We have delivered another 150 shields between Hudson Headwaters and Community Hospice this past weekend as well as another 15 earlier last week to the VA medical clinic in Glens Falls. This increases our total in the wild to 530 deployed so far. We are still on-track for the production of about 1000 shields total with the funds collected between the Go Fund Me and other donations. The printers have had some issues and needed some downtime.

Totals

  • 30: Warren Center
  • 30: Washington Center
  • 30: The Pines
  • 30: Glens Falls Center
  • 30: Granville Center
  • 30: Fort Hudson Center
  • 10: Slate Valley Center
  • 10: Holdbrook Adult Home
  • 25: High Peaks Hospice
  • 54: Warren County EMS
  • 60: Washington County EMS
  • 20: Warren Washington Albany ARC
  • 100: Hudson Headwaters
  • 50: Community Hospice
  • 15: Albany Stratton VA Medical Center: Glens Falls Clinic
  • 6: Others

Printer Issues

Each of the three printers have had some sort of issue in the last week. At this point they have been printing nearly constantly for the last month, so this is expected.

The Duplicator i3 Plus has had a loose heat-break, which would slowly leak overcooked plastic over the heater block and drip onto the nozzle, causing problems and on occasion, layer shifts. The hot end was broken down, cleaned and re-assembled with the addition of a new silicon sock.

The Prusa Mk2.5s had its heat bed stop heating entirely. Noticed this before work one morning and lost hours of printing. Turned out that the screws holding the terminal wires to the heat bed were loose. I imagine that was causing the print bed to not work consistently before I noticed it. I replaced the PETG cable strain relief clamp with the ABS one needed long term for higher temp prints and also re-soldered a terminal ring on a shoddy wire before tightening things up.

I still need to re-print the PETG carriage parts I used for the MMU2 upgrade because they have already semi-warped when I printed ABS recently. The probe is not level now, but I seem to be getting consistent auto leveling which is surprising. I will use the high temp life left in thee carriage parts to print their ABS replacements.

The Ender3 would not level this morning so it has had the day off. There seems to be a wire that is somewhat broken depending on how the extruder cable bundle is flexing. This makes the BL Touch stop responding in specific probe locations.  I will need to take the zip ties off and see whats wrong with the wires tonight. Depending on how the wires broke I may need to add some strain relief. There will also likely be a repaired solder joint.