I work at a small University and we have an Innovation Lab with a number of 3D Printers. One of these printers is a MakerBot Replicator 2. I had it unplugged and when I went to plug it in again I noticed a burning smell and a little bit of smoke coming from the Interface area (the control panel on the front of the machine). I quickly turned it off. Once the small amount of smoke cleared (about 1 minute), I turned it back on and everything seemed okay until I tried to use the control pad. The control pad did not move the arrow up or down on the LCD screen. Therefore, I removed the Interface panel, and it did indeed have a burning smell. I actually had a spare interface panel that I swapped out, but I couldn’t get it to respond to any input either. Both interface panel’s will display text and play the tune when you turn the machine on, but the controls do not work at all. However, I can operate the machine using a USB cable connected to the computer. Any ideas on what might have happened? Might it need to have a new MightyBoard installed?
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Maybe you can visually inspect the cable from the interface to the main board and see if there’s something abnormal
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There was an issue a while back where a bad board would ruin both the interface and mighty board. The event would make the printer completely unresponsive. Since you can print via USB, I don’t think that is the case here. You most likely only need a new interface. But I recommend contacting Makerbot’s tech support to be on the safe side. But before you do that, when you put on the new interface, did you remember to put the washers on before the back plate?
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Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I’ll try some testing and see what happens. As to the washers, that was a good call. I actually did not remember to put the washers on, but the other interface I have is fully assembled from the factory (fully housed with backplate and all) and it too was unresponsive. I also swapped the cable to the Interface with one from another MakerBot that I have and it was the same result.The interface does not work on other MakerBot’s either. I’ll keep everyone posted on what ends up fixing the issue.
I know you may have checked it but what about the cable that connects the board to the interface. I had something similar happen on a wanhao 4x printer and it was only a 7 dollar computer cable
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maybe some stripped wires cause the problem. I suggest replacing the control panel with a new one.
