Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

at the risk of asking anymore questions, and getting back answers that only further intensify my state of being, I will state my problem and then once again clear my eeprom and start over bc that's all i know do to i guess, and I am still having ridiculous problems with this machine...

I had Finally gotten to the first print, or so I thought, last nite before quitting. the script 4 I ran needs to be lower and I tried saving the new configuration.h, with the host disabled, and the eeprom turned off and then updated, many different +.5 values, and nothing would lower my center convex concave height... so i tried to print anyways just to say i finnaly printed something for F sake. i noticed it only got up to like 185 (when i had previously done my PID updates) and it was moving like it wanted to print a 1inch cube, but nothing was coming out, so once again frustrated, i gave up for the night. today i get home from work, again, ready to change the world with my printer, and now the Z axis starts bogging out, so i emergency stop. now i am noticing that when i raise the extruder by hand, x and y still roll smoothly, but when i move the z axis it then boggs, becomes loaded by the feed motor and begins to drive it, thus the choppy bogging motions, and belt grindings, yah!

it was moving smoothly before and while i test printed, besides no plastic coming out... guess i get to try again, bc i cant seem to "outsmart" this thing! what a bunch of time wasted, and i really haven't learned anything from this process bc i don't know whats casuing these issues. this process is really detouring me from getting the other handful of kits i was goin to fill this shop up with here soon...

WOW!

I read your post about 10 times and I still cant see how the "feed motor" can physically affect the axis motors.

I am sure that the 2 issues are completely separate.

1) are you using PLA or ABS ? 185 is a bit low for ABS, so I would up the temp on the hot end this would make the plastic more "liquid" and not let the extruder motor work so hard

2) The "z" axis is probably hooking up on the belts - Check your alignment.

** PROTIP **

Try to state your problem with out all the emotional back-story, you will get more responses.

Also

** DOUBLE PROTIP **

Try to make a video of your issue and include it in your post

Most of the PLA I print with will barely move at 185. There are three varieties of PLA, each with its own heat range, and some of it needs 225.

I usually move the print head to some convenient location and then feed the stuff through by hand at different temperatures until I find the one temperature where it requires the least pressure. I used to try doing entire prints at different temperatures, but that takes exponentially longer. The same process can be used to find the right temperature for ABS.

Because PLA is susceptible to melt creep, I don't recommend it if you don't have any experience with 3D printers. You can figure it out but it'll take longer, and you already have enough to sort out. ABS is easier to work with.

I suspect you have your feed motor plugged into the 2nd Z connector instead of the extruder connector, which means those two motors are connected in parallel. That would match your symptoms.

A classic stepper motor trick is to electrically connect two (or more) motors (like wires to like wires), then have fun turning one motor and watching the other motor(s) match every move. No outside power required...the motor you're turning by hand is acting as a generator.

If you do not re-adjust the three end stop screws after each change to the printer radius, you will NEVER, EVER see a change.

FOLLOW. THE. INSTRUCTIONS.

g.

thanks eric, now that's solved and its not feeding... I can assure you I had re-adjusted and saved many times, it seems 1,2,and3 are very true, tho script 4 needs to be a 1mm or 1.5 lower but I couldn't get it to move either direction upon adjusting the printer radius as it suggested, in the eeprom, after carfully reading about the turning off the eeprom. I will just try again... ill get it sooner or later...

When you are significantly out of calibration such as the first time you put your printer together, the center position (script 4) changes a little because you are initially making your 3 tower positions equal and on the same plane. Once they are equal, Script 4 does not move in height, when you change your printer radius/delta radius it is the positions at the circumference that change in height (scripts 1-3). If you want your center position (script 4) to change in height you adjust your max height values.

Example: Your hotend is 1mm above the bed at the center (script 4), but it is 2mm high at the towers (scripts 1-3). If you increase your radius by 50 (instead of the .5 recommended in the manual), you could run script 4 and still be 1mm above the bed, but if you ran scripts 1-3 the Z height at the circumference will have changed so much you'd drive your hotend into the bed at the base of the towers (likely along with lots of other bad things).

