Upgraded to HE280 and extruder stepper not working

[abigroot]

A little background here, I'm new to 3d printing and this forum. I had purchased a Rostock from Ebay and was told it had been upgraded to Max V2. Needless to say, I'm having my doubts on this. Regardless of that, I wanted to upgrade to the new he280 head and basically re-wire the whole thing. The previous owner had spliced and just twisted wires for connections and I was having none of that. Purchased the assembled HE280 and the whip and went about redoing the wiring. I haven't touched the ezstruder wiring at all, just removed the cover and feed wheel to clean it out. Near as I can tell, I have a Rambo 1.1b board and that was when the realization hit me. This is no where near what it was told to be.

After connecting everything and following the instructions I had to invert all three axis which wasn't too bad, but the stepper for the filament advance is just plain not working. I even plugged two new stepper moors which still have the connectors connected (not cut off and reassembled on longer leads) and still nothing. Can someone point me towards where I should look to get pictures and information to this topic to straighten this out. I will take pictures and screen shots and post them here to assist in troubleshooting.

first off, i need o make sure my wiring is correct. In the picture of the board, I have both new steppers connected to see about correct wiring. in the next two pictures, I wanted to show the wring I am working with. the way it is wired is absolutely wonky at best. plug side green, red, black, white. the connection on the motor side is (plug to motor) Black to Blue, Red to Green, Green to red, White to Yellow. This effectively makes it pin 1 on the motor red, green, Blue, Yellow. Confusing, but not sure that is the issue.

Again, I'm getting zero movement out of the steppers, any of them which leads me to believe that the settings are off and for that, see the screen shots below. Technical things do not scare me, I was able to decipher the inverting of the axes, but this stumps me. Can someone help me or give me something to move this into the "movement but needs adjustment" category?

[abigroot]

A little more investigating:

If in the settings EXT0_ENABLE_ON is true, I get resistance on the motor as if it is engaged, if EXT0_ENABLE_ON is false, the motor freewheels as if not engaged.

More to come as I try a few things.

[geneb]

From how the RAMBo is mounted, the chassis you've got is a V1. Did it come with injection molded carriages? Did the arms use plastic u-joints or metal ones?

V1 and early V2 machines used metal u-joints on the arms. These can bind over time if not properly lubricated. Later revisions of the V2 went to acetal u-joints that no longer had binding issues. The final rev of the V2 used injection molded carriages and ball & socket arms - the arm length was also increased.

The stepper motor connectors along the RAMBo go like this:

X Y Z Z E0 E1

There's two Z axis outputs as the RAMBo can be used to control other printer types - some cartiesians use two Z axis motors.

E0 and E1 are your extruder outputs. Unless you've got two extruders, you shouldn't have anything connected to E1. The photo you posted shows both E0 and E1 occupied.

If you want to test the function of the extruder motor, plug it into the 2nd Z axis output and home the machine. You should see the extruder motor move.

Do NOT unplug motors from the RAMBo board while it's on - you'll kill the stepper driver for that channel.

g.

[abigroot]

It has the injection molded carriages, so that should make it a V2.

I had both plugged in with the thought of "maybe the settings for the extruder are off, that was along shot at best.

I plugged it into the extra z axis and it does move. could that drive be fried? is it possible to use the z axis to drive the extruder in a re-direct fashion or use the second extruder port in the same fashion?

[geneb]

You can't re-purpose the 2nd Z output as it's wired to the first one.

You can tweak the firmware to treat E1 as if it was E0 though. Unfortunately, I don't know where that change needs to be made. I'm sure someone here can help though.

Do you have the ball & socket arms as well?

g.

[abigroot]

Thanks, I may just end up ordering a new board being as I do not know where this one has been, but if I could use ext1 instead, I might try that.

Yes, it has the ball ends as well.

It just looks like an old frame. I see signs of a heat incident in it as well. I might be ordering more parts as well.

[Qdeathstar]

If you're buying a new board anyway, I'd consider the duet...

[NorthOfSkepty]

I thought my extruder wasn't working after installing the HE280... turned out it the firmware just doesn't turn it on until it's up to temps... thankfully only about 30 minutes of my life was wasted before I discovered that...

[abigroot]

I'm going to hang out in the DUHHH! corner. yes, the extruder feed works when the temp comes up. Somehow I missed that and heating anything up was further down my list when doing initial checking. Everything works perfect. The auto calibration program is the easiest thing to do and the results are exactly what is needed for perfect prints. Whoever had this unit before me had a smaller and probably the cheapest computer power supply in it and when heating everything up and going to move things, the power supply would cut out. It was listed as 12 volts and 16 amps. I swapped it out (along with the rats nest of wiring) to a meanwell 12 volt 29 amp model and everything is coming up Milhouse!!

[geneb]

\o/

[t3chkommie]

THIS also got me. after getting some PLA up to about 180 the extruder started working as expected. this got be pretty bad... several hours and a seemecnc troubleticket open.

now I need to figure out why my screen is messed up...