Bang. Lulzbot Mini stops printing

 I still run two Lulzbot Minis, 1.04. They're durable and dependable.

Except for two weeks ago.

The BANG

I was making some custom Magic the Gathering coasters for a friend's birthday party. The last one to print was the Swamp icon, except...I was down to 1 meter of black filament. I thought I would be clever and do a two-tone. If you haven't read my earlier material, I covered doing it here.

When I switched over from gray to black, it went smoothly. I tried resuming the print from the Octoprint web page - and it choked. The nozzle crashed down onto the printing plate and I aborted. [Note to self: resume it from Cura next time?]

Future prints, it would run into an error during startup.

It would touch the first washer (front left), TRY to touch the second washer (front right) - but fail. At this point it would cancel the job.

Possible solutions:

1. Nozzle is old and needs replacing - but it was making a connection on the first one
2. Wire for the bed was broken - apparently the wire can be broken inside its casing
3. The board was somehow corrupted and needed to be reflashed
4. Bed was out of alignment - seemed reasonable from the crash
5. Toolhead was out of alignment - also reasonable from crash

Nozzle is an easy but time-consuming replacement - I'd come back to that if needed.

Replacing the wire was unfamiliar to me, but I would do it if necessary.

Likewise, the brains (the board) - reflashing it is something I had never done.

And then I found this page - adjusting the "x" axis, which is the vertical. (Fixes the toolhead being out of alignment.)

https://ohai.lulzbot.com/project/leveling-x-axis/maintenance-repairs/

It took some effort to get a good measurement, but it was easy enough to adjust.

Best of all it might even fix my 1.03 that's been sitting in a box for several years. Woo-hoo!

Adding Octoprint to Home Assistant

I still 3D print - home automation took over some of my time. It's still relevant to 3D printing though.

The useful links to my 3D Printing-related Home Assistant posts

Home Assistant Controlling Octoprint through MQTT - Chapter 1 

https://jimmernesshaas.blogspot.com/2021/01/home-assistant-controlling-octoprint.html

Home Assistant Controlling Octoprint through MQTT - Chapter 2 

https://jimmernesshaas.blogspot.com/2021/02/home-assistant-controlling-octoprint.html

Adding controls for the smart plug - also shows the dashboard

https://jimmernesshaas.blogspot.com/2021/03/adding-in-kasa-smart-kp-303-3-plug.html

The benefits are nice - I can turn on the two printers, start the connection from Octoprint, preheat the nozzle, extrude, retract...my printers don't have LCD screens or manual controls.

The costs are not that much - a Raspberry Pi 3+ for Home Assistant, a 2.5 Amp plug for the Pi, and the Kasa Smart Plug if you go that route. Mostly time to get into it.