spectrum z510 software problems

[designanything3]

I would love to get a copy too if possible. I can give you my ftp info so we can share with other 510 users. It would be great to keep in contact with you both. It’s great to meet other 510 users. I would love to share info, material recipes etc and finishing processes that work well.

Jimmineycricket1@yahoo.com

[jan3dp]

Cheers Charles ! Splendid

Things have been busy, but when I have a mirror of your flash disc I will use time to get the 510 up to speed again

Sent you an email for the file transfer.

Jan

[CharlesRiverMkr]

It’s great to have some other 510 users to talk to. I might have to set up a new Wiki with recipe info. I’m having good success with homemade binder right now and hydroperm and am hoping to try a few new powder recipes.

I’ll try to image the boot drive today.

[designanything3]

That would be great. I just purchased some hydroperm and hydrostone. Would love to hear what is working. I also purchased melodextrin and some other things. I didn’t find a good source for pva powder as an option to try. What binder are you using?

[CharlesRiverMkr]

The binder I’m currently using is this:

Minus the potassium sulfate & proxel gxl as I didn’t have those ingredients at the time.

Distilled Water: 93.45% volume (3537 ml)’
**‘**Surfynol 465: 0.5% volume (18.92 ml)’
**‘**Glycerol: 6% volume (227.12 ml)’
**‘**Potassium Sulfate: 0.2% weight (7.5 mg)’
**'**Proxel GXL: 0.05% volume (1.89 ml)

It seems like the potassium sulfate is there as an accelerant for the plaster. The proxel GXL is an antimicrobial.

I purchased the surfynol (2,4,7,9-TETRAMETHYL-5-DECYNE-4,7-DIOL ET) from Sigma-Aldrich.

I have some dry clay on the way and I have some maltodextrin and PVA powder. I think my first attempt will be with sugar instead of PVA though as it’s cheaper and it only needs to hold together until it’s fired.

I got replacement printheads from here: https://www.discountinkllc.com/products/hp-11-black-print-head?variant=9816827653

They aren’t genuine HP heads but they seem to be working fine for now and they are certainly cheaper.

I’ve also been playing with trying to revive the heads that came in the machine but cleaning them in an ultrasonic cleaner and flushing some binder through them with a kit from ink owl (Printhead Repair Tool for HP 10, 11, 12, 84, 85 - InkOwl)

[CharlesRiverMkr]

I didn’t think it would be such a pain to image this drive, I don’t have much equipment around anymore for IDE drives.

The one computer I could plug it in to isn’t recognizing it correctly once it boots to linux.

I think I’ll try to grab an IDE->SATA adapter tonight to give a try.

[designanything3]

Was the surfynol a pain to order? I just tried to register but they want an existing sigma… Act.

[CharlesRiverMkr]

It wasn’t too difficult. I think I just had to set up a new account and give them my EIN. So, if you don’t have an EIN, they might not be too helpful. They also warned me that they wouldn’t be able to ship hazardous materials to my home address, luckily, the surfactant wasn’t hazardous.

I did also run a water/alcohol binder with a tiny bit of dishwashing soap in it, it seemed to work ok but I think the straight water binder works better with the hydroperm.

[designanything3]

Hey Jan

to to get rid of the diskette error you need to boot to the bios setup. I think it’s the delete key. It should say it on the screen during boot. Then to disable go to the boot options and go down to floppy drive and disable it. Then it won’t check for it any more and should boot past that.

[designanything3]

So I think I found a source for pva thats a bit cheaper… they want to have me order about 88 pounds cost is just under 10 delivered. It is 1788 grade and about 300 mesh they said

[DisFanJen]

Wow!

I finally found some people talking about the Z510.

Anyhoo, sorry to send this off on a bit of a tangent but as there’s already a captive audience of 510 users.

I’m trying to revive our school’s Z510 and have hit a stumbling block. It boots, and seems ok, I can send a job to it but then it randomly throws an overheat error on either head 2 or 3.

I’ve replaced the heads for both of these but no luck.

Not sure if there’s anything else I can do and there is zero budget for repairs (like I said, school, we got the thing when our budget was flush a few years ago but even then they bought it 2nd hand).

So any ideas, hacks, etc? I’d really like to get this going again.

[designanything3]

A few things to try and figure out the source of the problem… Old or contaminated binder can be a source of overheating heads. Flush the lines and leave bleached water in them overnight. Make sure the filters are clean and you can pull fluid easily through the lines. If it’s hard to pull that can cause heads to go out also.

Clean the shiz out of the pogo pins with alcohol and make sure the ribbon cable is seated well. Are you using oem heads or knockoff?

[CharlesRiverMkr]

My machine had lots of dried up binder in the lines. I pulled a lot of clean distilled water through until it ran mostly clear. I also ended up blowing the lines out with compressed air at the connector inside the printer. There was a lot of gunk.

[designanything3]

Yeah that makes sense then that they are clogging and overheating. I would let them sit a few days with bleach and really flush them out. Remember anything past the filter that is smaller than .5 microns will go through the printhead and could easily clog the heads.

[DisFanJen]

We have a full pack of heads from HP which I believe are oem right?

You’ll have to excuse any noob questions as I’m part of the IT dept and this has been passed to us as the head of DT who left about 1 1/2 year ago was the only one who knew about this unit. the DT dept just left it sitting there and now came to us and said ‘make it run’. Nice…

We do have some personal motivation to get it going though. We’re all into tabletop gaming in IT and would like to print out some of the OpenForge map tiles for game night.

[DisFanJen]

Thanks for the suggestions. A good clean out of the lines, etc. was our next ‘go to’ so I’m glad to get some confirmation that has a possibility to fix the problem.

As an aside, anyone know where we can get a head bleed kit (or if you can mcGuyver one together from an old print head)?

This is another thing that’s gone walkabout for no real reason (I mean what would anyone else want with it?).

[designanything3]

eBay for a bleed kit. I have the one with the bottle not the funnel. Instead of the syrynge to bleed the lines I made a tube with one of the pieces from the printhead for each color. Then hook up the tube to the syrynge.

[jan3dp]

Hi all In my 10 years with the 510 the following procedure have kept me running:

1.Always add binder fresh from fridge before print job.

2.Return excessive binder to container in fridge when printer will be passive for 2 days or more.

3.Have a mirror placed by the head cleaner unit, this way you can always see the heads surface and wipe them with a cloth soaked in bleach.

4.Always print parts in color, does not matter if you use colored binder on 123 head, cause the parts get so much more solid printing with all heads.

5.After holidays, fill tanks with strong bleach and hot tap water, and suck thru the system with syringe at the head valves.

if you follow these route, your machine will run 1000 hours a year

[Eromonic]

Hi,

I know the Z510 pretty well and I have the tool used to recap the septums (the part under the printheads that leak). For a school, I don’t charge for recapping. I charge five bucks per septum which is 20 total. The diaphragm and metal cap both get replaced. I also do a printhead service that takes HP 10 and HP 11 then cleans them internally. If you would like to know more about either process, let me know. I am somewhat connected to a limited number of parts. You never know what I might have on hand. Just ask me. I am limited however, to the Z310, Z310 plus, Z510 and Z810. Happy printing

David

[designanything3]

Hi David

that would be great. I have a few leaky septums. How would that work to get them replaced. Is it easy to get them out of the machine and send to you? What kind of parts do you have for the 510?