X-Axis Stepper Stuttering and Skipping around

Machine has been wokring great till yesterday, started doing a print then noticed a complete layer shift. as i watched the machine would stutter and jump around when moving in the x-axis. or sometimes NOT move at all.

canceled print, unloaded, checked belt and all looked fine. connected to Cura and told to move x. it stuttered and skipped around, grinding and groaning.

so i powered down, unloaded it, and then removed the belt. removed the stepper motor. i can barely turn it bu hand it is really stiff and jerky. and when it turns it is NOT smooth at all like the other steppers.

assume it is a blown stepper ?? and will ahve to order a NEW one.

What would have caused this so that i can TRY to avoid this in the future !!

seems to happen when the X-Axis Stepper gets REALLY HOT

once it cools it is fine, could it be a bad stepper or something else ??

What type of printer are you working with? It could be an issue with the control box not getting ample cooling, sometimes if the RAMBo gets too hot it will cause motors to stutter and not have enough power to drive the axis properly. We generally encounter that issue with the z-axis not x-axis but it’s a possibility. It would be helpful to see some photos of your RAMBo (control board) to access it completely power off and unplug your printer then remove the 2mm hex screws that hold the control box onto your printer, depending on the type of printer you will want to be careful when doing this to avoid accidentally unplugging your case fan from the RAMBo.

The bearings in steppers sieze up eventually. I have had to replace the y axis ones on my taz’s previously. When trying to move stepper by hand make sure it isnt connected to rambo and that none of the wires are shorting to the others on stepper. That will make it hard to move by hand

This is a LulzBot Mini v1.03

stepper was removed from X-Axis and COMPLETELY disconnected. was hard to turn and when it would turn jumped about a quarter turn at a time. unlike a good Stepper where it rotate smoothly and you can feel the steps.

i can take picts of the mini Rambo when i get home

also swapped the X & Y axis stepper and the problem followed the stepper. so it seems it is the stepper not the board/ stepper driver.

That does sound like it will be the motor and not the board. Good news there, a motor is a much cheaper replacement!

Hi all, I’m posting to this thread as I’ve had a similar issue with the X-Axis shuddering / skipping / stuttering over the six years I’ve had my Lulzbot Taz 5ish. Some background, I have a Lulzbot Taz 4 but have upgraded the wiring system and use the current firmware, printheads, etc so it’s basically a Taz 5 at this point. The X-Axis shuddering has started randomly after hours or even days of successful prints. At first I looked at all the recommend “hardware” issues (I.e loose wiring, loose machine screws, bad belt, bad stepper motor…) but that was never the issue. The problem was that the first five times I “fixed” it I never knew what the actual fix was as I did a number of things like updating the firmware, unplugging and re-plugging all of the electrical connections, etc. Finally on this sixth time I may have the fix and it was pretty simple. Using the movement option for the X-Axis when I set it to 1or 10MM it would stutter but when I set it to .1MM it was smooth and then when going back to 1 or 1MM it was operating smooth/normally again. I’m thinking it’s a software issue where it somehow gets out of synch and the .1mm move some how resets it? Anyway, I’m not sure why but it worked, just hoping this really is the answer the next time it starts doing it. Cheers.

OK, strike the .1MM X-Axis move as a fix. After a half dozen successful prints it started the stuttering again and that didn’t fix it. What seemed to work is that I turned off the stepper motors and slid the X-Axis printhead all the way left to trigger the axis stop. I then used the printer interface to move the Z-Axis all the way down to Z stop and the same with the print bed all the way back to the Y stop. So essentially it’s the same as auto home only manually done. At this point the printer is showing X? Y? Z? on the display so I then turned the power off, waited 10 seconds and powered it back up. At this point it reads that it’s at 0 for all axis points and I was able to start a new print without the stuttering. No idea what’s going on or why this worked but thought I would post just in case it could help someone else out.