1 Topic by pcm81

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Topic: SD3 Y axis skips

My Y axis started to skip allot. I hear the same "click click click" sound as when stepper motor is slipping due to excessive torque.

Checked the Y axis bearings, rods, belts and everything seems normal, not too tight not too loose.

I read that on SD3 the Y motor is basically in an overdrive from stock config (too high voltage, current).

Anyhow, i am thinking of replacing my Y axis motor, any suggestions which new one to get? The stock unit from SD is $19 and if it lasts another year i'd be happy, just wondering if there is a better (its ok if more expansive) option to go with? Would like an easy mod...

Any other things i should check to diagnose the skipping?
I moved the plate down so hot end is not in contact with  the plate and it still skips.
I took the small y-axis belt off the motor, so it is no longer coupled with the rod in the back and skipping stopped.

Thanks ahead

2 Reply by bnj

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

You may have a problem with your stepper...  The motor is very hard to destroy,  and a year old is nothing for that kind of motors.

With the indication you are saying,  i wouldcheck the stepper first.  Do you have a fan on your board?  Or heatsink on the steppers?

It looks like a burnt stepper to me.

SD3, early 2013. Silicon 200W 8x8 heater bed, lawsy carriage on 8 mm hardened chrome shafts, E3D V6 and lawsy MK5 extruder, ATX 350 W PSU, Custom build plywood enclosure, azteeg x5 mini smothie firmware, with vikki 2 screen, fishing line conversion and pulley conversion, M5 Z rod. Calling it Gran'ma, going strong ! <3

3 Reply by pcm81

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

bnj wrote:

You may have a problem with your stepper...  The motor is very hard to destroy,  and a year old is nothing for that kind of motors.

With the indication you are saying,  i wouldcheck the stepper first.  Do you have a fan on your board?  Or heatsink on the steppers?

It looks like a burnt stepper to me.

Using a stock setup, so no fan or heatsink on stepper driver. Tried to measure voltage on the drivers, like is shown on SD website but getting nothing out of all drivers; do they have to actually be moving when i do the voltage measurement?

4 Reply by pcm81

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

A little further troubleshooting reveals the following:

Y axis motor skips when it encounters any extra torque. If i try to stop the carriage from moving it take probably 10x more force to stop it in X axis than in Y axis...

Any one knows where i can buy the driver for Y motor?

Does it make more sense to just upgrade to RAMPs than replace the driver?
I've heard that power circuitry on RAMPS is not in that good of the shape; any other options?

5 Reply by wardjr

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

Rumba

Printit Industries Model 8.10 fully enclosed CoreXY, Chamber heat
3-SD3's & a Workbench all fully enclosed, RH-Slic3r Win7pro, E3D V6, Volcano & Cyclops Hot End
SSR/500W AC Heated Glass Bed, Linear bearings on SS rods. Direct Drive Y-axis, BulldogXL
Thanks to all for your contributions

wardjr's Website

6 Reply by bnj

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

Well, I heard the Rumba is just the big bazooka of 3d printing. This is the card to go with definitely.

Now, I'm running a sanguinololu, with a Atmega 644, and didn't felt the urge yet to upgrade it. But as many electronic components out there : cooling is the main thing.

Everything carrying intensity needs to be refreshed. Your stepper is fried, that's for sure. It acts the same when I fry an ESC on one of my quadcopter. Motor just spins, but when you load it, it stall.

If I were you, I'll just order a good stepper, for 10 dollars online, and put it on the extruder (a micro stepper 32 is better), then swap the extruder stepper to your Y stepper.

Then, if you want to keep it DIY, you do like me : you drill the plate that protects your main bord with many holes, and zip tie a big fan on it. This will refresh your steppers, and give them more life.

Next step will be to give them a heatsink, and ultimately upgrading the board to a Ramp or a Rumba, that will give you more expanding possibilities like a Gcode extruder fan, LCD control,  and many other things.

SD3, early 2013. Silicon 200W 8x8 heater bed, lawsy carriage on 8 mm hardened chrome shafts, E3D V6 and lawsy MK5 extruder, ATX 350 W PSU, Custom build plywood enclosure, azteeg x5 mini smothie firmware, with vikki 2 screen, fishing line conversion and pulley conversion, M5 Z rod. Calling it Gran'ma, going strong ! <3

7 Reply by pcm81

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

bnj wrote:

Well, I heard the Rumba is just the big bazooka of 3d printing. This is the card to go with definitely.

Now, I'm running a sanguinololu, with a Atmega 644, and didn't felt the urge yet to upgrade it. But as many electronic components out there : cooling is the main thing.

Everything carrying intensity needs to be refreshed. Your stepper is fried, that's for sure. It acts the same when I fry an ESC on one of my quadcopter. Motor just spins, but when you load it, it stall.

If I were you, I'll just order a good stepper, for 10 dollars online, and put it on the extruder (a micro stepper 32 is better), then swap the extruder stepper to your Y stepper.

Then, if you want to keep it DIY, you do like me : you drill the plate that protects your main bord with many holes, and zip tie a big fan on it. This will refresh your steppers, and give them more life.

Next step will be to give them a heatsink, and ultimately upgrading the board to a Ramp or a Rumba, that will give you more expanding possibilities like a Gcode extruder fan, LCD control,  and many other things.

You gave me a good idea to go along with my fresh plan.

