I am attempting to build a Prusa i3 Replikeo printer and am completely new to the 3D printing world. I am having trouble with my axis. When I try to home it, it makes this scratching noise and looks to be skipping. I have the belt on tight that connects the stepper motor to the extruder on the x-axis. I have tried to loosen and tighten different degrees but all fail just the same. Above is a video of what it is doing. I am new to all this so simple, explained responses would be huge help. Thanks.
2 Likes
SOC3D
2
Can you swap the motor connections from the x axis to the Y axis? That would test the motor wiring and motor for the x axis and rule out an electrical issue. After that there are a number of mechanical issues to look at. Others might have more specific ideas if they have seen this specific problem. I’ve seen similar caused by limit switch and motor wiring.
Miro
3
Have you installed jumpers under stepper driver? If yes check trim pot on stepper driver just turn it left until motor stops working than start turning right until smooth. If gets hot turn little left if skipping go right. Also NEVER unplug stepper while under power.
1 Like
Sra1
6
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumper\_(computing)
They connect two pins together. Some 3D printer controller boards, e.g RAMPS, use them to set the microstepping required by your stepper driver. If you’re using A4988 stepper drivers you probably want 16x microstepping (usually this is the default). If you’re using DRV8825 you might want to use 32x.
check under your stepper drivers, you may have jumpers installed already. If not, you can source them from any computer parts supplier, or rip open an old PC and you’ll find loads on the motherboard. If you remove them from a PC, dont expect the PC to work any more!
Jumpers are tiny and fitting them can be really fiddly, if you have a toolkit with tweezers and always wonderes what they’re for, they’re definitely the tool for this!
Two other things:
1) check your endstop status using gcode Command M119, you may find one endstop is showing high/triggered even when you think it should not be doing so based on the position of the axis, some endstops default low and go high when triggered, others are always high and go low when triggered. I had to invert mine.
2) check your firmware, you may need to invert the axis
also, if you do change your microstepping, you will need to change your steps / mm.
and one more thing - check your maximum feedrate, could be you’re asking the axis to move too quickly! My max feedrate is 2000 mm/s in the firmware on X+Y and actual orints/movements are considerably less than this based on print speed. My homing feedrate is much lower, I dont have the figure to hand.
looks to me like your stepper may be miswired, or that you have too small of steps defined in the firmware.
Okay so I got all the axis to work and the extruder and heating bed to heat up using Pronterface. My question is where should the homes of each axis be? I’m assuming the Z should be close to the heating bed about a piece of paper height above it. Should the Y-axis’ home be when the heating bed is close to the back of the printer or pulled all the way out of front and should the X-axis home be to the left away from the end stop or up against the end stop. Also I still can’t move the axis 1, 10, 20, etc. steps at a time. Thanks for the help guys I’m so close to my first print
It was, I rewired all the steppers and the jumpers underneath and it works beautifully and quietly now thanks
By ‘left’ you mean counter-clockwise? Right clockwise?
