We have a refurbished Taz 6 at one of our library locations that has been giving us recent issues after a few months being used. When we got and finally started to test it (a few months after we got it due other issues going on) the only issue we have noticed with the machine was that the fan on the power supply was running loudly during certain printing points. Was told by another member of our IT staff that it was likely pulling more power than normal.
However, outside of that little issue the machine started to make more noise when the bed moves the full length of it’s track and more so when the nozzle cleaning is going on.
We have done a few things to try and figure out what might be the cause of this issue, but have not had much success other than possibly narrowing it down to something with the machine itself. This is what we have done so far:
- Replaced the Y pully and step motor (issues still happens)
- Retighten belts a few times over (issues still happens)
- Took the whole Y assembly and placed it on another working machine (noise and vibration didn’t happen on the Y axis)
- Returned Y assembly to original machine (issues happen again), placed it on a new bench/table (it’s normally on a heavy duty work bench with wheels, placed it temporarily on a solid unmoving table) machine still makes noise and vibrates
I’m unsure what else would be connected to this issue and the only thing we haven’t tried is taking another print bed off another machine in another location and seeing if the machine causes that one to make noises and vibrate.
The two videos have the noise it’s making as the vibration doesn’t show well until the end part of the 2nd video when it’s finishing bed leveling:
Video 1: nozzle cleaning
Video 2: bed leveling at print start
Is the Y axis noise coming from the motor? Disconnect the belt to isolate its motion from the bed.
If there’s no noise without the motor moving anything, try again, but this time, give the motor a little resistance by giving a little manual resistance to the gear (being careful to not pinch a finger).
If there is that noise even without the motor under load, it’s probably a stepper driver on the board. The boards are replaceable, but the drivers are not. Fortunately, if you give up the capability to do dual-extrusion, you can use the second extruder’s driver to drive your Y axis with a custom Marlin build.
I’ve already ruled out that it’s the step motor on the Y as it has been replaced completely at this point (so has the gear) and when I put that Y assembly on another machine (motor, wires, rales and all) the Y axis doesn’t have these vibrations nor sounds other than what is normal.
Sadly we can’t do a custom Marlin build as no one in our IT department would know how to do that and really I’m the only one in the department who even works on the 3D printers.
The board at least gives me an idea of where to look and if we have to replace it (which I’m going to assume likely yes)
Not the stepper motor the stepper driver. Drivers are directly responsible for the sound of the stepper motors. If they’re failing, the motors will definitely sound off.
I can whip up a custom firmware that swaps the Y axis driver with that of the second extruder, but before you do that, you can test the stepper driver easily in a few ways. You said you have a second stepper motor already, so with the Taz 6 powered off, plug that spare motor in place of the existing Y axis motor, just connected to the wiring. Not actually installed on the machine. Turn the machine on and let it try and home. Is the spare motor now making some bad vibrations? If so, blame the stepper driver and I can compile the firmware for you to swap it.
If there is no vibration from the spare motor now, put a little load on the motor by resisting the shaft’s movement. This will force it to draw a little more current from the stepper driver and put a little stress on it.