extruder motor not working, any ideas?

[TFRiceman]

hello,

 i am new to this site and am needing some assistance with my kossel clear printer.

here is some background on what happen before hand, i was printing a large scale of the printer bot when my filament fell from the top of my machine and hit my board.

i didn't think anything of it because it was still printing and all it did was knock of my fans to the board.. well.. long behold after a while i noticed that it was no longer extruding any plastic, 

so i stopped the print and tried it again. the extruder motor was no longer responsive.. 

here is what i did.

i switched the extruder motor wire with the x axis wire and the extruder motor worked just fine, but the x axis didn't move, so i thought its just the extruder chip that was bad. 

so i did the following

> replaced motor control chips -- that didn't fix it

> replaced the shield board -- that didn't fix it

>replaced the arduino board-- that didn't fix it.

i even tried reinstalling the software, arduino and repiter host on a new computer, with stock blue eagle labs settings and trying it that way and it still doesnt extrude. 

all the other axis move and the extruder will heat up but the motor wont move. you can even turn the extruder motor by hand when the machine is on. 

so i am thinking either there is something wrong with the marlin software or something isnt sending commands to the extruder motor.

i tried some of the other forums on here and tried there methods and it still doesn't extrude

do you guys have any suggestions or ideas what to try next.

thank you for your help!

[zog]

Have you set the voltage on the pololu stepper driver module correctly ?

It should be between 0.47 volts and  0.5 volts.

Or maybe the extruder motor has burnt out or partially seized,the accident probably has nothing to do with the extruder problem.

 The other thing to check is that the grub screw is screwed tight on the toothed gear as these can become unscrewed.

Jack

[TFRiceman]

thanks for the reply zog

I have the chip set at 0.50 volts and the grub screw is tighten on there really well.

its still not working!!

i went ahead and ordered another stepper motor and will see if that changes anything.

the funny thing is that stepper motor will work just fine on the other axis to.

it acts like its not getting a command or power to the stepper motor.

when you turn on the machine you can here the rest of the motors lock up, but not the extruder motor, you can literally turn it by hand and it will turn.

[Haydn Huntley]

It can be difficult to debug problems like this.

First off, it sounds like you've done all of the usual, intelligent things a person should do.

You've bought enough replacement hardware and tried replacing everything which you suspected was faulty.

What I'd recommend doing is marking each of our Arduino boards, RAMPS boards, A4988 motor drivers boards, and motors, so that there cannot be any confusion or mix-ups.

What you need to do is determine which hardware is good.

Then systematically begin testing them to find out which ones will work and writing down notes on paper.

First find out which of your motors and A4988's are good.  If a motor and A4988 work anywhere, then you can mark them both as OK.  

You'll want to figure out if either of your RAMPS boards can drive any of your motors on the E0 channel.  (I'm assuming that you won't have any problems with the X, Y, and Z channels and you can use them for finding out which 4988's are good.)

Note: often the Marlin or Repetier software running on your Arduino will not allow you to move the extruder motors unless the hotend is hot enough!  If you are using the original Marlin from BEL, look in Configuration.h, and you'll see this line:

#define EXTRUDE_MINTEMP 170

That means it shouldn't allow any extrusions unless the hotend is at 170C or above.

You can comment out this line to turn off this behavior.

#define PREVENT_DANGEROUS_EXTRUDE

I'd guess that you might have a damaged A4988 and/or perhaps RAMPS board, but that a crucial part of the problem has been that you didn't know about the above, and it has been playing hob with your testing.

Good luck!

[TFRiceman]

thank you for the help Haydn Huntley

sounds like i have a lot to do this week and weekend.

so i got the mintemp set at 0 now

 

#define EXTRUDE_MINTEMP 0

 

as for the 

#define PREVENT_DANGEROUS_EXTRUDE

what do you mean by comment out this line? do you mean deleting that entire line?

i do have all new boards on the machine right now, New arduino, new shield board and new motor chips and the extruder doesn't work, i will still go through these process, just in case one of them may be

bad or something,

thanks again for all the great suggestions 

[Haydn Huntley]

I'd recommend leaving EXTRUDE_MINTEMP set to 170, but if you change the PREVENT_DANGEROUS_EXTRUDE line to begin with two slashes to comment it out, like this:

// #define PREVENT_DANGEROUS_EXTRUDE

[ksed...@gmail.com]

hi man

me too i have this probleme