Artillery Sidewinder X1 - X movement shonky.

[Chinners]

Hi All,
As usual first post, and it's a request for help/advice.

I inherited an Artillery Sidewinder S1 a good few years back. I have modified the printer soas it is compatible with the BL-Touch using the Waggster mod. It has been running fine for the few years I've had it.

Recently the X-Axis has developed a bit of a mind if it's own, unable to decide whether it wants to move left or right. It went bad during a print so I hoped a restart of the printer would fix it. Nope - it exhibited this same behaviour when running the home procedure.

It also goes wrong when manually moving through the "move" menu item. In this attached video, I've tapped away at the move right button, but as you can see, it's a bit random and very loud.



I've replaced the motor and stepper, removed the extruder to ensure it is all clean but haven't been able to find anything. When the power is turned off, the head moves silky smooth when pushed.

Any advice would be appreciated.


Quick Edit,
I connected the old motor back up under no load and tried moving the head via the LCD screen - it still moves in a random fashion:

[CrazyIvan]

I've replaced the motor and stepper

Not sure what you mean by that, "stepper" is short for "stepper motor", so the "stepper" and the "motor" are one and the same thing.

Stepper motors are dumb, they simply react to electrical signals sent to them and return no information to the controller board. If the motor's rotor were blocked from moving in one direction, it could move in the opposite direction than commanded, but as two motors behave in the same way that possibility seems to be ruled out.

The only remaining possibility is that there is something wrong with the controller board, possibly a faulty firmware update.

[Antipodean]

I've replaced the motor and stepper

The only remaining possibility is that there is something wrong with the controller board, possibly a faulty firmware update.

My suspicion would be that a transistor driving one phase of the stepper motor has died, either short or open circuit depending on the winding arrangement in the motor.

If you have an electronics bent then replacing the motor driver transistors is reasonably easy, otherwise get a replacement driver board.