 interface kit but I haven't soldered it up yet. I'll try to put that together tonight and see what it gives me for a reading.

Oh, and I put a strain relief on my X limit switch and on my HBP wiring because I could see from the first few prints that flex was going to be a problem. So I'm thinking that's not the issue. But I'll remove the strain relief and double check the wiring just to be safe. But again, if there was an issue with the wiring wouldn't I either have runaway heat (super hot) or no heat at all? I have normally functioning heat, just not a normally functioning readout.

Not sure I understand this correctly? Some questions-

-Your HBP heats up and cools down as expected, but in order to print you have to warm it up manually. How are you doing that? In the control panel?
-Once it reaches 100 does it cycle the heater off and on to hold that temp? (you would know that by seeing the red led go on and off)
-you say it can reach 110. I'm assuming you know this because you measured the temp with some external method, right?

Seems to me that there are two possibilities. If it's hardware, then the temperature sensor in the heater board is not working, if you're getting a constant reading of around 99-103, that could be caused by it being 'stuck' at a fixed resistance rather than varying with the temp of the board. That would sound to me like an issue with the board itself, but it theoretically could also be in the wiring, i.e. a frayed connection or short of some kind. On the board you'd be looking at the traces for pins 1, 2 and 3, 1 is the ground input, 2 is the +5 input, and 3 is the analog output, which should be varying in voltage as the temp changes. If it isn't varying, that's your problem.

Or it could be software, i.e. the voltage at pin 3 is varying, but that number isn't getting read correctly. That could be corrupted firmware or some issue with RepG.

If I had to guess I'd suspect the h/w on board itself, but anything's possible.

More likely, this is a communications error with rep-g the board is heating correctly, but then again, I doubt that because the firmware is what controls the M6 wait for toolhead and HBP to reach temp.

Basically, this is most likely a wiring problem, and could be a failure at the HBP circuit board which is known to fail from mechanical stress at the connector. It only took one of my boards to fail before they all got epoxy added over the solder joints to prevent a break there where the copper literally had come off the board on the failed one.