i3v 8" Extruder Stepper Issues

I just got an I3V 8". Build went well.

Printed the hollow/honeycombed cube just fine.

Did the whole 100mm extrude calibration. Used the mutiplier on the E-Steps. Everything seemed to be working great.

Printed the thin wall object to calibrate my hot end/extruder setup. 3 times. Worked well. Mic'ed it to adjust my Slic3r settings for Filament Extrusion Multiplier.

Updated Firmware to ensure I could do it. And it worked. Just pulled in the default config from MakerFarm install manual. Enabled eeprom saves as well as changing the name of the machine.

Now, I cant print anymore. The extruder vibrates and shakes, moving only ever so slightly. a 100mm extrude would take over 5 minutes.

I noticed the motor was not hot. I felt the heat sink on the driver, too hot to touch. thought it was blown, so I swapped it with the X Axis driver on the RAMPS board. Now X axis is still working properly. Extruder is still not working. Slow to turn. Vibrates. I never get filament out.

Extruder works great when I open it up and push filament through. It comes out the end as expected. When I pull out the filament, heat up the hot end, and extrude nothing. Same status. Slow, jerky, etc. I put my esteps back to 841. No change. Took the extruder off, looked at all pieces, everything is great there.

When I plug in the extruder motor to the X Axis the thing moves great. No binding, jitter, no anything except expected movement.

I have the source from Makerfarm for the i3v, with the motherboard of 33. But that is the stuff that is not working.

When I use manual controls for the extruder or print, it does it either way. Can't seem to put my finger on what could be wrong.

Any ideas on what is wrong?


UPDATE: Using pronterface, If I hit extrude 10mm or 100mm of filament, that is where it binds. Same with printing. But if I go into the LCD and move the extruder 0.1mm at a time, it moves just fine. All the way around, both ways. WTH?

Did you try adjusting the stepper voltage regulator? It sounds like it may not be getting enough voltage to run the motor under load. Have had that happen many times before in my quest of tweaking and fiddling

I'm not sure what you mean by "Just pulled in the default config from MakerFarm install manual". What did you use as the source of the firmware update? It could be that something like the extruder value in DEFAULT_MAX_FEEDRATE is too high in the new configuration.h file.

Sorry Yes, regulator power was at .37 moved it a little forward to see if it helped now at .44. Under no load, just moving like an X axis it moves great. I hold the gear, it over powers me no problem.

Just the feed rate seems way off.

By default Makerfarm load, I mean from the manual, I downloaded the source. i3v-8. It is labeled "Marlin_RAMPS_EPCOS_i38v".

Both the Makerfarm source I downloaded, and the dacb/Roxy source show the same MAX_FEEDRATE: {250, 250, 2, 22}

Is that my issue?

Oh, OK. So you just reloaded the MakerFarm firmware baseline. I thought you might have obtained new source from somewhere else that could have required some configuration effort. The value of 22 in the max feed rate should be fine. At least that's what I'm using.

Just to clarify, everything worked OK up to the firmware update, and the issue started with the update and not a while later? And NOTHING else was done or has been changed? No adjustments were made, the same filament is being used, the same temperature settings are being used, etc.? I can think of a few mechanical things that could be causing problems, but they'd have no tie to the firmware update.

I talked to Colin. For pronterface, somehow I missed the 2mm/s Extruder change to 30mm/s. That fixed that issue about extruding through Pronterface. I will try and print something now. maybe I was having extruder jams at the same time I was trying to fix it manually through pronterface and got the issues mixed up now?

I have cleaned everything. I will print something and see how it goes.