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Hello fellow 3D printer peeps,


I'm facing an issue where my stepper motor gets pretty hot, i'd say 80C and above. I've been running PLA on this printer and noticed that it just begins to melt 50minutes+ in which the stepper motor starts to melt the PLA and clogging occurs. So far the hot end is doing the job, I've gotten good small prints but I'd like to use the whole printing area of the Rostock. Some possible reasons why I think its getting hot:

-Awhile ago the extruder motor wouldn't grip the filament so I added a little plastic tab on the spring to increase the compression, doing so helped it feed filament through consistently, however the clogging occurred (over working the motor I presume), so I removed the tab and coincidently the extruder gear still grabs the filament fine. So now I'm back to using this extruder setup with the original spring/gear setup (Also this is the original extruder that came with the printer). The motor still gets too hot! I think I may have "overworked" the motor when the plastic tab was in there such that its heating up now more than ever.

-The gear is worn? I haven't replaced the gear in over 3ish years, but like I said it's still grabbing consistently, there's no un-even filament lines when it prints it just gets hot.

I'm thinking of replacing the stepper motor, I've looked at other posts that people have adjusted the current in the repetiar arduino config.h file. If i recall the format has something along the lines of

"#define MOTOR_CURRENT {140,140,140,130,0} // Values 0-255 (RAMBO 135 = ~0.75A, 185 = ~1A) use 140 for xyz and 130 for the E if using Kysan motors and 175 xyz and 200 if using wantai motors"

Regardless, I'm not sure where to go about. Do I replace the stepper motor? Or upgrade the extruder stepper motor/rig (I'll have to change the firmware again)? Add a heatsink? What have fellow other Rostock user's have done (If any Max V2 users could help)?

The simplest thing you could try is sticking a heat sink on to the back of the stepper motor. You can hit Amazon and search for "stepper motor heatsink" and see a lot of options. This may be a good choice: https://www.amazon.com/Easycargo-Heatsi ... B07N5M94NT

g.

Thanks for the input, I just ordered a stepper motor heatsink with a fan, trying that out. Something I noticed the other day, I took off the extruder component off the motor, so no load and commanded the motor to move 10mm through matter control. I noticed that after it extrudes, current is still drawing into the motor and it begins to heat up without commanding it to move again. I suspect the motor is going, or I have to adjust the current going into the motor through the firmware. I might use a different slicer and run a print to see how the extruder heats up. (Also with the heatsink on and get back!)

I wouldn't adjust the current - it may cause the extruder to skip.

The motor will continue to draw power as it's being "held" in the current position. It may be that there's a winding going, but the heat sink may extend its life a while - or at least keep it from getting so hot as to cause material problems.

g.

Yea, I just added a heatsink, I'm thinking because it prints small prints well until it heats up that the firmware side is "good". I just ordered a stepper motor to replace it, the heatsink only extended the printing duration ever so slightly till it gets hot. I got a fan that i'll be adding on the extruder, moving the current heat sink onto the new stepper motor and let you know if this fixes it!

\o/