MK2S extruder motor stuttering
Hi everyone,
This is a problem I've had in the past, and it gone and went, but today it doesn't seem to go away.
I was replacing the extruder fan that broke with a new one I bought, and cleaned the extruder from some filament that was stuck in it. These two operations were successful, but after I was done, I found that my extruder motor is stuttering.
Here's a video I took of it now: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w1yq2bokp1nw8jz/2018-07-27%20Extruder%20motor%20stutter.mp4?dl=0
Things I did:
1. I ensured that there was nothing grinding against the axle of the motor. I shaved some of the PTFE and ABS to be sure of that.
2. I removed the 4 Philips screws of the motor and removed it. It still wouldn't spin, except it didn't make the sound now.
3. I removed the pulley. Still stuttering.
I tried spinning it dozens of times, and I got the same stuttering behavior. Then after 20 minutes, and after the printer has been cooling down, I tried to take the video above, and suddenly the extruder motor worked! I was excited, I put back the pulley, tried to run it again but now it's stuttering again. I tried removing the pulley but no dice, it's still stuttering.
What's wrong? What can I do?
Thanks for your help,
Ram Rachum.
Re: MK2S extruder motor stuttering
From the symptoms you're describing, it sounds like the motor's cabling is faulty. The motor might skip and stutter when one of its coils isn't being driven properly. It might also explain how the motor suddenly worked then resumed its stutter.
Check the connector first, it might not be seated well, and this is the easiest thing to check. Also try gently tugging on each of the wires going into the connector - you want to see if one of them came loose by accident. Then try going over the cable making sure it's not worn out somewhere, causing a short or a disconnect.
If everything seems fine, try replacing the connections between the extruder motor and the X motor, and try homing X, to see if there's an issue with the extruder onboard driver.
Re: MK2S extruder motor stuttering
moshi.b, you were right! I opened the dreaded Rambo case, and found that the connector was indeed dangling. I pushed it in all the way, and now my extruder is working!
Thank you so much! I'm happy that out of all the scenarios you suggested, I got the easiest one 🙂