Stepper driver dead....

[TyRGeN]

Hi i am the happy new owner of a Felix printer too,
I received and built the printer last week but had issue installing the arduino mega on my room's old laptop (vista home premium)
So i tested this week end on a normal win 7 computer.

Guess what ?
Everything went fine until chapter 13.3, page 52 :
Press Home X, then move the x axis back and forth. The axis will only move in positive direction if the Home X button is not pressed.
- Press Home Y, move the y axis back and forth.
- Press Home Z

At first sight, I did not understand what was these steps for, as I had no X,Y nor Extruder motor moving or making any noise at all. Only the Z-axis which was described as tricky was working fine, only down but no wobbles, no noise, perfect as in the videos.

Troubleshoot steps:
0/ I checked cables and connectors: the RAMP Shield was not fully attached to the MEGA Board [ok]
1/ I swapped stepper motors cables to the Z connector: all 3 motors were working fine [ok]
2/ I checked Optosensors and happily swapped the cables (each sensors for each motors), and Z axis could go up and down [ok]
3/ I swapped Y and Z steppers drivers, the Y axis motor worked but Z axis was not responding [ko]
4/ After having browsed the forum and found 2 or 3 identical issues, i decided to set the calibrations screw to one quarter, X an Y motors worked [ok]
5/ X,Y axis were going too far (shining through plastic).Glued some black paper on it [ok]
6/ I tried to test the rest:
fans control [ok],
bed heating [ok],
extruder [ok],
printing the calibration object without PLA : extruder motor works !! [ok]
(Thanks Guillaume to have explained it worked only after having reached a certain temperature)
7/ I tried to change the calibration screw on X, and got strange cyclic vibrations as if the motor was trying to turn while being blocked [ko]
8/I swapped again the X axis stepper driver with the Z axis stepper driver and now the table is moving like a charm, [ok]
9/ Problem, the Z axis is wobbling like hell or not even moving.[ko]
10/ After several tests Z was still not moving, I tried to set the screw to the maximum but the screw is now turning 360° :/ [FAIL]

Can somebody help me ? I would like to get the exact reference of this stepper driver to replace it

Thanks in advance
Stephane

[satoer]

Have you installed firmware version RC3? Some of these “stepper motor moving in one direction” problems seem to be solved with this new firmware.
The control pods on the stepper motor drivers are delicate. And you have to adjust them a tiny bit to get good results. Turn them all the way counter clockwise then turn them a tiny bit clockwise until the stepper motor moves at the highest speed without skipping steps or overheating the stepper motor controllers. Have you mounted the heat sinks with 2 component thermal adhesive, and not the supplied thermal paste?
If you broke the control pod by turning it to far beyond his boundary it doesn’t necessary not work anymore, but it will be hard to find the starting point. Try to adjust it to the same position as the other pods. Otherwise, check ebay for replacement stepper motor drivers (search reprap) or contact Guillaume maybe he can sent you a replacement.

[gfeliksdal]

Hi TyRGen,

Where you able to get it working with satoer's tips? If not the stepper driver is probably dead. Please send me a pm with your address etc. and I'll arrange you a replacement.

[aikx]

Have you installed firmware version RC3?

I can´t find this version! Any hints?

[TyRGeN]

Good evening all,

First of all, thanks for your quick replies !

- I only tried with the Marlin RC2 firmware proposed by Guillaume yet
- I used the thermal pads in the first place but they were not sticky enough, the electric wires pulled the heat sinks off every minutes so as i was a bit stressed by my troubleshoot session I ended by "glue-ing" them with a fair amount of thermal paste.

I'll try to find out this new RC3 version and try

[hvdd]

hi,
i had the same problem last week and this was quickly solved with RC3 version.
www.felixprinters/downloads
for the heat sinks i fixed them with cooling pasta on the chip side and the other site a small dot of black silicone ( supplied with the kit)
seems to work.
rgds

[satoer]

http://www.felixprinters.com/downloads/

[TyRGeN]

=D
Thanks !
-------------------------------
Edit:
Again thanks for all the good advices, I have been quite excited thinking the RC3 FW would do quite a good job by "reviving" my Z axis a bit but I was wrong. After some tries, clicking +Z was sometime homing, sometime humming, sometime going the other way around

Then I removed the "truss-rod" away from the Z motor and tried to turn the knob while homing, nothing changed.
Even worse, now the Z motor doesn't respond anymore and the stepper remains cold, i probably made a short-circuit by keeping my screwdriver on it for so long.

[satoer]

Are you sure you mounted the heatsinks not contacting the pins?

[TyRGeN]

Yes i am, it does not touch the pins
i just re-checked and tried to send a move commend on Z just to be sure but it does not react