Need help! Printer has gone haywire

hihi657 2019-10-07 08:02:40 UTC #1

Hello!

I've always thought of my 3D printers as worker bees laboring away on their little prints. I've dealt with every stripe of issue from mechanical to electrical and filament, and printed hundred of parts on many printers including this one. But always with the knowledge that the printer was fulfilling its code like a dutiful little worker bee.

However, if I was to keep with this analogy, then I would say my printer has been on a bender of honey mead and is drunk AF. Everything is cherry, bed is leveled, belts tightened, the filament system is vetted and perfect. I cannot figure out what's causing it, but symptoms are.....

Nozzle is unable to make straight lines where it's supposed too, then can do perfect outlines other places WTF???. Drifts off of the part when shading or filling in regions no longer staying in the lines. Momentarily pauses and restarts, error correcting and printing perfect 1 layer and being 1cm off the for 10 seconds of the next. I've never seen anything like it.

I've already tried different parts, calibration stuff, checked all the wiring, printed with USB and by Card. It seems mostly on the X axis where I'm having troubles. I thought maybe it was just that particular....idk. Y seems to print as expected. I'm thinking about replacing the driver. But before I move to more nuclear options I wanted a second opinion.

It's a disaster because I'm under a deadline for some parts i'm printing, and I have no other printer that can pass muster for sheer size of the part I need printed.

PLEASE HELP

carefudundae 2019-10-07 20:26:36 UTC #2

Some options:
1) driver went bad (this is the easy to fix one)
2) linear rails need lubed/cleaned
3) intermittent snapped wire in electrical harness somewhere (this is the hardest one to track down and fix, or even confirm that its the cause... may work in a given x,y position, but not in another. could also be temp dependent)

hihi657 2019-10-07 21:54:28 UTC #3

Thanks for the reply,

I did lube the rails, and I checked the wiring, so drivers it is!

Let me try that!

carefudundae 2019-10-11 18:56:04 UTC #4

did you have any luck?

Starman37121 2020-01-12 15:55:17 UTC #5

A remote possibility.....Watch, while it is printing, to see if there is slack in the filament during rapid axis movement.
If the axis movement tugs at the spool, it can cause the axis to lose location by small, sometimes large amounts.
I had a lot of trouble with this in the beginning. I solved it by adding a duplicate feeder motor, in parallel, at my enclosure top, near the spool. When I load the filament, I put enough slack to reach the farthest point of my print job.
I haven't had any problems, since.