Extruder stepper on a new Orion stuttering

[[email protected]]

I just had an Orion printer delivered ten days ago. We have already been through 2kg of filament and it was part of my lab's open house. Over 600 visitors watched it build a limpet, t-rex and many octopi. Since we have had the machine there has been a periodic thump from the extruder. It looks like the filament may be slipping out of the gears that drive it or perhaps the stepper is losing steps against the back pressure of the filament. Here is a video of the problem...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-mw6Z4 ... e=youtu.be

What do I need to do to fix this? I would not care except that I believe it is limiting the speed of printing and causing some failures in long prints.

Thanks a lot.

-Adam

[Polygonhell]

Yes the stepper is skipping trying to feed the filament.
There are 3 reasons why this can happen

1. Mechanical resistance in the bowden system, this could be any number of things, from filament not feeding smoothly off the roll, over extruding causing increased back pressure at the nozzle, printing at too low a temperature, some thing jamming in the ezstruder/bowden.....
2. Too little current to the drivers, you can adjust the value in the firmware, but at some point if it's a mechanical issue, you'll just chew up the filament.
3. Drivers overheating, if the current is set too high, then the driver overheats and goes into a temporary failsafe before resuming, the easiest way to rule this out is to have a fan blow over drivers while printing, if it stops happening, it's the likely culprit

I would assume the 1, until you rule it out.

[[email protected]]

Thanks for the quick response. I am printing PLA at 195 and still getting the skips. The filament is feeding freely. I have no disassembled the Bowden tube to see about possible binding but will do that next. It is straight from the 'factory' so I am hoping there is not a binding issue.

Now sure what I would do about current...i'll see where that is speced in the driver. The the easyDriver stepper driver has a pot to turn, but I don't see anything obvious when I pop the front panel.

Sure wish it had worked flawlessly out of the box. Ah well. It has been way better than my thing-o-matic was.

-Adam

[PopolZ]

What's your printing speed?

[[email protected]]

The movie was made at 30mm/s. The results when printing at that speed with a layer height of .2 are not acceptable. I need a bunch of stuff right now, so we are printing at 20mm/s and getting useful results. Hopefully tomorrow when the rush is over I will be able to check the Bowden tube for sticking filament.

[Polygonhell]

I'd try 10C hotter not all PLA is created equal and I've had stuff that won't reliably print below as high as 230C.
If you have access to a thermocouple you should also check the actual temperature of the Hotend when at temperature.
I've had two hotends recently grossly over report temperature even with the correct thermistor setting in the firmware, it's easy enough to correct if this is the case.

[RAMTechRob]

I have the same exact problem, just not as bad. I'm at 195, and the prints are coming out nicely, but the noise is making me nervous. I will try bumping up the heat to 200 and see if it stops.

[[email protected]]

I have now dissembled the Bowden tube and it does not seem to be binding the filament at all. There is clearly a temperature issue because at 185 I can barely push PLA out the extruder by hand. I gradually worked up to 220 and it seems to flow relatively easily. I can now print at about 30mm/s but faster and there are still skips from the stepper. I think I need to bump up the stepper current. The docs for the RamBO say that it is a firmware change, but I don't see how to do it in Repetier. Anyone know how?

[PopolZ]

By looking at your video your stepper is OK as it stall only when the filament bounce back.
I have that problem when my hotend doesn't maintain its temperature. I usually print at 150mm/sec @ 215°C and sometimes for no reason the temp drops to 190-195°C then I get major filament skips.
At 195-200°C 40-50mm/sec is the best I can get.

[RAMTechRob]

I bumped up to 200 C and my problem stopped. Prints are coming up nicely too.

[printer999]

I am having this exact problem and have tried all of these. but its still doing the same thing, I normally print with pla but did a little abs then switched back to pla, A few prints later I had this problem start. I think some ABS is stuck in the hotend or something. How can I fix this?

[guanu]

if you look on the bottom of the machine, check if you have a blue dot next to the serial number.. if you do, try this.. get the firmware for the orion at https://github.com/seemecnc/Repetier-091-ORION (click download zip at the right).... extract the zip that downloads into a directory on your computer... then get the arduino IDE software from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software Load the repetier.ino file from the /repetier/ dir that was in the zip you downloaded for the firmware... this will load lots of tabs of files... click the tab for configuration.h and go to line 701 (the bottom left corner will give the line number the cursor is at)... this line will say

#define MOTOR_CURRENT {175,175,175,200,0} // Values 0-255 (RAMBO 135 = ~0.75A, 185 = ~1A STANDARD IS 175 XYZ AND 200 E)

what you want to do is change that line to say the following:

#define MOTOR_CURRENT {155,155,155,165,0} // Values 0-255 (RAMBO 135 = ~0.75A, 185 = ~1A KYSAN MOTOR CURRENT SETTINGS )

then connect your usb cable to the printer, go to tools -> board and select arduino mega 2560
then go to tools -> serial port and select the com port of the printer... after that, click upload (its the icon that looks like an arrow pointing right, next to the checkmark)

all your other settings should be in eeprom, so you wont have to re-adjust anything... this should help the torque..


NOTE: this is ONLY for machines with the blue dot next to the serial number... thoes have a different brand motor and we found the lower current increases torque and helps with the motors getting warmer

Guanu

[printer999]

it doesnt have the blue dot but I am still having this problem, I think It may be the hotend but Im not sure. Do you think I should just replace the hot end? ( I am printing something for a job and I dont really feel like waiting till next monday to get a tiny little piece of brass. If the hotend is the part thats jammed, and it looks like it may be, how can I clear it? Ive already taken the hotend out of the extruder.