Extruder stepper losing steps

[JheregJAB]

Hello again!

To shorten a longer story, I have recently had to do a good bit of maintenance on my makerspace's Rostock Max. I thought I had managed to solve all of it's issues (they were many) but now that I have started printing, I have heard the extruder missing steps.

We have an EZstruder on this machine, but it isn't top mounted. The print starts out fine, but then the stepper motor starts missing steps, which you can see and hear pretty easily. Eventually, the stepper wears a groove into the filament and then the extruder can't push the filament at all. Basically, it acts like there is too much resistance to extrude filament. This doesn't make much sense to me, however, because it always starts out fine and I can push plastic through the hot end by hand without much issue.

I've seen some people on these forums installing fans to cool the stepper controllers on their RAMBos, and that is the direction I am currently leaning. Do you think I'm on the right path?

[Eaglezsoar]

Hello again!

To shorten a longer story, I have recently had to do a good bit of maintenance on my makerspace's Rostock Max. I thought I had managed to solve all of it's issues (they were many) but now that I have started printing, I have heard the extruder missing steps.

We have an EZstruder on this machine, but it isn't top mounted. The print starts out fine, but then the stepper motor starts missing steps, which you can see and hear pretty easily. Eventually, the stepper wears a groove into the filament and then the extruder can't push the filament at all. Basically, it acts like there is too much resistance to extrude filament. This doesn't make much sense to me, however, because it always starts out fine and I can push plastic through the hot end by hand without much issue.

I've seen some people on these forums installing fans to cool the stepper controllers on their RAMBos, and that is the direction I am currently leaning. Do you think I'm on the right path?

Somehow your message got hidden from everyone, sorry it took so long for someone to reply. I hope that you have this fixed by now but you are definitely going down the right path with your idea of cooling the Rambo card.
Whatever you can do to get a fan in there blowing on the driver chips will most likely solve your extruder skipping steps. Some put one or even two 40mm fans in the opening behind the LCD and wire them directly to the 12V line.

[JheregJAB]

Yes, simply printing with the door open made a big difference. I'll get a fan wired eventually. I am also planning to add a peek fan, which our machine does not currently have.

[Eaglezsoar]

Yes, simply printing with the door open made a big difference. I'll get a fan wired eventually. I am also planning to add a peek fan, which our machine does not currently have.

I am surprised that you have been printing without a peek fan. Usually the Peek part of the hotend will fail eventually depending on the temps that you are using.
I would get that Peek fan as soon as possible. Adding the fan to blow on the Rambo should make a big difference and you will be able to close the door!