Extruder gear suddenly not turning - stepping motor issue?

My very first print (simple 15mm cube to test) came out fine. 5 minutes later, sent the second print and everything seemed to be operating correctly... however the extrusion gear is not turning so no filament is being fed. Seems that the stepping motor is suddenly not functioning.

All other motors are functioning fine, and when I use MatterControl to move x/y/z axes, there's no issue, but nothing happens when I click Retract/Extrude. No noise out of the stepping motor. Pulled out the filament to see if perhaps there was some sort of obstruction but still nothing. I wonder if the motor is even powered.

Thank you for reading and for any ideas!

 

Ok let's try isolating the issue.

First step is removing all filament from your extruder

In the terminal in MC send:
M302
This will allow you to do a cold extrusion. You don't need to have your nozzle heated since we're not trying to feed through it.

After allowing your printer to cold extrude send this command to activate the stepper

G1 E50.0

This will tell it to "extrude" 50mm of filament.

Let me know if this works.

 

It said "OK" in the terminal but the stepping motor didn't move.

Thanks

 

Ok do this. Unplug the stepper motor from x and plug it into E0. Then Send the G1 E5.0 command . Let me know if X motor moves.

Following this plug E0 stepper into X and tell it to move X 10mm. Again let me know what this does.

What we're trying to isolate here is if the stepper motor or the stepper driver is faulty.

I should also add if you haven't done a full system reset you should do that before this.

 

Sorry Mike but I am an absolute beginner.

I assume by "stepper motor from X" you mean the stepper motor that controls the X axis movement located on the far right. What is E0?

Also by "full system reset" do you mean just power cycling my computer and the printer?

thanks

 

E0 is the extruder motor. You'll see it labeled on your ramps board as that. You are correct on X if right is to the 12v input connector. Also correct on the system reset

If it worked once it's either software or electronics.

 

I did as you said and when I pressed the Z+ button on MatterControl it did move the extruder gear.

 

What happens when you plug the X motor into the E0 port and tell it to extrude?

 

My mistake.

Should have written

"I did as you said and when I pressed the X+ button on MatterControl it did move the extruder gear."

 

I guessed as much, now we need to try the reverse of that. Try and move the x carriage with an extruder command

 

I plugged the X motor into the E0 port on the ramps board. When I send an extruder command from Matter Control, nothing happens. Strangely, when I send an X command, there are tiny movements along the Z axis.

 

Do you have a multimeter? Sounds as though you have a bad stepper driver. We should measure your voltage from here: http://i.imgur.com/wbo9IsZ.png

Please use http://www.robo3dprinter.com/pages/technical-support to get contact with team robo started in case we need a new driver.

 

Thanks for your time and guidance Mike.

 

I've recently had this problem occur twice, and after following the steps up to switching the motors on the board and switching back, the extruder motor comes back to life. The first instance was a couple days ago and it happened again last night. Do you think this could be a recurring problem and if so, would I need to replace parts?