Extruder E0 doesn't work anymore

Hello guys

Im hoping to have a little help here, i printed some parts this morning for a auto bed leveling system (not important) then i turned off the system and took everything apart to installe the system.

Then after i re--assambled the prusa i3 printer, everything seemed to work just fine, but the extruder wouldn't work, not forward or reverse.

I tried heating the system to check if it was some kind of error detection system that prevented me from moving it. still no result.

Then i took the E0 motor and connected to the x-axis plug, and the motor worked just fine. after i took the stepper driver and installed on the the x-axis plug and the motor and stepper driver worked just fine too.

When i connect the x-axis motor to E0 nothing happened not with a working stepper driver either.

What could be my problem i have narrowed it down to the ramps board or the sainsmart mega controller.

Anyone had any similair problems with their ramps 1.4 kits?

Hopefully someone can help me

PLEASE! im desperate

.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2015 03:31PM by Noddy.

I had the same issue once. The Slic3r settings had been reset so that it had no extruder listed in the printer settings. The "G-Code Flavor" was set to No Extruder.

It turns out I just experienced the same problem. Replaced the driver, after looking through the slicer3r software and not finding any obvious problems? However, I was in slicer working with the settings when it quit. I deleted and re-installed slicer but that didn't fix it either? I was looking through the pin outs but not sure that's a problem. I'm pretty sure it's a software problem but so far I've not been able to locate it.I have tried several different things with slicer but noting makes the extruder work?

Anyone with some good ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Basically what i did;
1. the extruder was working fine till i got into slicer and was working with the retraction settings
2. replaced driver....did not fix the problem
3. tried to reload slicer to correct the problem but on help
4 searched the configuration.h file also because I was messing with the grid point leveling just to see how it worked, thought I could have done something to it?.
5. as a side bar I experienced several crazy problems due to replacing the driver board. It seems that the one i installed was not very good , though brand new from Folger company. Also, the ramps board was flaky that i purchased from them? I put my Sainsmart parts back in and re-adjusted the voltages and things finally settled down and all is good but THE EXTRUDER issue.
The one thing that was interesting was the symptoms that a bad driver board will cause, like causing the stepper to chatter or hum or move erratically, even though the voltage was set correctly. It made me sweat for a while till I got it strengthened out.

Rick

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/2015 01:07AM by nealre.

Only thing I can think of is to check if the hotend temperature is higher than 170 degrees, below that the extruder protection kicks in. Also check if the stepper driver gets very hot, if it is re-adjust the current to the motor by adjusting the potmeter.

You could try turning off the extruder protection temporarily in the firmware to rule it out.

Completely turning off the power, rebooting the PC, unplugging the USB cable and power up everything and connecting the USB and try again.

You can also try the E1 port and see if that one works. If it does, I'd suspect the RAMPS board or maybe the micro controllers io pins maybe gone bad. You can also check if the solder joints are the culprit. Plugging and removing the steppersticks may damage the solder and/or tracks on the PCB. I'd take a multimeter and put it into low resistance/conductivity test mode and see if all the pins to the stepper stick actually make contact.