The way you get the endstop screws set up is to do a "four-point calibration," but it's more like a 12-point calibration. You get the X, Y, and Z towers as close to perfect as you can. Then, you test the center and adjust the printer height in the firmware. That first pass gets everything "sort of" correct. Then you do it all over again, and it gets a little closer, although most of the error was taken out in the first step and this is just to tighten it down a bit. The third pass gets it closer still to ideal. When you're done with that, you do the printer radius thing on one of the towers and that will help the print head track true over the surface instead of dipping or raising as it moves out from the center.

To save time, in those scripts, you can use F5000 to set the speed. I did that with a depth gauge that's accurate to 1/1000 of an inch and the gauge always indicated within half of a thousandth of an inch of where it was supposed to go, even though 5000 is "fast." That's more than good enough and at least 20x more accurate than you'll get with the paper method. The biggest pain point for me in this process was having to wait for the thing to home and move the head down to where it was supposed to be, and it got a lot less frustrating once I trusted my stepper motors to do their jobs.

626Pilot wrote:The way you get the endstop screws set up is to do a "four-point calibration," but it's more like a 12-point calibration. You get the X, Y, and Z towers as close to perfect as you can. Then, you test the center and adjust the printer height in the firmware. That first pass gets everything "sort of" correct. Then you do it all over again, and it gets a little closer, although most of the error was taken out in the first step and this is just to tighten it down a bit. The third pass gets it closer still to ideal. When you're done with that, you do the printer radius thing on one of the towers and that will help the print head track true over the surface instead of dipping or raising as it moves out from the center.

To save time, in those scripts, you can use F5000 to set the speed. I did that with a depth gauge that's accurate to 1/1000 of an inch and the gauge always indicated within half of a thousandth of an inch of where it was supposed to go, even though 5000 is "fast." That's more than good enough and at least 20x more accurate than you'll get with the paper method. The biggest pain point for me in this process was having to wait for the thing to home and move the head down to where it was supposed to be, and it got a lot less frustrating once I trusted my stepper motors to do their jobs.

May I ask what gauge you used and how you attached it? Would a Horrible Freight dial indicator work for this?

ok so now you have me second guessing if its all square so I checked everything over, made some minor adjustments and have reset my height and 1,2,3,4 are good. try to print the cube and it seems to move appropriately but doesn't extrude any plastic, the motor isn't moving at all, its plugged into the second to last 4-pin on the Rambo. does that have to do with the print parameters or will eeprom tell me about something about why the motor isn't moving? whats a normal feedrate for a stock machine?

this thing still isn't spitting out any plastic, it gets hot enough, blah blah. I cringe when i sit next to it, its really messing up my game! and im still gonna come home from work again tomorrow to a printer that doesn't print... I don't know why it wont feed, it was plugged into z in series at first, but the board is fine, z works normal, and feed is plugged into the proper channel and now doesn't feed material... I swear once I get this silly thing printing i'll surley leave ur forum alone until I have something to show... or at least you might hear me say its a wonderful machine, and its spits out nice prints once you figure it out and it is running flawlessly. if i ever make it run that smoothly, im curious? but i know why i bought it and what its meant to do, and im so close. (FOUR LETTER WORD!)

It gets up to and holds strong at 240, nothing smoking or anything, heatbed was also steady at 60, the feed motor isn't pushing and filament, this looks nothing like a cube, ha... but I am serious that I want this thing to work... my speed in the slic3r printer setting is 60 like it shows. what am I doin? seems im pretty close, but still miles away...

Double check your wiring for the extruder in the cable, and the plug. Make sure the pins are clicked into place in the plug.

put a zip tie on the stepper shaft of the extruder that is protruding out of the ez assembly.

In host you should be able to connect to the printer, and step with manual controls.

If your heat seems to be working fine, then you don't need to have it HOT to test the stepper, just troubleshoot, and step in manual control.

It looks like your x y and z axis are all working, so try swapping the extruder connector on the RAMBo into one of those slots and see if you can get the zip tie moving.

