Hey Guys!

I need some advice / thoughts. I bought a monoprice, and right out of the box, it hasn’t printed. I want to know what is wrong - seems to ‘home’ and get stuck in ‘homing’. I have a video of the symptom linked below… Maybe it arrived DOA? Maybe I just need to flash the onboard memory? I am a total newbie in the 3D world, and I am stumped with this. I figured I would link a video of my symptom and see who can offer me thoughts - maybe I return it? Maybe you know what I need to do to fix this so it can print? Here is the video (by the way you will see that the bed tape is scratched… I had since lowered the bed - that is not the issue here…): - YouTube

You can email me here with any thoughts but I am stumped!
GG

If you manually move the extruder to the right, does it at least move by itself towards the homing position? If so, your end stop switch might not be making contact, or is problematic in some other way and is not realizing it has nowhere else to go. Just some preliminary thoughts…

It definitely seems like your limit switch isn’t being triggered. There should be a thin piece of metal that bends towards a switch as your extruder head moves towards it’s limit. If this piece is missing / broken / bent / out of place, your motor doesn’t know where to stop & keeps trying to push until it finds the switch.

This should be an easy fix, presuming it’s not physically broken (the metal switch is a big fragile if handled incorrectly). Thoroughly inspect the side of the printer that the motor is getting ‘stuck’ on, and you should find what you’re looking for.

Post back if you need more help, or if you have success!

Does this happen every time? Does it make the same noise if you home the printer from the “Move” menu option? It is a bit hard to tell, but it actually seems the print head hits the X axis limit switch as it moves to the left and the clicking happens after that. It could be a firmware issue or a file that you are trying to print. Printer displays current firmware version on the screen right as you turn it on, to update it checkout MP Select Mini wiki. Also try printing a different gcode file from a different sdcard (the sd card that comes with the printer is of poor quality).

1 Like

I would contact monoprice. Can you manually move the machine around via the control knob?

Yes I most definitely can. This ONLY seems to happen when I initiate a print. Otherwise I can move the extruder all over with the knob, no problem. This only happens when I hit ‘print’ and the mechanism takes over.

Thanks so much for your thoughts. Yes, this ONLY happens when I initiate a print (when I hit ‘print’ and then the printer just ‘starts’), the extruder ‘homes’, but, then its like it keeps trying to travel down a path after hitting the end of the line at the left of the bed… like it hits the wall but keeps trying to go in that left direction. I actually tried both gcodes that came stock on the memchip of the printer. I DO have MP’s tech support number but so hard to reach on my schedule I thought I’d post my concerns here… Still, I may try to call them soon. I will also try to download a GCode from Thingiverse!! Thanks!! GG

Thank you!!! I ill have a look and will let you know. The thing is, I hadn’t really even messed with that part of the printer since unpackaging it so I imagine it should be OK but I will have a thorough look and see what’s what. I will let you know if that is the problem and if that gets fixed.

It sounds like one of your axes is not hitting the Home limit switch. I’m betting the bed is too high or one of the switches is disconnected. Try pressing them manually to see if the unit then begins to print