Stepper Motor Clicking

Hello,

I am having an issue where my stepper motor makes clicking noises some of the time, and spins back a few steps before moving foward again... I thought it might be a clogged nozzle, but I just cleaned out my nozzles yesterday, in an attempt to fix the issue. I also thought it might be that the first layer was to low, but adjusting higher didn't have an effect. I have also tried slowing or speeding up my print speed.

The motor is very hot to the touch, so I was wondering if it could be a bad stepper?

If the motor is already getting hot and struggling then you have bad issues with the filament transport or hotend.
Unless you just totally overpower the motor for the fun of having a small room heater...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/29/2016 11:31PM by Downunder35m.

Steppers are pretty simple, so it's unlikely the motor itself is bad. Maybe the driver? Maybe you're giving it too much current?

A hot extruder motor can also warm and soften the filament, causing jams.

My motors never get hot, just warm but the drivers are constantly too hot to hold on to. If your motors are hot then I can't imagine what the drivers are doing. Are they also hot?

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Master Tinkerer

I would remove the motor from the extruder then try and run it. Then you can try and stop it with you hand and see how hard it is to stop.

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Newbie with Folgertech 2020 i3.

Does this also happen when you heat up the extruder, remove the filament and then activate the stepper motor using Gcode (feeding)? Does the Stepper motor also warms up or skips then? If not you could look if there isn't to much presure on the extruder spring (don't know if you have one, or that you can adjust it with a screw?). If this solves the problem then you stepper motor is probably delivering not enough torque. You could consider looking for a stepper motor with more power/torq then. I had a similar problem before, and this solved mine.

If you're using Ramps (for other boards you should check the manual), you could try to adjust the current to the extruder motor by turning the potmeter on the stepper driver slightly counter clockwise (maybe mark it with a marker, so you can adjust it back to the current settings easily when needed). You'll adjust the current down this way. See if this solves the problem and if the stepper motor still delivers enough torq to the extruder.

you could also try to exchange stepper drivers with another one to easily check if the extruder strepper driver is a faulty one.

thanks for al the responses.

it could be that I applied too much current, but I had only added current after having extruder issues... After posting this, I read that was possible that having the springs on the extruder too tight would cause the clicking so I loosed them up and that seemed to help.


on stepper drivers, do they sell them with a better pot? or maybe a pot I can set digitally?

Usually you only have to set them once or after some hardware changes, so for the job they are quite good.
Often it is not the pot but the owner using the rong tools causing them to fail.
There are dedicated "screwdrivers" for them made from ceramic, they are also meant for these adjustable ferrite cores on inductivities.
Most commom mistake is to overturn them.

yeah, I just don't have a great feel for them, plus, on my machine they are difficult to access, plus when in doubt MOAR power... but obviously not the solution here,

The pots I have, if you over turn them it just cancels out the current, as in it goes to zero. Kinda weird behaviour really. You can take a multimeter and check them by putting one lead on the pot screw head and then another on the bottom right lead, if the the polulu driver is oriented where the pot is on the bottom. Just don't do this with the psu powering the printer, might short something, just do it with the usb connected. I have my extruder set to max (1.2v), but have a cpu cooling fan blowing on it to keep it cool because it was overheating after a while, especially when I geared it up with a spur gear so it had to move faster to extrude the filament.