Hello all. I sent the following to Folgertech support this morning, but I figured I'd post it here as well in the event that anyone else might have some insight.
I bought an FT-6 with the dual extruders and 7” Touch Screen.
I mechanically assembled my FT-6 without any problems. I took my time over the course of 3 days, and carefully followed the instructions. But once I powered on, I’ve had a cascade of problems with the electronics.
Problem 1:
The orange pi does nothing. No LED indicator light comes on, and the LCD Touch screen does nothing (see image ‘OrangePiPowered.jpg’). The only noticeable change is that the Orange Pi board itself does get warm.
I flashed the included SD card with the operating system here, following the instructions in the zip file carefully:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=128t0sgLWXDaFyKeETpMfc118OLR8OUus
I tried this with both WindowsDiskImager on a PC and Etcher on a Mac.
I also flashed a different 8Gb SD card as well, to rule out the possibility that the included card was bad.
Based on another forum post, I also tried flashing it with the image found as part of this article, to no effect:
https://www.instructables.com/id/Octoprint-Setup-on-OrangePiLite/
Using a multimeter, I verified that the board power connector was outputting 5 volts.
Also, the LED indicator lights for the power supply and MakerBase board are lit (see images ‘PowerSupply.jpg’ and ‘Makerbase.jpg’).
My assessment is that the Orange Pi board is defective.
Problem 2:
When I couldn’t get the orange pi to work, I decided to try replacing it with a Raspberry Pi3 I already had. This RPi already had Octopi set up correct, as I had been using it to control a different printer.
When I attached the LCD screen to the HDMI port and USB port of the RPi and powered it up from an external power supply, the LCD screen did power up, but the only thing it showed was vertical scan lines.
I tried reseating the HDMI cable and right angle connector. I also tried 2 other HDMI cables I had. All had the same result. I verified that the RPi had booted correctly because I could access it by it’s IP address from my laptop.
My assessment is that the LCD touchscreen is also defective.
Problem 3;
Desperate to get my new printer to actually do something, I figured I could just run it from the RPi Octopi using the web interface. However, Octopi could not establish a USB connection to the Makerbase board at any baud rate. The Makerbase does blink a blue LED when Octopi is trying to connect, but that’s all. I tried 3 different USB cables with the same result. Each time getting the error message: "device reports readiness to read but returned no data”.
I then attempted to connect to the Makerbase board directly from my laptop over USB through Simplify3D and got the same result. Again, I tried 3 different USB cables.
My assessment is that there is no firmware loaded onto the Makerbase board, or the board is simply defective. I’ve not attempted to load the firmware because no instructions have been provided on how to do so, so I wanted to verify that I did indeed need to load the firmware before attempting to do so.
I would very much like for these problems to be addressed as quickly as possible, because as of right now, I have a giant, $800 brick taking up space in my office. I’d really like to get this thing working.
Please advise.
