Extruder stepper juddering back & forwards
After printing virtually none stop for 3 months I had a problem, my filament cooling fan's wire fatigued & broke internally, my Pinda probe also stopped working when I removed the cooler so I replaced the fan & rewired the Pinda probe, I self tested & recalibrated my printer.
I had only a very short length of filament in my extruder so I clicked unload, the filament came out a short way & stopped, I pulled it out the rest, hit load filament & couldn't get my filament to load, I removed the filament & hit load again & looked in the side to see my extruder juddering backwards & forwards, it's not even getting 1 cog rotation with no filament inserted & the tension bearing removed. Have I messed my extruder motor up, burnt out the extruder on my main board or could it be something else, fatigue on the extruder wires maybe?
About a month ago the Pinda probe crashed into some warping ABS that resulted (unknown to me at the time) in the 3mm Filament used to zip tie the cables to, being pulled out of the back of the extruder, hence the wires being put under more stress than they should be leading to the fatigue. So every time you have a head crash check this hasn't happened to your printer, I'm pulling my hair out unable to print anything, I'm going to have to use my CTC replicator clone if I can't get my Prusa working, not something I'm looking forwards to but I need to finish some models I'm in the middle of, I am dreading having to go back to something so inaccurate again 🙁
Re: Extruder stepper juddering back & forwards
Ok, found out what it causing it, after most of the day taking the extruder to bits & putting it back together to get random judders, I just heated the extruder up, hit load fillament:- Random jutters, squeeze the cable... It starts loading, take hand off :- judders! looks like the cable has fatigued as well! bugger! I really wish I could just buy replacements with the correct ends that are the correct length, I'm going to have to solder some patch wires in (where is my multi meter, I could do with only patching the cables that are broken)
So If your extruder started juddering randomly you have probably got a broken or part broken wire!
Re: Extruder stepper juddering back & forwards
Am back printing again, after replacing 2 wires on the Extruder, 2 wires from the parts fan and 3 wires from the Pinda probe.