MakerGear Forum

Hi Guys,

I am a new m2 owner, I've had my M2 for only a couple of months. One issue I noticed pretty quickly, but after my first few prints was that I has missed a zip-tie underneath the print bed. This caused a bunch of rubber to shred off the pulley located there. The strange thing is that once before & after my printer was printing awesome : I printed a really cool twisted vase, and a small gearless heart from thingiverse with no issues.

Then I started to print a large gearless heart and all was still going well, I was able to print all but two pieces. Since then however I haven't been able to complete the print, they will start out & then after a short bit start to 'shift'. I've recently tried my best to re-level the bed & z-stop and believe those are good, but the problem persists.

Do I need to replace those pulley's ? and if so, where can I get new ones ?

Please be patient with me as I'm trying to understand everything with this, but it can seem a bit complex at times. Any help is of course appreciated. Thanks.

Jeff

can you post pictures of the damage?

these small black plastic dots are what wore off of the pulleys, they don't actually look that bad - but maybe they are damaged enough to start causing the prints to shift ? and also added is a picture of the shifting I'm experiencing on one of the last few prints I made.

Make sure it's not the print that's wrong. I distinctly remember one of the heart gears being non-manifold and producing a weird shift every time I printed it, until I found a replacement version on Thingiverse that somebody had cleaned up. Shifting at exactly the same place every time is a symptom of something wrong with the print. That was several years ago, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to find the same bad non-manifold objects still there on Thingiverse.

Otherwise, is the shift always in the Y direction?

The belts are really hard to damage (someone recently posted a picture of one with a serious defect in it, but that was a unique experience as far as I know). Skipping is more likely to be caused by a loose set screw on the gear on top of the motor. If something was catching the belt enough to start shredding bits off of it, then it could potentially work the set screw loose after a while.

I'm curious as to what's rubbing against the belt. I don't have any zip ties on the Z stage at all except one in back that keeps the wire harness from moving around too much. But that wire harness has a short lead to the Y motor, so it can't get anywhere near the belt.

Tim, I've very new to all of this, do you have a recommendation for something that should be an easy print, and also help us diagnose the issue ?

Jeff

Take a look at the extruder, are you able to twist the whole printhead (which sits in a printed clamp)? Dont mind the belt, 99 percent of the work is done by the fibres within the belt which give the strength. This is my guess from this small part as these small motions dont create much force to the belt but the extruder pulling filament from the spool creates a twisting force.

On the otherhand its possible that connection between a stepper and the driver has some issues or the current is to low to give the stepper enought strengh not to loose a step.

Ingo

The nozzle seems like it will turn, not the whole print head (part that is in the printed clamp). Is that OK ? Also if it is a driver or current issue, how do I go about correcting these, I'm really wanting to get back to where I can print again ?

classicvideogamer wrote:do you have a recommendation for something that should be an easy print, and also help us diagnose the issue ?

There's always the bracelet and glider prints that MakerGear presumably still put on the SD card when they ship. The bracelet may be too simple to seriously stress-test anything; your other choice is to re-print one of the gears that you successfully printed earlier. Has this slippage/offset occurred on several different printed objects, or occur in different places on the same object?

What do you use for your slicer? If you use Simplify3D, then you can usually trust the tool path view to be correct. If you use slic3r/pronterface, then you don't see the result until it prints, although there are tool path previewers out there (I have used only Simplify3D for previewing; somebody else will have to suggest to you what previewers are available).

http://gcode.ws

Which model are you trying to print?

Make sure your belts are fairly taut (but not TOO taut; I know, not very helpful), you don't have a crack in the motor mount that will cause your extruder to be able to shift at all as Kulturfolger said (you said it could turn; does that mean laterally?) and definitely check your gear set screw (remove the fans to expose the extruder drive gear, make sure you can't wiggle it on the motor shaft; if you can, tighten the set screw with the smallest allen key that came with the printer, and use some loctite to keep it from happening again).

Maybe you could print something and take a video. Or I could create a file, just select a Thing and say if you use ABS oder PLA.