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My Da Vinci Mini W is acting weird.
It started with my prints looking kinda bad, and the filament was making a “thugging” sound.
I cleaned the nozzle, adjusted the X-axis, cleaned the feeding module, trimmed the feeding tube, and changed the bed tape, but the prints still looked a little bad.

There’s also a loud machine noise when doing the auto-calibration. The noise can only be heard when the extruder is moving up and/or down during the calibration, and only sometimes. Like only during 3-4 of the “clicks” when calibrating.

Last week when I got back to check a finished print, the print was stuck on the extruder.
A lot of plastic had been pushed up into the extruder, so I had to open it up and remove the plastic.

Now, the prints look terrible. I can see that the extruder isn’t moving upwards enough, so it keeps printing plastic “inside” the print. And because the nozzle is hot, it ruins the print when the extruder moves.

I’ve tried adjusting the Z-offset, but that didn’t work.
The first layer is actually fine. It looks really good. It’s when the extruder moves upwards, it starts to look bad.

I’m pretty sure that the extruder isn’t moving upwards enough between layers. I don’t know the exact measurements, but it’s like instead of moving upwards 1mm each layer, it moves 0.7mm.

Hope someone can help me.

Regards
Jonas

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It does sound like it’s not moving along the Z axis enough. Can you adjust or swap the stepper motor drivers on the mini? I only have a Davinci 1 and don’t know the mini.

If you can you may be able to supply more voltage that might help push the motor that little extra.

Otherwise try really cleaning the Z axis, I don’t see why but something might be slowing it down.

Other than that I can only imagine a fix could be found using Repetier but that would require loads of work and I don’t see why you’d need to as this problem shouldn’t happen.

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Thanks for the reply. I don’t know if it’s possible to change the drivers, how to properly clean the Z-axis, or how to use Repetier. I have to look that up.

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No problem, don’t look at repetier, it requires flashing your printer and all sorts, not worth while till you feel or need it.

the drivers might be little modules on the motherboard, you can pull them out and move/ replace them on the older davinci but I am not sure about the mini.

Just remember that the drivers can go in upside down so make a not of which way around they are when you find them.

the z axis should be nothing more than a screw drive, maybe it needs a little oil or a screw is loose?

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Hello again. I just wanted to inform you that I got my printer working again. I cleaned everything, and put some new oil on the z-axis. I also tightened all the screws. It’s not exactly as good as before all the problems started though. The machine still does some loud machine sounds from time to time, and the print quality is a little worse. But it’s still acceptable, and it works! Thanks for the help Jonas

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That’s great to know. It’s odd how some benign things can cause such big issues but it’s good when it’s a simple fix.