Or put the Z axis stepper on E0 connector and use manual controls to see if you can get it to move up or down...CAREFULLY!!!! don't go past the end limits

I have the regular extruder setup, not the EZ, requardless, when I unplugged my X,Y,and Z from Rambo and plugged the feed stepper into the x it worked fine, so motor is not messed up, my board isn't messed up either, and I don't know how to manually move the feed stepper with it plugged into it E0 spot, I bet is starts with E0 something... the wires are correct, well might or might not be inverted I guess, depending, but it doesn't move when I try to print. i bet its something with the code, where do i find what controls the feed stepper? ive looked thruout those other files in the REPETIER.H when it talks about the extruder, but i don't know what that SH!T means, bc there is no instruction to change any of that and I haven't, but that's not to say theres something that is out of place. what other reasons could there be that i am this close and it wont extrude my filament to the heatbed in a normal manner? john, i cant be the only one that has had this many problems? what is the deal with this?

ok great so the stepper is ok

look at this picture:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByTdMD ... sp=sharing

Open Repetier Host, go to "manual control" tab.

look down there is a "extruder" section with two buttons that have arrows.. up and down.

These feed or retract the filiment, disconnect your bowden tube from the hot end so your not feeding filament.

and press these buttons. if the drive that's connected to E0 is not moving. you have a problem with the board or maybe something got accidentally changed in the firmware for RAMBo and was uploaded to the board.

to be sure it is not the software, download a fresh copy and dont edit it at all. just upload it and test extruder again.

if the board is bad call SeeMeCNC

ya that's what these arrows were for huh? id hit them a couple times without anything happening prior to me running this check that you instructed me to do, and I neve knew what they did bc nothing happened... so when I check, nothing happened, I opened the zip and extracted to a new folder and opened that repetier.ino into arduino and uploaded to get the same thing, so e0 is not functioning on the board? it seems that the motor isn't getting the signal is all I can make of it... so its the board or my wiring, and when hooked to the x, y, or z it acts as it should, soo that eliminates my wiring, but once again, if this wasn't my first printer, I might not have to ask so many silly questions...

EvilFz1 wrote:ya that's what these arrows were for huh? id hit them a couple times without anything happening prior to me running this check that you instructed me to do, and I neve knew what they did bc nothing happened... so when I check, nothing happened, I opened the zip and extracted to a new folder and opened that repetier.ino into arduino and uploaded to get the same thing, so e0 is not functioning on the board? it seems that the motor isn't getting the signal is all I can make of it... so its the board or my wiring, and when hooked to the x, y, or z it acts as it should, soo that eliminates my wiring, but once again, if this wasn't my first printer, I might not have to ask so many silly questions...

yup so your wiring is good, looks like a board issue. call support they will instruct you further.

there has to be a g-code I can manually input to control the motor besides pressing the button right? I just want to further eliminate that aspect before I have to call them again, wouldn't want to waste anybody's time, if its NOT the board I mean... I really just wanted to print some stuff like a month ago... this has completely thrown me off, ive stopped designing and other stuff bc this process has been consuming me and now im here, with a notion of a potential board issue, that was raining red flags from the beginning... I gotta be able to type in a g-code, or locate my issue in repetier.ino somewhere?

EvilFz1 wrote:there has to be a g-code I can manually input to control the motor besides pressing the button right? I just want to further eliminate that aspect before I have to call them again, wouldn't want to waste anybody's time, if its NOT the board I mean... I really just wanted to print some stuff like a month ago... this has completely thrown me off, ive stopped designing and other stuff bc this process has been consuming me and now im here, with a notion of a potential board issue, that was raining red flags from the beginning... I gotta be able to type in a g-code, or locate my issue in repetier.ino somewhere?

when i got my kit, i ran into the same issue except with the z axis driver. IF the motor spins when plugged into another port, and you have verified that you didnt change the arduino program. The problem is ON THE BOARD, tear it out, send it back, get a new one, and get printing.

definitely a bad E0 on the board, john was kind enough to help me switch the settings of E0 to E1 and it now feeds! you don't know how Fu King happy I am! I just cant wait to get printing and order s'more stuff. you guys may not like me now, but I will assure you, this is how most of my first impressions end, lol, and I promise that you will eventually love me, so to speak, by the lengths I am willing to go to push this OS movement! thru OS 3d printers, OS power generators and OS vehicles I will soon educate a vast amount of willing people, and altho I am obviously still earning myself, I will serve the "greater good" with all of this knowledge I am accumulating, and I do appreciate the help that I have found here, thankyou!