Blog Archive

Αλέξανδρος Γ. Σφακιανάκης

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Ender 3 - extruder stepper skipping

paythelady.61 shared this article with you from Inoreader

I have a problem most likely very similar to some reported by other users: extruder stepper is visually skipping a step from time to time. It rapidly rotates in the direction opposite to the one it is supposed to rotate.

I noticed the following:

  • The extruder stepper jumps totally randomly - there is nothing specific in the pattern printed, position etc.
  • Stepper jumps more often on the infill, rarely on the walls.

Details about print:

  • PLA (Devil Design - various colors, they doesn't matter)
  • Filament guide installed on top, but not yet before the extruder (it is printing right now, I'm waiting for the ball bearings too)
  • Filament mounted on the top - in the place defined by Creality
  • Extruder is already replaced with the aluminium one
  • The mainboard is SKR E3 mini V2 (replaced recently)
  • 95% flow set in Cura
  • Printing on glass, leveled bed (the jumping occurs on all layers, not only first)
  • 215 °C hotend temperature, 60 °C bed temperature
  • Stepper motor current settings (from Merlin menu): 580 for X, Y & Z, 650 for E1

Other observations:

  • What's interesting is that extruder motor jumps even if I manually unwind some filament, so that the only force that it has to overcome is only pushing filament into the head.
  • I did a quick DIY wooden spool holder, so that the filament was fed almost horizontally. This actually seemed to make things worse - stepper jumped more often. I moved spool to the top again and it reduced jumping a little.
  • Prints are done beatifully (after changing the motherboard, that is) - no lost lines or layers, walls connected with infill, perfect first layer etc.

What may be the cause of stepper motor jumping? How can I solve it? Does it pose a threat to the motor or stepper? I need to print filament guide and spool holder with ball bearings, so that I can minimize force required by the extruder motor, but then the stepper will probably jump during the prints. I already damaged the original mainboard because of stuck filament, I don't want to destroy another one.

View on the web

No comments:

Post a Comment