Urgently need fix to meet deadline for University final year project

Hi guys,

I'm a final year product design student form Ireland and I am mid way through the prototyping stage of my main design project and i have a submission due next week. My extruder motor suddenly stopped working yesterday. I played around with it for a while and then changed the pins on my board (ramps 1.4) so that the extruder as using e1 instead of e0. This fixed the problem but today it stopped working again. I replaced the stepper driver and it worked for a while but then went back to not working.

Could it be an issue with the potentiometers on the drivers ?

I would be very grateful if you guys could reply as soon as possible as it is very urgent.

Kev

Can i also add that there is a very slight whine when i try and extrude and that i have tested the motor and confirmed it is working

Change the motor, it looks like its burning the drivers which means one of the coils is grounded. Use a multimeter and measure resistance in both coils and compare to other motors.

I don't know if this is the case. When I sapped the cables for the extruder and the x axis the extruder motor ran fine through the x terminal but the x axis motor gave the slight whine when running through the extruder terminal

The whine starts when you have your driver turned up too high. This in turn overheats your driver. When your driver overheats, it will shut off. Turn your trimpot down and add a fan to your board. If you don't have a heat sink, add one.

THansk you both of you for the replies. Could I ask what causes this kingrahl and is it normal for it to happen to motor and driver that were previously working fine

Could you be more specific in your question?

Turning the potentiometer too high causes this. If you're trying to get more power than it can handle.

How long was it previously working fine? Were you able to print for long periods of time prior to this?

Does someone else have access to it that they may have adjusted it?

I had just recently installed a new replacement board and it ran fine for a few test and short prints. is it normal for the potentiometer to be adjusted in this case

I've tried turning the driver down and up. The whine will increase slightly and the motor will make some slight vibration but there is no turning of the gears

With the power off and motor unplugged, how hard is it to turn your motor gear while feeding filament through? Your idler may be pushing against it too tight. Too much resistance (binding) can keep your motor from turning.

I've had the idler removed while running these test so I don't think its because of any resistance. Any other ideas?

Do you have everything else off the motor also? Just the motor sitting on the table?
Have you tried another motor by itself on the same driver?

Disassemble the motor and take a look at bearings an rotor shaft , also check wear in the bearing housing. If the motor has been under stress for a while shaft could bend, bearings wear out or damage the coils.

Check the pin connectors both at board and motor (if equipped with) I have had some problems before with a faulty cable.

>>INCOMING WALL OF TEXT<<

Try connecting the motor to another motor using the same color wires. Then spin one motor really fast. The other one should either copy or mirror its behavior. Then repeat the test, but swap each motor's jobs. If the motors both behave the same, then they should both be able to turn each other with the same amount of force and they both work as intended. However, if both motors are hard to turn, then try disconecting them, the one that is harder to turn is SHORT CIRCUIT. If niether of these are the case, then try delibrately shorting the motors by connecting each coil's pins together (my 2 coils are the first two pins and the last two pins). If shorting each coil makes it harder to turn, then the motor works. If it doesnt change, or only one coil effects the motors ability to turn, then the motor is OPEN CIRCUIT. Fixing this will require taking the motor apart to see if any wires are broken off inside. This troubleshooting method is basically making the motors act as generators. If you cant find a replacement, look inside a flatbed scanner and grab the stepper assembly inside. That is what my printer uses for the extruder. Gives awesome resolution, and I just added .5mm to the retraction to negate gear slack. Hope this helps and best of luck on your project!!

Just to add, my first haunch was also towards a broken motor. Do the test that darkyoshi is proposing.

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