Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

Hi everyone! I really love reading through some of these forums and seeing what everyone is working on, and I'm very excited to get started on some of my own projects! I've run into a glitch though, and wonder if anyone can help me out. Here's the situation (sorry if it's long-winded):

I recently completed building the Rostock Max v2 and was really excited to start printing the first piece: the EZfan Shroud. I was about halfway into the print, and it was looking beautiful, when my printer stopped. This seemed to be due to the fact I was printing from my laptop and not from an SD card. After copying the file to the card, I started the print job again, and it seemed to start fine by heating the nozzle and bed, but then when it started printing, it printed up in the air. It was a big tangle of extruded filament. I stopped the print job, turned the printer back on, and tried to send the carriages home, but the x-axis carriage got stuck halfway up and made a terrible stuttering sound. Now none of the carriages seem to be working right. I did take the covers off and found the motors to be very hot. I can't find anything physically impeding the belt. I let the machine cool completely overnight and tried homing the carriages again this morning, but it's still not working right. Any ideas?

Hi Ellen, I moved your post to troubleshooting.

What OS are you using? One gotcha is auto screen saver. When this kicks in, it stops communication to the printer so the print fails. You can disable auto screen save.

When you started printing from the card, did you home before starting the print? If your X carriage got stuck then you have a mechanical binding problem (and that could have caused the earlier problem of printing in the air). Sounds like you need to loosen the eccentric on the carriage a bit. The stuttering is the stepper motor skipping steps. It is basically harmless. Steppers get hot so that is likely not an issue.

When you say "not working right" this morning, precisely what do you mean? To get the best and quickest help you need to be clear and concise and complete - include what OS you use for your host, what control software, etc.

cheers,
Michael

Another idea on the stuck carriage...

First, with the machine turned off - can you VERY SLOWLY move the carriages up & down by hand without binding? The reason for SLOW is that the steppers actually act like little generators and feed current back to the RAMBo when you move them. Ideally you would disconnect the stepper from the RAMBo to do this but if you move them slowly you'll be ok. Too fast and you could blow the RAMBo.

Hi Michael. Thanks for your reply.
I'm using MatterControl on a Mac. Someone else also suggested that the screen saver might have been the problem with the initial print, that's why I switched to the SD card. One thing I didn't do, however, was to hit disconnect on my computer before the print job started again from the SD card. Could that have screwed things up?
As far as the problem with the carriages goes, I did home them before starting the 2nd print. I have tried moving the carriages, slowly, with the power off. Z and Y move smoothly, but X feels bumpy or sticky in spots. Perhaps "loosening the eccentric" would help, as you suggested before. Can you give me a hint how to do that?
By "not working right" this morning I simply mean that it's doing the same thing as yesterday.
Thanks so much for you help!

Yup, I use a Mac and the screen saver WILL stop your print. You can configure it so one of the corners disables it. I simply move my mouse pointer to the upper right corner of the screen and the saver is disabled.

I don't think staining connected will cause a problem. I do that all the time. Just don't try to do anything from MC!

Yes, it sounds like you have binding on X. The carriages have two wheels on one side and one wheel on the other. As I recall, the side with one wheel are on an eccentric axle so you can adjust them to remove excess play but not be too tight. Take a look at Gene's manual at the carriage section, I am sure it is well detailed.

Great! I'll try that. Thank you!