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I was in the middle of a print and all of a sudden I heard a sound that sounded like something falling of my table and hitting the floor and my X stepper stopped working! I immediately stopped by print so a not to waste filament and prevent the nozzle from driving into the glass like it was starting to do since one motor wasn't working. I hope it's not the RAMBO Board and is just the stepper, I have extra Kysan steppers to replace it. So at this moment the only thing I can do is plug another stepper into the X spot to see if it's the stepper motor. If if is the driver can I set up my repetier firmware to use the extra extruder spot??? Hope so. Any advice is welcome and wanted! Thanks guys!

Well, it was the stepper motor, built this in October 2013, wouldn't think the motors would go so fast! I only have 18 days 3 hours 50 minutes of printing time on it according to the firmware. Oh well, at least it wasn't something too major and I had some Kysan steppers just sitting around!

Made by humans.

AndThenSome09 wrote:Well, it was the stepper motor, built this in October 2013, wouldn't think the motors would go so fast! I only have 18 days 3 hours 50 minutes of printing time on it according to the firmware. Oh well, at least it wasn't something too major and I had some Kysan steppers just sitting around!

I have never had a stepper go bad that fast either but there is always a first. You may want to check the current going to it which is controlled by the firmware. It's possible that the current is set
too high. I doubt that is the case, but it is something I would want to check.

How did you verify it was the stepper and not a wiring or driver problem?

cheers,
Michael

Well I knew something was wrong with one of the steppers as it would make a clunking sound that started about 2 or 3 weeks ago but I was not able to figure out which one it was, when the stepper stopped driving the axis I was pretty sure it was a dead stepper but to make sure I took one of my extra Kysan steppers and wired it up for the RAMBO since my Max kit came with a ton of extra connectors. I removed the bad stepper and plugged in the Kysan then connected to RH so I could use the manual controls to see if it was moving or not, the new Kysan was moving so it wasn't the driver that had gone bad. Then I plugged in the original stepper again, connected to RH and manually moved the axises and sure enough the original stepper did not move one bit. Also if you grabbed the shaft of the original stepper and turned it you could feel what felt like broken pieces inside that you were moving against.

But I'll tell you what, that stepper must have been a defect from the beginning because once the new motor was installed and the belt tensioned to where it was before my machine moved with what seemed to be much more precise movements (hard to explain but I could just tell the movements were much crisper) and once I printed all of my layers were perfect! I was getting what I thought were good prints before but there would always be a few layers that were a little out of whack but I could never find anything wrong or binding or anything so I just figured that was the way it was. I am very glad the stepper died so that forced me to install a new one and reveal the true machine within! LOL Now I am getting absolutely perfect prints that are very accurate dimensionally and it all thanks to a blown motor!

I think a lot of people run the belts with too much tension, the bearings in the stepper aren't rated for a lot of side load, and with the long belts it's very easy to put a lot of load on them, so it doesn't surprise me that you see failures.

Well this was my first 3d printer, building my second now, but there wasn't any documentation about the "right" amount of tension to put on the belts, it was just tension the belt until you think it is good lol. So it wouldn't surprise me if I do have too much tension on the belts, they are all almost to the top of the slot for the tensioner bolt, how much should the tensioner be pulled up??

Mine are about half way, but it depends how tight you could get the belt initially.
There just isn't a good way to describe it, usually belts are tensioned based on deflection in the middle for some constant force, but it's kind of hard to describe, other than perhaps it's more than you would normally expect because of the length.