E0 - Extruder Motor Getting No Current/Signal

Hey All,

Wondering if the collective hive mind has any suggestions for an issue I have going on.

Quick Note on my setup: Anet A8 Modified Printer (General frame upgrades with a TitanAero Extrusion head) with Ramps 1.4 board on a ArduinoMega2650, DRV8825 drivers, running Skynet3D 2.4 or something of the sort, it's a Marlin based clone for Anet A8's.

Long story short - My Printer was working beautifully until a few months ago, one day while printing some smaller items the E0 motor controller/driver wasn't spinning or moving the extrude motor, thus meaning I wasn't getting any filament to be squeezed through the hot end, resulting in failed prints to do severe under extrusion.


Here's what I've done in troubleshoot testing:


1. Swapped Extruder Motors - Same Issue no motor movement

2. Tested Extruder motor on another motor driver, worked on all X, Y, Z1 & Z2 motor drivers on the Ramps board.

3. Put new known working motor driver in the E0 slot - still no motor movement

4. Rang out all connections/cables from board, to connectors with a multi-meter - everything check out no broken wires/connections.

5. Tried a whole knew motor cable from E0 to extrude motor - nada doesn't do anything still.

6. Tried that same motor cable on the other motor drivers while connected to the extruder motor - motor worked fined.


At this point i've eliminated some common issues in my mind, it's neither the motor or the connection to the board. So I dove deeper:


7. I now swap out the Ramps 1.4 Board for a new Ramps 1.4 Board - and the issue persists, still no movement from extruder motor.

8. If not the Ramps board, then the Arduino possibly? I swap out the Arduino for a new one, at this point Ive basically swapped the electronics outs completely - still the extruder motor does not move when connected to E0!

9. Making sure i'm not insane, I hook the old Arduino + old Ramps boards back up and repeat all these tests again - yea nothing out of E0 like before.


So I turn to you guys... what could test/try to get this back to working properly?

This is what i've yet to try:


1. Check the firmware and insure E0 is correctly called out to the right output pins of the Arduino - however I don't see why all of a sudden a parameter like this would just change magically without me re-flashing firmware?

2. Change the firmware and set it to use E1 instead of E0 and check to see if it functions - however this is a short term fix as I eventually want a second hotend on my printer for dual printing, so having just 1 hotend on my board is not ideal.


Any suggestions are welcomed! I'm hoping i do not have to try a completely different controller than the ramps boards, there's gotta be a cheaper solution i'm just overlooking!

You said that the E1 is currently (software) swapped doing the work as E0.

The only thing I did not hear was that you replaced the DRV8825 Driver PCB on the Ramps 1.4 board for E0, as the DRV8825 Driver would be the first thing to go bad.

Thanks Roberts_Clif.

Correction - I did not switch the E0 and E1 hot end designation in my firmware as of that post, it was something I still had not tried. I also verified it wasn't the Driver as i swapped out the E0 driver with a working driver and still nothing, noted in troubleshoot step #3.

However, I did totally overlook a major but simple thing - cold extrusion checking in marlin based firmware. Basically a fail safe/ security parameter making sure the hot end is hot before extruding. So basically troubleshooting cold meant of course, no motor movement. I preheated the hot end to PLA temp and tested the motor - WALA IT WORKS!

Simple but easy thing to overlook! Gearing up for a test print to see if I have any other issues after all the poking around and board swapping.

Thanks again for the thoughtful insight!

I misunderstood the "Put new known working motor driver " as a stepper motor instead of a DRV8825 Driver PCB.

I was going to tell you that you can not extruder cold if I would have seen that you had you had replaced the DRV8825 Driver PCB.

I fell for that myself and tested forever trying to get the extruder motor to turn, then finally when it did spin it was spinning backwards so rewired to correct the problem.
Rewired so not to make the firmware non-standard with the other 3DP12 Printers, some how they sent me a wrong stepper motor.

So you got it working, now give yourself a pat on the back.

Hi all I have the same problem I swapped out the mega 2560 and fitted a new Ramps 1.4 fitted all new A4988 drivers and tuned them checked out cable connections tried new cable tried the extruder cable on the z drive and the motor works fine swapped the A4988 onto the Z drive and it worked fine checked all voltages on the A4988 and cant find a problem, I set the minimum temperature to 105 degrees and disabled the prevent cold extrude settings in configuration.h but still no movement on any extruders. When I try to move an extruder I hear a faint click and the motor LOCKS but stops there even when the nozel is at 245 degrees.
Can someone please help

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2023 02:42PM by Nigel Kelly.