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My never-ending battle with the stepper motor "click"
What you describe here is "kind of" typical if your feeder "stepper current" setting is to lo (normal current setting here is 1250 mA). When it come to a certain tension the stepper suddenly cannot hold the load anymore and when the stepper motor releases, the built-up pressure in the bowden pipe will act as a compression spring, so that the stepper motor loses many steps backwards.This means that you get low extrusion, because the pressure needed to provide the necessary extrusion suddenly disappears.
(Based on the fact this have been an ongoing issue over the years in your UM2..)
Another alternative are to slow down the printing speed, cause this will not ask for this "high" demand from the feeder.
Build your own gear box for your UM2.
A couple of very effective upgrade is to build a belt geared feeder using the same feeder unit (the black box) holding the knurled feeder wheel on it's own shaft 5 mm including a 32 (teeth) pulley that's also holding two bearings.
On the new stepper motor(200 step/rev) requested you'll need a 16 (teeth) pulley (5 mm) plus a belt (same as the short one used on the X / Y stepper motors).
The above is what I'm using. Of course, printed my own designed gearing house including a release handle to make ease feeding the filament past the feeder unit.
There is also another feature I'm using, - turning the feeder unit upside down. This will make the feeder to grab the filament on the inside of the "looped filament" arriving from the roll. This will increase the efficiency of the feeder system due to less friction.
Using this method, you will obtain a 2:1 gear that's double the torque with no need to change the firmware..
This is a very cheap way of improving your old UM2..
There is several other geared units around, so just find the one for you.
However, you may also upgrade by using the "UM2+" versions new feeder - this require a change in your firmware.
If you go for the full upgrade to "UM2+ Kit", including an Ollson block (w 4 different nozzles) plus a spacer to replace the compression spring, two new 6 mm axes and the new feeder.
Ofc., this kit also including a new stepper motor for the feeding unit -and last the plus sign to mark your printer UM2+.
Strap in for the first Cura release of 2024! This 5.7 beta release brings new material profiles as well as cloud printing for Method series printers, and introduces a powerful new way of sharing print settings using printer-agnostic project files! Also, if you want to download the cute dinosaur card holder featured below, it was specially designed for this release and can be found on Thingiverse!
S-Line Firmware 8.3.0 was released Nov. 20th on the "Latest" firmware branch.
(Sorry, was out of office when this released)
This update is for...
All UltiMaker S series
New features
Temperature status. During print preparation, the temperatures of the print cores and build plate will be shown on the display. This gives a better indication of the progress and remaining wait time. Save log files in paused state. It is now possible to save the printer's log files to USB if the currently active print job is paused. Previously, the Dump logs to USB option was only enabled if the printer was in idle state. Confirm print removal via Digital Factory. If the printer is connected to the Digital Factory, it is now possible to confirm the removal of a previous print job via the Digital Factory interface. This is useful in situations where the build plate is clear, but the operator forgot to select Confirm removal on the printer’s display. Visit this page for more information about this feature.
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Torgeir 238
Hi @flashphilm,
welcome in here.
What you describe here is "kind of" typical if your feeder "stepper current" setting is to lo (normal current setting here is 1250 mA). When it come to a certain tension the stepper suddenly cannot hold the load anymore and when the stepper motor releases, the built-up pressure in the bowden pipe will act as a compression spring, so that the stepper motor loses many steps backwards. This means that you get low extrusion, because the pressure needed to provide the necessary extrusion suddenly disappears.
(Based on the fact this have been an ongoing issue over the years in your UM2..)
Another alternative are to slow down the printing speed, cause this will not ask for this "high" demand from the feeder.
Build your own gear box for your UM2.
A couple of very effective upgrade is to build a belt geared feeder using the same feeder unit (the black box) holding the knurled feeder wheel on it's own shaft 5 mm including a 32 (teeth) pulley that's also holding two bearings.
On the new stepper motor(200 step/rev) requested you'll need a 16 (teeth) pulley (5 mm) plus a belt (same as the short one used on the X / Y stepper motors).
The above is what I'm using. Of course, printed my own designed gearing house including a release handle to make ease feeding the filament past the feeder unit.
There is also another feature I'm using, - turning the feeder unit upside down. This will make the feeder to grab the filament on the inside of the "looped filament" arriving from the roll. This will increase the efficiency of the feeder system due to less friction.
Using this method, you will obtain a 2:1 gear that's double the torque with no need to change the firmware..
This is a very cheap way of improving your old UM2..
There is several other geared units around, so just find the one for you.
However, you may also upgrade by using the "UM2+" versions new feeder - this require a change in your firmware.
If you go for the full upgrade to "UM2+ Kit", including an Ollson block (w 4 different nozzles) plus a spacer to replace the compression spring, two new 6 mm axes and the new feeder.
Ofc., this kit also including a new stepper motor for the feeding unit -and last the plus sign to mark your printer UM2+.
Just my thoughts.
The choice is all yours.
Thanks
Torgeir
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Torgeir 238
Hi @flashphilm,
Here's two links how I've made a geared stepper for the filament feeder system.
You'll also see several other improvements you can do if you like.
Most of this work done in 2016 and still working great. 🙂
Thanks
Torgeir
Correction of text.
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