Help needed! Reprap prusa (sanguinololu 1.3a) Originally shared by Mano Biletsky (Open MAKER) The

Help needed! Reprap prusa (sanguinololu 1.3a)

Originally shared by Mano Biletsky (Open MAKER)

The extruder motor of my Prusa Mendel started making a loud vibrating sound since today. I printed with it 2 days ago and nothing whas wrong then. While extruding before printing today, everything was fine. As soon as i started the print the motor started acting up.

My question is: is my stepper driver dead?

One thing i changed in my slicer settings was to set the non print moves to 100. When i put it back to 60 (where it normally is) the problem persisted…

Check the wiring. If one of the pins or wires is bad, it’ll make a horrible loud noise like that.

Ah thats a good one! Never thought of that… thanks

Try turning up the pots on the stepper drivers

When i try to turn up the pot. The motor noise gets louder (more current) and when i turn it down it doesn’t have the power to turn the motor.

The wiring is fine. There was something i noticed though. While moving my printer, i must have knocked off my self made heatsink (aluminium strip).
So my guess is that the motor driver is fried. I have ordered a new one today.
I also ordered a heating cartridge. Instead of the normal resistor. Attaching wires to a heating resistor is kind of a pain since you can’t solder them…

if your using a wades extruder your bolt could have tightened on it’s own while printing and locking the stepper motor up. try turning the extruder by hand

Thank you, that is another one i did not think of. I did however disasemble the entire extruder so i indeed made shure it was rotating freely.
I also had a backlash in the gears. The hole for the bolt in the large gear was a little too big. So i was able to fill it up with a bit of ABS. Tight as a circulair muscle!