I’m currently awaiting some parts, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Starting about a week and a half ago, just after things started working, things stopped working reliably. Isn’t that always the case? In particular, the x-axis would “slip”. What I mean by that is that the zero point would move, so instead of a box you’d get a broken box, part here and part there. Then it got worse, and worse. OK, it was broken.
Then the fun part starts. You contact tech support. But remember, this is not a toy for the layperson, it really isn’t. You start debugging by working on what’s going on, checking various things out. Is the belt slipping? No? OK, the motor isn’t working right? Is the driver ok? Not the driver? You verify the voltages on the drivers because you just know they’ll want to know and you try the spare driver because you want to rule that out. Oy! You check that the motor windings are ok. There’s a lot to check. I ended up looking up how stepper motors work. Interesting and much simpler than I might have thought.
Finally I got tired of this and asked that they send me the remainder of what could be wrong and I would return my parts and they could debug and use them for whatever. It was down to the arduino board, which is a little computer board, or a ramps board, which is an interface between the arduino and the motors, sensors and other components of the printer.
The parts are due tomorrow. While I’m at it, since I have to rewire anyway, I bought some nicer mesh tubing to hold the wires together and protect them and rerouted the wires better. Now all I can do is wait patiently for tomorrow and hope nothing else goes wrong. For good measure I bought spare wire and connectors from Amazon so I have the ability to replace a cable if I have to. For $10 it was worth it.
My Gifted Life 