3D Printing Forum

Here is what it is doing most of the time but not always:
https://goo.gl/photos/wRpVinpA9TnAEbQJ9

I was able to giggle the wire going into the stepper and this behavior stopper for a while but resurfaced half-way through a print.

This is my first printer build so I'm not really familiar with what to look for to fix this.

First guess: bad stepper driver in control board. This did work correctly at some point, right?

It worked for the first test print. then the second not. It's intermittent at this point. I thought it was the wire connection at one point but could be unrelated. It cam connected to the board under an encloser and I have not opened it up to look at the control board. The manufacturer has a troublshooting page that goes over checking the voltage on the board for each motor so I was going to try that. It's like the motor goes back and forth each time I tell it to go in one direction. I checked all the pins and they seem fine but maybe signal is crossed?

Yeah, you gotta pull the cover off of the board and take a look around. This could be as simple as reseating the JST connector that is in there. Turn off the power, pull out the 4 M3 bolts and have a look.

Does the carriage move freely when the system is off? Could the belt be binding on the right side bearing?

Does the carriage move freely when the system is off? Could the belt be binding on the right side bearing?

GrueMaster wrote:Does the carriage move freely when the system is off? Could the belt be binding on the right side bearing?

I'd considered that as well, but after watching the video carefully, it looks like the stepper really is oscillating back and forth in some way.

Another thing you can try that is fairly easy is to take the extruder stepper motor off its mount and plug the X motor wire into it to see how it behaves. That will at least eliminate the control board and wiring as the issue.