Issue with one of my Y axis stepper motors

CNC Machines Shapeoko
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Hi All,

I’m hoping the community might be able to help me with an issue that suddenly cropped up. My XXL has been working wonderfully the last couple years that I’ve had it, even this morning. When I went to use it this afternoon, while it was homing, it started making a grinding noise, similar to when it’s gone too far on an axis and starts skipping teeth on the belt. A little trouble shooting and examining later and I narrowed it down to the Y axis motor on the side the control board lives. Typically, when the machine is on, when I press against the gantry, I’m unable to make the machine move, the motors turn, or skip against the belt. However, that particular motor would turn when pressed against. I cleaned all the V wheels and pulleys, tightened all set screws, belt, and eccentric nuts, and still it made that grinding noise. I then removed the motor from the gantry and belt to see if it still continued when I attempted to jog in the Y axis. When jogged, it vibrated and ground while turning but what I noticed was that every time I stopped jogging and started again, the motor would turn in the opposite direction. Without that motor in place, the other motor moved the gantry and operated just fine.

Has anyone run across this problem before? I tried to include a video of the motor turning in opposite directions to give a better idea of what’s happening but the site wouldn’t let me and the .gif I created was too small to see what was going on.

Thanks for any help you might be able to provide!!

2

If the motor isn’t turning right, that’s either a connection issue, or a stepper driver gone bad.

Power down and swap the two Y-axis connectors — if the problem swaps sides, then the stepper driver on the controller has gone bad.

Let us know what you find out at support@carbide3d.com and we’ll do our best to work through this with you.

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Thanks Will,

I did as instructed by doing the swap (and contacting support). The problem remained in the affected motor, so I don’t think it’s the stepper driver.

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4

Since we swapped both wiring extension and motor it might be the wiring extension in this case — please check that possibility as well.

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I’d be willing to bet it’s the molex connector in the middle of the wire run from the stepper motor to the board.

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That appears to be it, as the affected motor ran just fine when plugged into another extension!

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