Greetings. I did not wish to appear as though I was co opting Craynerd's thread, so I decided to start my own. I have been building this printer for a few months now. It is composed of a RAMPS 1.4 and running on pronterface. It is 1.5 foot square and is this large because it will eventually be a small recycling/ manufacturing center. At the base opposite the ATX power supply will sit a plastic grinder/ extruder that will make the plastic filament needed from old bottles. It will be similar to the grinder found at
www.filabot.com. There will also be a 3D scanner attached that will use the build platform as the scanning platform based on the scanner similar to the concept from
www.david-laserscanner.com. It currently runs off a netbook that has the CAD program on it.
Anyway, I do have a question to ask. The Z axes stepper motors are not working correctly. With one attached, it will run fairly well, but after a while it starts to stutter. With 2 Z axes steppers attached, they generally won't rotate at all, or at the most one or to rotations and then stop. The only way to fix it is to turn off the power supply and unplug the Arduino, then plug it all back in. Based on a suggestion by jgroom, I turned my attention to the stepper drivers. The y axes is so hot that I can't touch it, but the others are fine. I was wondering how to adjust the potentiometers, and if being out of wack would cause the excess heat and bad rotations?
Sorry for being so long winded!