Z Axis will not calibrate (resolved before posting)
Last night I printed a couple of headphone hangers and when I looked at them this morning I noticed the first few layers were goofy and stuttered. Slight elephants foot even. Honestly after the first five or six prints going beautifully I fired off the print and was hardly paying any attention to the printer. Perhaps a might cocky on my part. So I printed off a little toy this evening at 0.3mm DRAFT. It printed the first layer kind of crappy so I adjusted Z on the fly. Had to get the Z closer on the first pass as it was apparently high now. Printer had not moved physical locations or anything. The first layer displayed that same sputtery crappy adhesion which is why I got the nozzle closer to the bed. That fixed the issue by the end of the first layer and I let the print run. CAme out fairly clean but not as nice as my first half dozen prints. I mostly chalked this up to the 0.3 DRAFT settings so I figured I would do a calibration. And fire off a new print at 0.2 QUALITY. So I went ahead with the calibration wizard to start from scratch. The Fans check clean everytime. X fails about half the time (saying something about the cable length). The Y runs clean every time. Then the Z axis runs all the way to the top and tries to keep going then fails. It says the sensor fails and to check the nozzle for debris. But why is it running all the way up and complaining about the sensor failing? I hooked up with pronterface and had the Z step manually. It looks like the Z motors are firing out of sync with each other. If I step the Z by 1mm in either direction a few times I can see the left motor pull the X axis out of level. It appears the left motor is stepping farther than it should. If I have the printer powered on and try to manually turn the screw rods the left wont budge (unless I really grab on tight) but the left will move fairly freely...............................................................................................................
And here is the valuable lesson. CHECK EVERYTHING. AS I typed out the above issues I was working through everything trying to figure out what in the heck was going on. I ended up at that last bit where I noticed that under power the right screw would turn freely even when it should be under power. I cracked open the case to swap the Z motor cables to see if the board might be screwed up. The plug for the right Z stepper had COMPLETELY popped out. So it was completely disconnected. Not sure how long it was like that. I considered wiping out this post but valuable lessons should be shared eh?