Extrude stepper motor stop mid print

winstondon · October 13, 2015, 9:30pm

Hey guys, I am back.

Lately I noticed my ZeePro extruder stepper motor stops half way while undertaking some larger prints. The other motors are still working hard, but just printing air.

I am using simplify3D to slice, and transferring the G-code to Octoprint, I also tried to slice with slic3r to see if it was a g-code problem… the print still stop midway.

Have anybody encounter this?

Most prints that takes 1-2 hours are okay, I noticed it on larger prints (3 hours or more).

When I noticed it is printing air, I stop it and try extruding some filament, doesn’t work. but after I restart OctoPrint and ZimBoard the motor extrude again.

Thanks in advance~

KingMartin · October 14, 2015, 8:09am

Bad Prints all of a sudden

This could be so many things.But just to throw in some problems I ran into:- if you are still using the top cover, remove it and the PTFE tubes from the hooks left and right, so that the bending is reduced; with my Zim the bending of the tubes is too much if the head is in the front area due to too much friction- or remove the tube altogether and try directly feeding from the top to see if its dust in the tube- check the upper motor working fully in different head positions; with my Zim my cable is damaged so that in the front right area the upper motor stops working and the lower is not strong enough to completely push it past the top motor- check temperature readings- checl lower and upper motor working properly and the filament is running free and does not need force- try higher temperature- try higher and lower extrusion multiplier- try slower or faster head moving speed, thus resulting in slower or faster extrusion- turn off cooling- check for partially clogged nozzle- try different filament, maybe this one just has problems

Most likely I would say are the following two things:
1.) your thermistor is defective: mine was reading the temperature wrong sometimes but never at room temperature so no way to discover that: changed the thermistor and everything is fine again
2.) broken cable or bad connection: had a bad connection of a pin on the top cable just under the white bridge which holds the cable in place at the head. @3DPrintEvangelist also had a defective (broken) cable where also the printer stopped to extrude mid print

Pedro_Pereira · October 14, 2015, 12:17pm

Its because of posts like this one that im 100% sure that it Will take years before a 3d printer becomes “consumer grade”…

winstondon · October 28, 2015, 3:58pm

Thanks for the Reply guys.
Stepper motor stopping midway is indeed odd
Skeptical that it is bad wire connection… since restarting the Zimboard will make it work again.
And the temperature looks good monitoring from octopi

I am slicing with SImplify3D
Same G-file only with temperature difference hangs the PLA printer but not the one printing ABS. Leaves me thinking it is probably hardware problem; however… I am noticing, it has only happened on some of the STL I got from Thingiverse. I haven’t have any of the other parts that I make myself from Solidworks resulted in extruder stepper hang. Very odd!