Stepper Motor Driver Broken?

JohnOldman

@phaedrux So far I've not been able to recreate the issue connecting the extruder to that driver and I'm not really comfortable connecting the z motor to it again because last time the issue occurred, it almost broke my BLTouch. I did however realize, that I had debug loggin on when the issue was still arising. I can pinpoint a few times in the logs when it occurred because of

Error: Probe already triggered at start of probing move

However, there are no relevant error or warning messages anywhere in the vicinity. So it appears that whatever was happening with the driver, the board did not detect an issue.

Phaedrux

Well if the extruder works on that driver at least we know the driver is still functional.

@johnoldman said in Stepper Motor Driver Broken?:

Error: Probe already triggered at start of probing move

That sounds un-related, but may indicate some interference with your BLtouch wiring.

JohnOldman

@phaedrux
Sorry, I think I didn't explain properly. The error popped up because the bed was severely slanted due to the issue. So I know that the issue occurred just before this error popped up.

And the driver is definitely not completely dead. But the fact that it stopped working intermittently makes it unusable.

Phaedrux

@johnoldman said in Stepper Motor Driver Broken?:

And the driver is definitely not completely dead. But the fact that it stopped working intermittently makes it unusable.

It sounds more like an intermittent connection or wiring issue.

JohnOldman

@phaedrux That's what I thought at first but I checked the wiring multiple times without any effect and the moment I plugged it into the other driver, the error never came up again.

Phaedrux

Can you grab some photos of the driver chip and connector on both sides of the board?

Have you tried connecting just that Z motor and binding only that single motor to Z and testing its movement?

JohnOldman

@Phaedrux

Photos below. The problem with recreating is that it only showed up every few hours, so I don't see how I can reproduce it without trying to print something, which in turn would come with a significant risk of damaging the probe, printhead, or bed...

Phaedrux

@johnoldman said in Stepper Motor Driver Broken?:

I don't see how I can reproduce it without trying to print something, which in turn would come with a significant risk of damaging the probe, printhead, or bed...

My suggestion is to have the z motor on the driver not connected to anything physically on the printer at all for testing. If it takes a long time to happen, setup a gcode file that simply moves the axis in question back and forth at various speeds and then copy and paste the commands many times to create a long running file.

dc42

@johnoldman said in Stepper Motor Driver Broken?:

I have a RatRig V-Core 3 with a duet 3 mini 5+ and a 2+ expansion board. I kept getting an issue where the rear z motor would suddenly stop turning, mostly between prints. No error message or anything.

You haven't shared your config.g file yet so I can't see what motor current you have set. The other possibility is that the driver chip is overheating and going into thermal shutdown - although normally you would see an error message when that happens.

Next time it happens, run M122 so we can check the status of that driver. If you have a spare stepper motor, connect that to the driver and configure your machine as if you have dual Z motors, so that a problem with that driver won't affect the print..

JohnOldman

@Phaedrux I didn't have the option to set up the motor in isolation (would have required pretty significant disassembly) but I created some gcode to move the axis up and down and ran it for about 4 hours. This doesn't seem to have triggered the issue. Not quite sure what else to try since the only situation that would somewhat consistenly cause this issue also comes with significant risk of damage as well as losing prints part-way...

@dc42 My M906 is

M906 X1000 Y1000 Z800 I30