Z axis stops moving up.

Hello,

I'm trying to have my first successful print on a prusa i3

Plastic ABS
Nozzle 240c
Bed 100c
Speed 50mm/sec
Layer height 0.2
Slicer cura
Extrusion width 0.4
(If I left out anything important, please let me know)

It seems to me that It's printing right, but the Z axis only goes up about 3mm and stops (or just slows down too much?). X and Y keep going, plastic keeps extruding, but the nozzle just digs into the print. This is my first printer. If anyone could treat me like a child and walk me through exactly what I need to do, I would be so happy! Thanks!

After homing, can you run the z axis upwards with G-Code? Use G1 Z10 to go to 10mm above the bed (or where it hit the Z-min end stop. If so, try to go to 100 by sending G1 Z100... If this works then something is getting messed up in the sliced G-Code. If it doesn't work then you have a mechanical problem or something wrong in your firmware...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2015 09:50PM by MindRealm.

---

-David

Find me online at:
Thingiverse
Instructables.com
LinkedIn
Facebook

Check out my FolgerTech Prusa i3 (plexi) at MindRealm.net

Using pronterface, it moves up as high as I want. So it is capable of moving higher. Does that answer your question? I'm not familiar enough with gcode to do the G1 Z10, G1 Z100 thing. But if that's what I need to do instead of moving it with pronterface, then I'll try to figure it out. Thank you for your help

In Pronterface, you can type G-code in at the bottom of the left side, below all the text. If it goes up when you click the buttons, that's good enough... Your problem is not mechanical, nor firmware related. Probably need to define your printer in Slic3r...

---

-David

Find me online at:
Thingiverse
Instructables.com
LinkedIn
Facebook

Check out my FolgerTech Prusa i3 (plexi) at MindRealm.net

I tweaked slic3r a bit, but I'm not sure of the right settings. So the problem is, It's not moving up enough per layer. On the printers control screen, I changed "Zsteps/mm" to +3100.0, it was at +400.0. That doesn't seem right to me, but now It's moving up enough per layer I think. I'm sure there's some math I'm supposed to do here...

You have to calibrate your axis and your extruder and put these values in marlin.

Thanks for the reply.

I've been messing with the numbers and I guess my printer can't handle +3100 axis steps per unit. So right now it's working at +2500. So to fix the feedrate in marlin I need to change one of these numbers: 500, 500, 5, 25. Right? Not sure which one though. Maybe it would help me to see the marlin setup for a reprap prusa i3.

I came here to ask basically this same question.

I printed my first print, the calibration cube. Although it's obviusly not perfect, and I need to calibrate more, it worked as intended and I'm happy just to see the printer works!

I tried another file I found on thingiverse, and a few minutes into the print I noticed the nozzle was running into the layers as it ran across the bed. It got worse as time went on so I stopped the print, realizing the z-axis never moved up throughout the print. What causes this, as it doesn't appear to be my firmware settings? The slicer somehow messed up creating the g-code; how does this happen?

Jonny, I think you need to change the "DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT" in your firmware. For example, I've set mine to: DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT {80,80,4000.00,94}. That's for reprap prusa i3, m5 threaded rod and 1.8 degree (or 200 steps) stepper motors. You might need different numbers for yours, but changing those made a perfect print on mine.

Yeah, I went through all of that, and I thought I had it dialed in! Changing the z-axis steps to 4,000, what they should be for my same setup also, seemed to fix the issue for about 4 calibration cubes (although I had to reduce the feedrate from 5 to 2 since the motors weren't moving at all and I think they were trying to move too fast). I did adjust the potentiometer on the stepper motor also to as low as I could to keep it from overheating (and installed a heat sink), and it is at about 0.8 Volts.

However, anytime I try a big file off of thingiverse, it just never moves up past z=0.00. I'm really at a loss for what exactly is causing it as it's intermittent. I go back to a .5mm tiny calibration cube and it moves up perfectly, then try another print file off thingiverse and it doesn't move up. My extruder body is so beat up from the extruder getting knocked around that the screws holding it in are about to burst out!! Looks like I'll be needing another one soon .

I had this issue briefly and thought some electronics had fail.
What is you Z-Axis offset?
Is your Z-Axis endstop working and properly adjusted?
I had my z offset wrong and caused the nozzle to crash into the bed (fixed with the Z-Axis offset (or whatever the option) then had to adjust the Z-Axis endstop screw slightly and it all worked.

My z-axis offset is at -1 in the slicer settings. I did this to fine tune the nozzle height and get it closer to the bed without moving the z-axis endstop (since I haven't been able to print the adjustable endstop yet). I'm not sure how this could cause the issue, though, especially since when printing the thin wall 0.5mm calibration cube, the layers look perfect. Could this somehow be causing a software slicing issue for the larger prints?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2015 06:11PM by Jonny Five.

The instructions that came with min stated that the nozzle should be close enough to the bed so that a piece of paper is very liglhty trapped and can be tugged out with only a little tug.
Beyound that my issue was down to the end stop issue.