ANET A8 steppers

cglass17

I just upgraded to the Duet3D WIFI board. Has anyone had any luck with getting the original ANET steppers being extremely quiet? Mine don't seem to be quiet and trying to figure out if they can be made quiet or if I actually need new steppers.

Wyvern

There is tuning you can do to iron out sound, but see if you are on 16X interpolation.

A lower impedance motor, at least in my case, is quieter than a higher one.

Running lower amps will also quiet the steppers, but you need to make sure it is operating well at whatever current setting you set.

cglass17

I have this for the microstepping
M350 X16 Y16 Z16 E16 I1 ; Configure microstepping with interpolation

I have tried
M906 X300 Y300 Z300 E300 I30
varying 300-1000.

They all seem to be the same.

On another note, I see everyone suggesting 16X interpolation. I am confused why this is the suggested setting vs 256.

Wyvern

@cglass17

You shouldn't really notice any change at 256 and it can seriously bog down the printer speed.

I did a test at 16X 16X with Interpolation and 32X

16X with interpolation yielded the best result.

It is beyond my scope but there should be a way to tune the drivers for reduced noise.

But your currents seem pretty low, what is your max amps on the steppers? you should probably run between 50-75%

cglass17

Based on reading 42SHDC3025-24B on the back of the stepper, I think these are the specs
https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/LMYSTAR-42-Stepper-Motor-17-Nema-42BYGH-1-8-0-9A-3-96V-with-90cm-Motor/32823911368.html

Wyvern

@cglass17
It's a higher impedance stepper, so it will loose torque quicker at high speeds.

.9A So I would at least run at .45A.

you could install stepper dampers if they fit, they will take a lot of the robotic noises out.

you could always go with better steppers, it's a smaller machine so you could also install some E3D .9 standard steppers- unless you are at 12V which I would still say run 1.8 degree steppers.

This is a data sheet for setup and description of stepper driver configuration- https://www.trinamic.com/fileadmin/assets/Products/ICs_Documents/TMC2660_datasheet.pdf

I haven't dabbled in using this so, I'm sure someone else will chime in.

cglass17

Yeah, I am already looking at other steppers. But before I bought new ones, I wanted to make sure I couldn't get these working.

dc42

@cglass17 said in ANET A8 steppers:

Based on reading 42SHDC3025-24B on the back of the stepper, I think these are the specs
https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/LMYSTAR-42-Stepper-Motor-17-Nema-42BYGH-1-8-0-9A-3-96V-with-90cm-Motor/32823911368.html

Yes, that's a low current stepper motor. The controller will need 24V power for it to run quietly and fast. Does the A8 use 12V or 24V?

wilriker

@dc42 The A8 has a 12V PSU.

@cglass17 I was upgrading my A8 as well and never really had big issues with the noise levels of the stock steppers. I since switched to low inductance, high current steppers (Wantai 42BYGHW811) but this did not change the noise level. Though I am in the process of migrating to 24V and I am looking forward to seeing if this makes a change.

cglass17

@dc42 - Yep like @wilriker said 12V. I didn't realize that the steppers could run on either 12V or 24V until you stated it. Thanks for pointing that out. So it sounds like you are confident that if I change the voltage that the motors will be quiet. Sounds like I need to look upgrading all of the electronics based on that.

wilriker

@cglass17 The electronics can mostly handle it. What you definitely need to swap is anything that is voltage-specific, i.e. heaters (bed and hotend) and fans. For the latter you could go with buck-down converters but I would not try this with heaters (even though there are high-current buck-downs but they cost about the same as a new heater so why going the workaround-route?!).