Interesting
Wembi – Closed Loop Motorupgrade for 3D Printer, via @Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/109167261/wembi-closed-loop-motorupgrade-for-3d-printer
it’s Kickstarter, for something 3d printer related… I’ll wait until it’s a real product.
Get the NZ Smart Stepper. It exists now and helps catch missed steps on my larger 3D Printers. http://misfittech.net/product/nano-zero-stepper/
I’m not so convinced that 3D printing really needs higher resolution than a 1.8° stepper motor can provide. Coupled to a 10 TPI lead screw one step is 0.0005 of an inch. Which is minuscule. Considering that thin filament is 1.3mm today. So it would take more than 102 steps to traverse the diameter of that thin filament.
If prints are coming out wonky for folks it is not because their stepper motors are not fine pitched enough. It is far more likely that their machines have other mechanical issues that need to be addressed.
there’s also the fact that 3d printer kickstarters don’t have a very good success rate
@raykholo
If you’re getting missed steps then that means your motors are under powered. Most 3D printers have pathetic drive systems. I suppose that is because they can get away with having such lackluster hardware? But there’s a lower limit to that sort of thing.
Most folk are trying to use NEMA 17 motors along with converted ATX PSUs @12V and weak Allegro drives to run their machines. That’s a recipe for gutless performance right there. That sort of hardware is suitable for spinning a radar dish on a model train set, maybe. Beefier motors, along with higher voltage, and better drives would go a long way towards developing some torque at speed.
Pump up the jams!
@Paul_Frederick this is the machine in question. The volcano nozzle was catching on the extruded plastic which was severely warping upwards. The “Smart Stepper” encoders on the X and Y axes have helped mitigate what were repeated catastrophic failures.
I have a bondtech arriving tomorrow which will hopefully solve my extrusion woes on this machine.
@raykholo
so what voltage are you running your steppers at, and what kind of drives do you have?
12 volts 
that’s an atx psu in the corner of the shot. I’m making the move to 24v on all my new builds, but all my E3D’s are still 12v and I have a bunch of atx’s around.
Originally it was DRV8825 drivers with a lot of cooling (but also tried A4988’s with the same outcome) and the nozzle would snag within the first few layers and the printer would end up grinding away in the corner 15 minutes in. Repeatedly.
@raykholo
going from 12V to 24V is going to be a revelation for you. When I went from 24 to 28V even that was a nice bump. Which surprised the hell out of me. I have some low end TB6600s now with 32V printed on them, so that’s what I’m running now. At 12V you’re probably running out of torque at around 500 RPM. 24V should take you to maybe 750 RPM?
The faster you run the less time (dwell) you have to dump current into your motor coils. Inductors resist change to the flow of current. That’s just what they do. So to overcome that inductive reluctance we use higher voltage and constant current drives. But as the window to push current narrows at higher step rates current still drops off due to inductive reluctance. When current drops off is determined by the voltage you run (voltage is pressure - current is volume - inductors are change resistors). The higher the voltage the faster you can run before current fades. That higher voltage/pressure just pushes through the motor coils harder.
All higher voltage does is decrease the time it takes for the motor to come up to full current (has to do with motor inductance), nothing magic. The drivers keep you from exceeding the motor’s current limit. Likely mechanical limits will prevent you from achieving any real performance improvements.
Motor power is related to current times voltage. Check the manufacturer’s product lines, the same power motor can be available in different current and voltage specs, but current times voltage will be pretty close to the same thing. The higher voltage/lower current motors will have higher inductance, not a good thing for faster rise time.
Check out the technical articles at http://geckodrive.com, a higher end driver manufacturer.
Higher voltages will let you use lighter gauge wire for the bed and hot end.
@raykholo try experimenting with setting extrusion widths in your slicer, might help with the curling by reducing the amount the extrusion is stretched as it prints and the resulting shrinkage as it cools. There’s archived discussions in the http://reprap.org forums that can explain it better than I can.
http://drive.com
@Kirk_Yarina
The higher your step rate the less time you have for your motor to come up to full current. At some point at any voltage your motor won’t come up to full current either. The lower the voltage you use the lower speed that point comes too. Which is why stepper motors all stall out as you run them faster. They current starve. Hook an ammeter up to a stepper and ramp the speed up, and watch it happen for yourself. I have.