I just got an old Ender 3 for cheap and wanted to replace the crappy extruder with a nicer bowden extruder of my (now) direct drive Kobra Max. When I connect the new stepper, nothing moves. It’s a longer stepper and a different manufacturer. Is the wiring different or VREF wrong or are there other reasons why it wouldn’t move? The driver is good, since the old stepper is still working.

Thanks for any help!

  • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    Just to give more details, NEMA 17s can have 4, 5 or 6 wires. 4 wire versions are bipolar while the 5 and 6 wire versions are unipolar. While it would be nice if NEMA 17s were all the same, they aren’t. The standards apply to dimensions but not electrical specifications. Windings will change from manufacturer to manufacturer but are ultimately limited by its size. Because of this, all NEMA 17s will be capped in torque to a degree. Increase the case size with a NEMA 23 and you get more space for more windings, etc.

    More info here: https://www.etechnophiles.com/guide-to-nema-17-stepper-motor-dimensions-wiring-pinout/

    Edit: All this said, it doesn’t matter too much if steppers are mismatched. It’s just a matter of tuning voltage and steps. I prefer to have the same steppers in a project since it is much easier to configure that way.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      To clarify what I meant, the Pinouts are all standardized- or should be. OP shouldn’t have any issue slotting in the old wires (unless it’s a different wire count, of course.)

      If it is a different number of wires OP will certainly be having a hard time adapting it… (that becomes a firmware issue; and I just don’t want to know the headache a creality main board will cause with that.)

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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        11 months ago

        Pinouts aren’t standardized in my experience. You get 4 wires but the color and position can be different. OP can easily use a multimeter to find the two pairs and then use different combinations to find the correct placement (1A,1B,2A,2B - 1A,1B,2B,2A - 1B,1A,2B,2A - etc)

      • callcc@lemmy.worldOP
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        11 months ago

        Pinouts are not standard (at least in practice). I’ll downvote your post for it to not appear on top.