I purchased a Kysan 1040229 Geared Stepper with a 5.18:1 gear ratio to use as a Bowden Extruder but I am having issues with it. It is 1.8° with a rated Voltage of 2.4V and rated current of 1.0A. All it does is Click. I can spin the motor by hand and it does light a diode when I do so, so I think the motor itself should be in working order BUT I am not certain at this point.

Anyways... Is there a certain configuration or setting to get a Geared motor to work?

I have tried changing the Steps Per MM in which I originally started at around 1036 but nothing and went both down as low as 80 and up as high as 5000. None of which I tried work. I tried different micro step jumper settings. Tried trimming the pot on the driver from as low as .6 to as high as 1.8 (which is about as high as I can seem to get it) and it did not even help. Tried various setting in marlin that dealt with the stepper. Tried swapping wires around. I even tried using the Stepper on 2 different board and in combinations of multiples of different drivers. First a GT2560 and then on a Ramps1.4 Mega combo. The drivers I used were various A4988 and TMC2100. I tired it in Different AXIS slot and Different drivers themselves just encase any of them might have been bad. I have even taken the gear box off to see if it would spin with out it. Nothing worked

I am at the point where I think that either there is something inside the motor itself which may be causing it to not spin OR the power I am giving it is just not enough to move it. The later seems to be the best reason to me.

I don't know, maybe I just purchase a bad motor. Anyways I could use a suggestion or two at this point.

Are you able to spin the motor by hand, or the motor+gearbox? There could be debris in the gearbox thats jammed it up. Another thing to look at is acceleration settings. With a 5:1 gearbox, the motor needs to spin 5x faster for the same output speed (ditto for the accelerations), this might be too much for your stepper and is causing it to skip steps which results in the clicking noise.

Edit:sorry, on mobile, didn't see the part about you testing with the gearbox off. The last thing you can check is if you have a broken coil wire or a short. A broken/faulty motor is rare, even for those coming out of China.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2018 01:47AM by Trakyan.

Are the wires of the stepper connector in the right order? You said, you could light a LED, which is a good sign. But maybe two wires have to be switched to make it work?

A 5:1 geared extruder would typically have around 700 to 800 steps/mm at x16 microstepping.

---

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].

Quote
Trakyan
Are you able to spin the motor by hand, or the motor+gearbox? There could be debris in the gearbox thats jammed it up. Another thing to look at is acceleration settings. With a 5:1 gearbox, the motor needs to spin 5x faster for the same output speed (ditto for the accelerations), this might be too much for your stepper and is causing it to skip steps which results in the clicking noise.

Edit:sorry, on mobile, didn't see the part about you testing with the gearbox off. The last thing you can check is if you have a broken coil wire or a short. A broken/faulty motor is rare, even for those coming out of China.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have to open it up and check that.

Quote
o_lampe
Are the wires of the stepper connector in the right order? You said, you could light a LED, which is a good sign. But maybe two wires have to be switched to make it work?

I did try switching the wires around but i only got reaction from one order. Sadly that was just clocking.

Quote
dc42
A 5:1 geared extruder would typically have around 700 to 800 steps/mm at x16 microstepping.

I actually tried 700 and 800 at x16 microstepping but thanks for letting me know.

Got it working. Opened it up and looked at the coils and two had wires touching each other. Not sure if that was a the exact cause of it, but once I put it back together and wired it back up I was able to get it spinning. Now I just need to install it on the printer and calibrate it. Thanks everyone for your help. It is very much appreciated.