Clicking from X/Y-axis stepper motors when idle during print
I've noticed an interesting issue with my printer. During a print, whenever either X/Y-axis stepper motors are idle, they click approximately once per second for the entire duration they are idle. The clicking only happens whenever the motors are idle and stops immediately when the motors start moving. The clicking is imperceptible when you're simply watching the motor shafts, but you can feel the clicking by touching the motor shafts, and the clicking leaves visible artifacts in the print.
For example, consider printing a square. When the X-axis is moving, the Y-axis motor is idle and it clicks. When the Y-axis is moving, the X-axis motor is idle and it clicks. Here is a photo of the resulting artifacts in the print:
I've seen that others in this forum have reported clicking, but I haven't seen any resolution for the issue. I've tried both high power mode and silent mode, the motors click and leave artifacts in both modes.
I've attached some gcode to print a 40mm x 40mm square up to a height of 40mm. Can someone try printing it to see if you get the same artifacts? You don't need to print to the full height of 40mm, but I'd recommend printing at least 10mm. Also, while the print is in progress, can you touch the shaft of the X-axis stepper motor to see if it is clicking while idle?
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
Ceryen
Re: Clicking from X/Y-axis stepper motors when idle during print
I've determined that the cause of this issue is the X/Y skew compensation. The printer must be trying to correct for a small amount of skew by inserting individual microsteps every ~6mm. I don't believe that individual microsteps can be done accurately, so I suspect that this is the cause of the clicking in the stepper motors.
Since my X and Y axes must be very close to perpendicular (an individual compensating microstep every ~6mm is pretty darn close to perpendicular!), I've decided to run without X/Y skew compensation. I've turned off X/Y skew compensation by completely clearing XYZ calibration, then calibrating only Z. After turning off the X/Y skew compensation, my X/Y stepper motors no longer click and I no longer get artifacts in my prints.
Re: Clicking from X/Y-axis stepper motors when idle during print
When you do the X/Y/Z calibration do you get the "congratulations - perpendicular" message or not?
Re: Clicking from X/Y-axis stepper motors when idle during print
I do get the congratulations that my axes are perpendicular. Is that supposed to disable X/Y skew compensation?
I can imagine that it might print that message even if the axes aren't perfectly perpendicular if it believes that the skew is small enough for X/Y skew compensation to be effective.
Re: Clicking from X/Y-axis stepper motors when idle during print
I just ran some further experiments.
I redid the full "Calibrate XYZ" and got the message saying that my XY axes are perpendicular. When I redid the square print, I got clicking from my XY motors and artifacts in the print.
I then cleared XYZ calibration and did just "Calibrate Z". When I redid the square print, I did not get clicking from my XY motors and I did not see artifacts in the print.
Re: Clicking from X/Y-axis stepper motors when idle during print
I thought that the "X/Y perpendicular" message meant no corrections added. 😥
Re: Clicking from X/Y-axis stepper motors when idle during print
Thank you very much for posting the solution to this issue! I was having the same problem with my 1 - 2 month old MK2S kit, became WAY more evident when I put it in a sturdier aluminum extrusion Full Bear frame (I assume because there were less other artifacts masking it now.)
Anyways, I found that when I put my fingers on the x or y gear pulleys, when they were supposed to be idle they did indeed 'tick' or 'twitch' what seemed to be perfectly in line with the vertical lines I was seeing on my single wall cubes. I was lucky enough to find your post here. My xyz cal said 0.05 degree skew, so one would assume that means no corrections applied. But, when I cleared the xyz cal info, redid z cal and printed with the skew correction definitely 'off' in the manner you described here, no more lines! No more ticking! Thanks very much!
Re: Clicking from X/Y-axis stepper motors when idle during print
This is very interesting, thanks for finding this and sharing it!
But Patrizio is right, according to Prusa there is no adjustment under 0.12° skew, so why are we seeing this?