Y-Axis Failure
So my printer MK3S+ has been printing great with ~4 days of print time logged. Original prints all came out looking great (PLA and PETG) The past week I have been experiencing a large amount of Y-Axis failures along with filament runouts. This is causing visual issues in final prints. I have researched this and have not found a solution yet from searching, but have tried many things I have found.
Stats from last print (est 7hr print):
Filam. runouts - 9 (filament did not actually run out)
Crash - X 0 / Y 69
Print Prior (est 7hr print):
Power Failures - 1
Filam. runouts - 15 (filament did not actually run out)
Crash - X 0 / Y 60
Things I have done to check:
Checked belt tension: X 249 / Y 259
Checked rails: rails slide very well and if I tilt the printer back the bed moves the Y axis on its own.
Checked lubrication of Y rails: Light lube, again, slides very well and if I tilt the printer back the bed moves the axis on its own.
Checked Cable Clearances: All appear to have full motion and cables routed correctly.
Checked Cable plugs: Everything feals and appears tight.
Slicer/Gcode: Installed a fresh copy of slicer on a new computer and did a fresh slice with default settings. (Prusament PETG - Signal White)
I am not using an enclosure and have tried to keep the printer in a fairly cool area incase the Y motor was getting hot. Touching by hand when failures are happening the Y motor feels just like the X motor.
The link below shows a picture similar to my belt on the motor. Is there any chance printing a spacer and centering the belt more will help?
RE: Y-Axis Failure
The filament runouts are a symptom of a dodgy filament sensor. The lever arm/magnet setup on the MK3s is very critical to get it just right. To test that is is the filament sensor you can follow the troubleshooting steps here https://help.prusa3d.com/en/article/ir-filament-sensor-troubleshooting-mk2-5s-mk3s_112226/ A quick test is to simply turn it off from the printers lcd menu and try a print. If it doesnt have any runouts then you know its the sensor and so can take it to bits to fix it.
RE: Y-Axis Failure
@neophyl
Thanks, I will give that a try for a print I'm starting tonight. Right now I unload the filament every print and do not load it until prompted after bed leveling is complete.
Basically the printer completes sensing then when it goes to print recognizes filament is not loaded. At that point when it buzzes I load the filament. I have found this helps keep my nozzle clean with the PETG.
RE: Y-Axis Failure
One thing I will add is the Y axis failure does not seem to start out right away. I don't have exact times currently, but I would say roughly 1hr in it starts then progressively gets worse as the print goes on.
I plan to go buy a new SD card and try that as well.
RE: Y-Axis Failure
Update and changes:
I have updated firmware to 3.10.0.
I have taken the time to add a 5mm offset to the Y motor. This centered my belt on the gear.
I have ran two more prints since the above changes and have reduced the Y-axis failure to 25-30 per print.
I did not see a filament runout failure on these prints.
RE: Y-Axis Failure
Just a final update. I could not get the Y-axis crash to stop. I managed to reduce, but not stop. The crashes were causing poor prints so I ran a 10hr test print with the crash detection turned off and my prints are back to normal.
It appears a lot of other people have this issue, but don't get anywhere trying to fix it besides just turning the feature off.