Replicator Electrocutes Me

I bought a Replicator online. After reinstalling firmware, I got it working and printing many parts beautifully. One day I touched the metal casing on one of the extruder stepper motors and it shocked me! I touched it again, and it just keeps shocking me haha. The other stepper motor housing didn't shock me though. And the first one only shocked me when the motors were ready to print.

Now its 2 months later. Now both extruder motors shock me (not any of the XYZ motors though). And they do this right after the printer is plugged in (which didn't happen before). In addition, the printer times out when trying to heat up in preparation for a print.

Has anyone had a similar problem before? How can I troubleshoot this?

Sounds like a short from a stepper wire to the casing. But ~12v shouldn't feel like much, right?

Sounds to me like lack of grounding (are you using a 3 core mains cable?) coupled with leakage in the power supply.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Return it under warranty.

. . . and let them know how distressed by it you are and inconvenienced by not being able to use it.

-a

Unfortunately I bought it as is on ebay. I'm pretty pleased with it actually since I am able to make great prints from it despite the shocks.

The zap sensation is dependent on the angle of the power supply connection, hmmmm.

HOLY CRAP, I just disconnected the power supply from the printer to inspect the connection. Upon touching the outer metal plate of the DIN connector (which is supposed to be ground probably), I get zapped!!!! So I moved to a new outlet (one that doesn't look like it was built in the 1800s), and I don't get zapped. So the problem was that I was using a super old outlet that is not grounded properly. I hope that wasn't constantly consuming current and increasing my electric bill!

Quote
jessicabrenner
HOLY CRAP, I just disconnected the power supply from the printer to inspect the connection. Upon touching the outer metal plate of the DIN connector (which is supposed to be ground probably), I get zapped!!!! So I moved to a new outlet (one that doesn't look like it was built in the 1800s), and I don't get zapped. So the problem was that I was using a super old outlet that is not grounded properly. I hope that wasn't constantly consuming current and increasing my electric bill!

Electricity wants to find the path to ground with the least resistance. With a ungrounded or poorly grounded outlet, you were that path. With a outlet with a better ground, it could use that. The outlet is doing it's job, but it's putting a band-aid on the problem. The real problem is that your power supply is leaking current and that shouldn't happen. Fix or replace the power supply before something bad happens.

cdru, that's not necessarily correct. While these symptoms could indicate power leakage on a badly-grounded plug, Jessica said her PSU shocked her, and it seems unlikely that a PSU would fail in that way. Thus, I suspect that the outlet is the failure point -- it was leaking hot into the ground.