Equipment Problems

[LakeDuck]

My creator pro just developed a hitch, when it is starting up, bed appears to move properly once a print would be ready to start it goes to the home position for the X/Y position but then when it moves to the opposite end bed to get ready to drool prior to starting the head will be traveling across the bed (Nozzles not touching the bed) the head will appear to hang up, violent movement as if it is stuck and try to move kind of a grinding noise then continue on to opposite corner. But then my calibrations are off. and the model will not print properly, as it builds a raft it will get to a point "Grind" and continue building the raft in another location. Any ideas?

[Mjolinor]

Broken wire to the X stepper would be my first guess assuming you have moved it by hand when it is off and all is smooth.

[LakeDuck]

I can move the carriage my hand with it off, it moves in all directions "all is smooth"

[LakeDuck]

In trying to figure out whats wrong I did the following, I un-plugged the x -stepper and manually moved it to its home position in the initial sequence before printing a part, no vibration as it moved to through the y direction, then I plugged back up the x-stepper and unplugged the y-stepper and manually moved the it to its home position as before, no vibration as it moved to through the x direction. Any body have some ideas, I was going to order a couple of steppers and some other stuff to try and get it back up and running, what other parts would need to be ordered?

[Mjolinor]

Have you checked the X stepper wires then and they are OK?

[ssayer]

When you're looking at motors or wires, I'd put my money on a bad wire any day. Stepper motors are rarely the problem...

[LakeDuck]

The wires look like they are in good shape, I will have to take it apart to follow the whole path, I will do that on Monday at lunch

[ssayer]

Yep, they're just cheap wires so you need a meter to check for sure (and make sure you wiggle them while you're checking them!). The insulation on the outside will look fine...

[LakeDuck]

ssayer thnx for the replies, I do think that I have a bad wire in the harness, very hard to whether it is at the connector in along the wire, do you or anyone know of a source for the wiring harness?
I dont see it on the FF website

[soofle616]

The machine should have come with a spare in the box when you got it. I checked their website and also could not find a replacement (odd since I seem to remember them having one up there before) so you might try your hand at repairing the cable you have. Odds are the damage is internal to one of the wires and not the connector. Generally speaking what happens is the constant movement causes the wires to flex until they break and that's when things go wrong with the printer. Remove the outer jacket and replace the wires that are broken (or all of them while you're in there) with the same gauge wire. Make sure you use stranded wire or it won't be flexible enough and will likely break again. Cut off the old wires as close as you can to the connectors while still leaving enough left to solder the new wires to and make sure you cover the connections with shrink wrap or similar to prevent contact between the wires.