greenarrow

My machine is working again with the DRV8825! I got four from Ebay (seller tenovo2010) for £12.50 from China. Had to adjust the micro stepping jumpers as these boards use a different configuration: http://reprapworld.com/datasheets/datasheet%20drv8825.pdf Otherwise it was a drop in replacement. First print happening now.

I've ordered a DRV8825 some hopefully I will have some success with that. I have tried several A4988 from different manufacturers, set them using Vref before applying load and none of them have worked. Perhaps I have some differently spec'd motors as I have a pretty early model (back when all the steel bars were the same thickness rather than the crossing bars being thinner).

Have you tried using the DRV8825 or are you just using the old driver still? My broken driver is irreparable so I'm just trying to find any driver that will work as the originals are no longer available. Thanks.

Hi. have you tried the replacement drivers from Ultimaker yet? I have had almost exactly the same problem with one of my drivers as you describe in your original post. The original drivers from Ultimaker that I have use the A4983 chip and I've tried several replacement drivers that use the newer A4988 chip with no success. I haven't had time to do any really in depth investigating but it seems like the new A4988 is shutting down due to one if it's new saftey constraints [that the A4983 does not have]. If this is a correct assertion then this points to the original A4983 being erranously used outside of specification. The A4983 is no longer made so I presume the Ultimaker drivers now use the A4988. I'd be interested to know if you've had any luck with the new Ultimaker drivers before I spend €16 on delivery.

Sorry to bump such an old thread but it does seem to follow. One of my original A4983 drivers packed up and I have been trying to replace it with a A4988. It is simply the driver at fault and all the other electonics is fine. This can be demonstrated by putting another original driver in the slot of the failed one. The problem is when I put a new A4988 the motor it powers the motor but just makes a lot of noise and doesn't move it. I presume this is the driver shutting down and starting up many times a second due to a "fault" that the original drivers tolerated. Has anyone else tried using the A4988 on an original Ultimaker?

Just got this working in Linux using the latest Cura and CuraEngine heads and I have to say it is amazing! It's fast and simple to use, and best of all the print quality beats the old Skeinforge backend. One of my biggest problems with the old slicer was the old holes coming out to small and having to fudge models to the right size: http://hydraraptor.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/polyholes.html I did a print just now with a 5mm diameter circular hole and it came out at 4.5mm. This is a lot better than Skeinforge and the remaining difference may just mean that I need to tweak my machine better. What are other people's experiences with the printed size of small holes on the new CuraEngine slicer?

@daid - If I was to add another washer then the large and small gears would only be bighting across about half their thickness. The small gear is already on the very end of the motor spindle to there is nowhere to move that. @yzorg - My machine is so reliable now that I have never had a single first layer issue since all these upgrades, hence I now trust the machine to just get on with it. Are you using the new thick bed?

I have an early Ultimaker (second pre-order batch) and a few months ago I went all out on the available upgrades. Before the upgrades I was experiencing a number of problems on a fairly regular basis. Now they are all fixed. These problems included: [*]Plugs in the hot end.[*]Fillament stipping (often after a plug).[*]Issues with bed flatness (had to always use rafts for objects > 5cm).[*]Bed height variable (had to manually jump it often).[*]Failed prints due to missed steps.As such I could not really leave the machine unattended, at least not around the start of the print. The upgrades I then made included the following: [*]New thicker build plate[*]New hot end[*]Hobbed bolt[*]Drive upgradeI had a few problems in the upgrades but these were overcome with some perserverence: [*]The thicker bed did not come with the longer bolts required to fit it.[*]The heater was a nightmare to get out the old aluminium block (came very very close to destroying it).[*]The drive upgrade did not fit the machine, had to file some of the bits of wood down.Then there was a revelation: During the upgrades I reallised that all the friction in my XY axes causing missed steps and failed prints was due to the rod end caps! I have since removed then and I have never had missed steps since! If you can't [while the power is off] easily move your print head around by hand, by holding the print head then you may have this same problem. I carried out all these upgrades a few months ago; since then: [*]I leveled the bed once.[*]Fillament stripping once (when printing very fast).[*]None other problems have occured.Before I had to attend the machine when I started every print, could never really get the bed level, often had first layer problems and always had to use rafts; now I never really look in on it until the print has finished and never use rafts. In conclusions: get all the upgrades!

I get these errors quite a bit, but it normally works after a couple of retires. No changes to input data, not running out of RAM.

Shameless self-promotion: http://matterq.org Or if you just want a simple command line program use austerus-send (use internally by matterQ): https://github.com/greenarrow/austerusG (probably Linux only)

Mine used to slip like this quite often. Then I switched from using grease to sewing machine oil on the rods and it has never happended since.

Mine used to do that too! I dismantled the fan and squirted a bit of the provided gease into the bearings. It has been almost silent ever since.

One word: Oil! After switching from the provided grease to Singer sowing machine oil I can finally print at Marlin default top speed / acceleration. Before this it would occasionally skip a few steps on a layer. Probibility tended to make this happed a long way into large prints. I still have a few reliability issues with the extruder so come a rainy day I will try the V2 hot end and V3 bolt (currently still using V1 bolt).

What speed are you printing at? When I've had missed steps adding more grease to the four outside rods has normally fixed it.

I use 230400 on Linux.

My machine slipped just like yours when I first got it. There where three things I changed: 1) I found one of the end caps on the rods was too tight preventing the rod from rotating as freely as it could. 2) I Greased up the outside rods really well. 3) I turned up the power a tiny bit using the adjusters on the stepper driver boards.