MK3S extruder motor intermittently stops
My MK3 is 4-5 years old, was assembled by me from a kit, and has been rock solid forever, but lately my extruder motor seems to be intermittently malfunctioning. In the middle of a print, it will stop spinning. I have a visualizer widget connected to the motor shaft with a magnet so I am able to see any movement the motor shaft will make, but when this malfunction occurs, the motor stops entirely.
Sometimes this occurs during a print and then corrects itself. See the attached picture for one that happened today. You can see the layer where it decided not to extrude for a bit, and then resumed later.
If I stop the print and execute a filament unload, I can hear a whirring sound coming from the motor, but the motor shaft does not spin. If I pull on the filament with enough force during the unload, the motor comes back to life and will start working again. It will work again for perhaps hours, and then in the middle of another print, it might fail again.
Has anyone seen this? I have not found anything like it in the KB but it is not a heat creep issue. I do not have a stuttering or clicking extruder, it just stops working electrically until I either push or pull the filament.
Things I've already verified:
- Doesn't matter what filament. Been printing a lot of PLA recently and the spool of black Hatchbox I printed the example with is new and fresh from the package.
- The gear on the extruder shaft is tight.
- The tension on the filament at the extruder doesn't matter. Whether it's loose or tight, this malfunction occurs.
- This is not a heat creep issue. The motor simply stops spinning. There is no clicking or stuttering, just a dead motor.
- When this happens, I am able to open the extruder door and push filament through. The extruder is not clogged.
- Printer is running firmware 3.13.2 and I print entirely from Octoprint and have for years with no issues.
- Printer and Octoprint computer all run from a UPS so I have ruled out AC power as a problem.
Would love suggestions on what to try next.
RE: MK3S extruder motor intermittently stops
I'm having the same issue. Sometimes it will extrude for hours, sometimes it will stop after the first couple layers. Ender 3 V2 Neo with the 4.2.2 GS32F303 chip and T8 (TMC2208 stepper driver as far as I can tell). Hero Me 7.0 MRISCOC Sept 23 firmware
It seems to happen more when the print has more retractions. I printed 3 max volumetric flow tests from Orca no problem, that is a vase style model with little to no retraction.
I tried all these and still stopping mid print:
It's not a cooling issue at the mainboard, added a second fan and continues
not the wiring or stepper motor, tried 2, the OWM and the orbiter 2.0 LDO
not a clog because it's not grinding the filament at there extruder gears
reflashed the Firmware
tried all different voltages from 0.7 - 1.55 (1.55 per my calculations for the orbiter). If the voltage is too low, it skipped too much, towards the high side and it stops extruding eventually
I'm guessing my main board (or stepper motor driver) is on its way out. I actually bought an SKR E3 V3 but on a last ditch effort I reinstalled the OEM extruder and it was working well just long enough or me to return the board.... Now I'm thinking to get another creality board since I like the mriscoc and some other 'drop in' board sounds like to much effort at this point.
Did you figure out your issue?