Extruder motor not responding - Taz 6

Hi there,

I recently purchased a Lulzbot Taz 6 for use at the factory I work in. It has been working fine until today where the extruder stepper motor stopped responding.

This is a bog standard, out of the box Lulzbot Taz 6.

I had started a print, the first layer printed fine but when I came out to check later, no more filament had been extruded from the nozzle even though the print had carried on.

I just assumed that the filament had jammed so I stopped the print, heated up the nozzle, and removed the filament. I noticed that the extruder pulley had become filled with filament so I started to remove this. When trying to get the extruder to turn by using the move option on the printer control panel, the extruder refused to move. Although the stepper motor was not hot to the touch, I left it to cool down and tried again, the motor still did not respond.

I attempted to troubleshoot this by first, rotating the extruder stepper motor with the printer off to see if I could generate a charge and cause the panel to flicker, which it did. Secondly, I connected the print bed extruder power cable (Which still works) to the extruder stepper motor, which still does not respond with this connected.

Any ideas? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

The controls will not move the stepper if the hot end is not up to temperature.

That’s it! Thank you very much, greatly appreciated.