I always wanted to go dual extruders and since i have an all metal extruder+hotend sitting on the shelf i am going to stick that on the carriage, put the extruder motor in y motor location and i am going to replace main board with RUMBA. This was always the long term plan, but now the schedule has been expedited.

Thanks for extruder / Y motor swap idea.

8 Reply by ronsii

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

If you haven't tuned the 'pot' for adjusting the voltage out to the stepper motor this could cause the lack of torque if it is not set right.

9 Reply by pcm81 (edited by pcm81 2014-05-06 02:05:26)

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

ronsii wrote:

If you haven't tuned the 'pot' for adjusting the voltage out to the stepper motor this could cause the lack of torque if it is not set right.

Have not adjusted the pot; however SD3 worked well for the last year...

What are "the best" stepper motors i can use with RUMBA controller? I pretty-much decided to move to RUMBA (dual extruders upgrade will come in the future) and want to upgrade steppers along the way.

Thanks

10 Reply by pcm81

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

The Y stepper driver was at 0.508V instead of recommended 0.52V adjusted to o.518V.

Will test tomorrow.

Any bets on if this was the only problem or if my motor is indeed shot.

make your bets people.

11 Reply by wardjr

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

I think you will find that with a good PSU and the Rumba.  Your motors will perform better and be fairly adequate.  If you order the Rumba with the 1/32 drivers you can choose via switch to run at 1/16 or 1/32 for each driver.  Also you can run a separate PSU for the bed heater.  Over all it is well worth the money and extremely robust.  I won't go into details but I have done things to my Rumba that certainly would have killed a lessor board.

Printit Industries Model 8.10 fully enclosed CoreXY, Chamber heat
3-SD3's & a Workbench all fully enclosed, RH-Slic3r Win7pro, E3D V6, Volcano & Cyclops Hot End
SSR/500W AC Heated Glass Bed, Linear bearings on SS rods. Direct Drive Y-axis, BulldogXL
Thanks to all for your contributions

wardjr's Website

12 Reply by pcm81

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

pcm81 wrote:

The Y stepper driver was at 0.508V instead of recommended 0.52V adjusted to o.518V.

Will test tomorrow.

Any bets on if this was the only problem or if my motor is indeed shot.

make your bets people.


Just checked the "stopping force" on Y axis after the stepper driver voltage adjustment to 0.518V from 0.508V. The Y axis still skips with much less resistance than is needed to stop X axis. Tried by hand, so no exact load characteristics... I'd guess 5 to 10 times less force needed for Y stepper than is needed to stop x stepper.

13 Reply by wardjr

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

I would adjust that VREF by feel and see if you can get better results.  You seem to have a good feel for force produced so don't get too hung up on exact voltages.

Printit Industries Model 8.10 fully enclosed CoreXY, Chamber heat
3-SD3's & a Workbench all fully enclosed, RH-Slic3r Win7pro, E3D V6, Volcano & Cyclops Hot End
SSR/500W AC Heated Glass Bed, Linear bearings on SS rods. Direct Drive Y-axis, BulldogXL
Thanks to all for your contributions

wardjr's Website

14 Reply by pcm81

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

Quick update.
At 0.6V VREF the y driver stops after about 50mm of head travel, so I am guessing 0.6v is over the top for the driver.
0.55v seems to work, but now i need to recalibrate the printer; the print-head "floats" from one y path to the next; as if it moves in positive direction more than in negative.
On second thought recalibrating the printer probably wont fix it; if it was as simple as linear cal issue then y paths would be longer/shorter than intended; but in reality when head moves in positive y direction it moves further that it returns back moving in negative direction.

15 Reply by ronsii

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

Missing steps in one direction is pretty common with the Y axis, usually it is because the two side bearings are binding because of mismatched belt tensions and the added force of pulling filament.

16 Reply by pcm81

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

ronsii wrote:

Missing steps in one direction is pretty common with the Y axis, usually it is because the two side bearings are binding because of mismatched belt tensions and the added force of pulling filament.

Thanks for the advice. Will check belt tension later today when i get back home from work.
Last time i had skipping like that was due to extruder power cable hitting one of the Y belts. that is not the case this time.

17 Reply by ronsii

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

Yeah that will do it too smile usually the binding from the belts is because the carriage is getting it's angle changed with one end moving more than the other and even though the stock bearings SD uses are self aligning they don't align very good with small angle changes, sometime a sharp tap to the side of the bearings will 'align' them, also make sure the y carriage is perpendicular to the x axis when adjusting the belts... ie don't just tension one belt without making sure the back pulleys are loose. There are some good posts on here on how to properly tension the belts, as long as you follow one of these you should be good.

18 Reply by pcm81

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

Does any one know waht stepper motors are used on SD3?
Nema 17 1.8 degree 1.7Amp or what?
Especially interested in y axis.

Thanks ahead.

19 Reply by mdrVB6

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Re: SD3 Y axis skips

Do you still have the stock carriages on your machine?  After maybe 200 hours on the machine, mine was skipping in the Y axis too, sometimes quite badly.  I did every belt adjustment technique in the book with no good results.  A lot of the electronics adjustment are beyond my current level, so I was really hoping it was not that.  I ended up printing the lawsy carriages and I have not had a bit of skip since!  (knock on wood).  It just seems like the stock carriages are not robust and are prone to binding.

Another thing to note: almost every time I have had skip, I have found hairspray on the rods.  Clean them frequently.  It helps to lower the bed to the bottom before applying hairspray if you go that route.

SD4 w/ RUMBA, E3D Volcano, all bearings, glass bed