The Z-Axis is suddenly not going in the same direction consistently. It will go up when I push up in Easel, then down when I push up. The direction it goes is completely inconsistent. Has anyone else seen this issue? I assume my Z-Axis motor is fried.
This is most likely due to a bad connection on the stepper. Check all of your connections for the Z motor. If that’s not it, its probably a damaged stepper cable.
Thanks for the suggestion. All connections are solid. I swapped the connections to the Z and X axes on the X-controller and the back of the motors. If the cable were bad, I should be seeing a problem with the X-axis now. The problem persist on the Z-axis only.
If you have a multi-meter you can check the resistance between the Z-Axis stepper motor phases. You would need to remove the cables from the stepper motor to do this. You should get a pretty high resistance if not a complete Open when testing Phase-to-Phase. If you get low resistance then the windings in the stepper motor have developed a short and it will require replacement. You can also just set the multi-meter on the continuity setting and check phase-to-phase; you should not hear it beep.
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Brandon Parker
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A stepper motor can take a lot of beating and is most likely just fine (98,7% certain 
)
Each stepper have two internal coils, with two wires for each forming two pairs.
If one wire have no contact the motor will run fine but there is no directional control. So you seeing random direction of motion is a very strong indicator of a faulty wire/connector point.
The failure point could be within the stepper but that is rare. A continuity/ohm-test of the stepper coils might shed light on that.
Thanks all for the suggestions. I finally did figure out the problem. The connector to the X-Controller was indeed not fully seated. The far right side was not connecting properly. It was barely noticeable. It seems like the connector doesn’t want to rest in the receptive properly like the others. At least it’s working! Your tips definitely kept me looking in the right place.
Cheers!
This is awesome … “98,7% certain 
”
Glad to hear that you resolved the issue Michael!
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Brandon Parker
I was at about 99.6%