I suspect my z motors aren’t doing their jobs, but does anyone know of a way to test them?
Disconnect from load. Test. If still failing, connect to known good stepper driver. If still failing, check wiring. If still failing, they’re probably bad.
The thing is, they seem to be working just fine at the beginning of a print, but when it gets to about 3 mm the nozzle doesn’t go up far enough anymore and it presses into the layers it just printed, not enough to stop the print, but enough that there ends up being weird waves on the outside of prints and it ends up not being quite level.
Could be the stepper drivers getting too hot, or there’s physical resistance at that height.
The room I’m printing in stays quite cool, so I don’t think its getting hot, but it might be some sort of resistance.
The stepper drivers can overheat in an air conditioned room, especially if they’re faulty, trying to push too much power, or if there’s a wiring issue or bad motor stressing them.
The room I have been set up in is around 55 degrees, and I haven’t been able to find anything possibly blocking movement of the stepper, and it moves just fine if I move it on my own, but after 4 layers of a print the steppers don’t move up like they should.
So it could be the drivers for the steppers on the control board going bad, but you still haven’t given any photos, videos, or even what printer and tool head your using to help narrow down the cause.
Hold up professor, which thermoplastic polymer did you use & intend to use?
We want to know so we can help you & determine what’s appropriate for not just the application but also the hot end & heating the bed
I’ve been using ESUN3D 2.85mm PLA. This is the setup I am currently using, I believe it is the original setup, but the toolhead was replaced about a year ago.
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I don’t have a way to send detailed enough photos to show the prints, but after 4 layers the nozzle presses into the print and doesn’t move quite far enough up after each consecutive layer.
I tried another print, and I noticed the fan inside the right compartment was not spinning, could that possibly be causing the motherboard to overheat and not process the z accurately?
If you run the Z up and down the full range of motion while it isn’t printing, does the Z stop moving?
After it screws up during a print, immediately after, can you move the Z up and down through the full range of motion?
Does the fan in the control box ever turn on?
What are all these wires dangling down here?
They look like they might be out of their harness, and a broken wire could have caused a short somewhere… maybe killed a stepper driver or fan, or something else. Reference of how that area should look:
That’s an older Mini 1 that lacks the clips to hold the thermistor and bed heater cables to the cable chain.
Yeah, those cables don’t have hooks or anything, but at the same time I’ve never had them get caught on anything. It moves through the entire z range just fine before printing. The fan in the side hasn’t turned on at all, but I was watching the console and it was registering M73 P1 as an unknown command, could this be part of the problem?
Sounds about right what temperatures in Celsius it’s okay if your like one or two Celsius off
In celsius its been 200 for the nozzle and 60 for the bed.
That’s a reasonable temperature
The filament prints just fine, its just being pressed and smeared by the nozzle being too low.
That would then be z axis leveling
You will need a referral if your asking me on z axis leveling