I have been a long-time watcher of this channel and am finally a follower. I am a 5-head semi-assembled XL owner. My machine was delivered around this time last year, so it will soon be out of warranty. Recalling my warranty experience, my XL sat in the box for about three weeks before I started the assembly process. One of the extruders was DOA and not extruding the filament (it seems that I might be the first person to get a replacement for the complete extruder assembly with the serial number for the replacement part 001). I needed to call DHL to pick up the faulty part, and they shipped out the replacement one 2 to 3 days after the successful delivery of the faulty one. It took me around 20 days back and forth last December to get everything sorted, but I finally got the replaced part delivered before Christmas last year with an 'upgraded' 0.4mm nozzle. I managed to swap out all my 0.6 nozzles with 0.4mm ones this January. As a mechanical engineer and DIY electronics enthusiast, I find it concerning that Prusa did not use two drivers or a step-up driver for the Z-axis motor. TMC2130 chip is the older product line now and must be pretty cheap. A different design choice, like swapping with a more powerful chip, is necessary, especially when the TMC2130 driver needs to drive two Z-axis motors and hold the bed and the parts during the print. Alternatively, they should place heat sinks for the motor drivers. Many AliExpress sellers sell those TMC2130 modules with free heat sinks, so there must be a reason for this. I believe I am relatively self-sufficient and like your DIY skill level, such as replacing the USB-C port for the Nintendo Switch. I own different kinds of soldering tools and a rework station. I don't mind reflowing the chip, but Prusa should've honoured the warranty, considering we were the early backers for XL models. Recently, after watching your video, I got my XL upgraded with its original enclosure. It's disheartening to see that in the current economic atmosphere, brand/customer loyalty seems to have lost its value.
I'll have to agree on that! I am always genuinely happy when there's a new video out and will always watch it even when the topic itself is not really my thing. I'm not subsribed to a lot of other channels that make me feel the same.
@@RobertCowanDIY Still, thanks so much. I do think a lot of those creators don't go to bed happy at night. They tell themselves they are independent, heck they tell us all the time with the "these are my own thoughts and X brand had no influence on what I am to say". But they don't admit the pressures they are under to be positive so as to be first in line when the next thing comes out, so they can rush out a review for traffic. If they get taken off the list, they miss out on all the traffic. Also, I 100% believe that the way they skirt having to be negative when sent a bad product is to not even review it. Which is almost shilling in itself as you are keeping the truth hidden and the outright shills will gladly post and thus the overall picture will be skewed. Actually, this was more or less just confirmed in a comment I saw the other day. A fairly big channel posted on another fairly big channel saying something like: "Yeah, the printer they sent me was actually alright, I kinda liked it. But some things I really don't like about it - so, I told them directly and good to see they have now improved it in the new version" (paraphrasing here). I checked his channel and didn't see a review about said printer at all. Maybe he told his patreons, maybe reddit, I don't know. But the mechanism is real and I wouldn't be surprised of it's happening more and more.
@@RobertCowanDIYwhat bothers me most about this is that they did it bother to just invest 5$ more for a 2nd driver and heatsinks......and that's from prusas, who only serve customers that are willing to spend more for proper engineering....... That said, the customer support, in 99% responds to less technically inclined ppl than you, so they have to go the foolproof way.....I have seen everything from xht-cinnectors plugged in the wrong way, missing screws&wires, the printer being not turned on, pinched cables ECT.....ppl are a lot more stupid than you might think 😂
I have to give a huge shoutout to Prusa on this one! I love how they treat a well respected influencer with the exact same level of service/disregard as I would assume they do a normal customer. Also, "unexpected wear" is great CorpSpeak. It sounds like marketing taught the engineers how to say "yeah, we rushed this out the door and didn't test it for long enough". Well done marketing! I guess I should add the usual disclaimer now: Thanks to Prusa for what they have done for the industry/hobby. It can't be underestimated. But maybe they drank the KoolAid served up by their fan base and actually think they can't do better. Anyhow, thanks to Robert for being so transparent. Love it and really a breath of fresh air.
I don't think all customer support must learn UA-camrs by name, this is not how it works. He obviously went through the normal process instead of reaching out to contacts he knew. There is nothing to praise(or criticize) about their support in this specific case, at least in my opinion.
@@JiajuChen I was being sarcastic, but yes, I vastly prefer that they treat everyone equally. That said, to propose a teardown instead of swapping motor leads was less than stellar advice. Especially since others here have had the same issue and their tech support actually did propose the "less invasive", way faster trouble shooting method - so, at the very least, they could streamline their manual. As stated in the video, they were under no obligation to extend the warranty, but I would personally have done it. Keep it mind, this product already had a bad start to life. It wouldn't have cost them much to send a new board for free to create some goodwill.
@@JiajuChen Having "fanboys" say that their decision for "paying the extra buck" is because of the fantastic support seems like a thing of the past. The last 3 times I've needed support from Prusa it took ages. And the results weren't something to be proud of.
Hi Robert, nice video as always. I too had a driver failure on my XL. It happened 2 months into ownership. Support had me swap motor cables as you did and video movement of the head/bed with cables in correct plugs and swapped. That confirmed the failure of an XY driver (left side in my case) and not a cable or motor failure. They got me a replacement buddy board in two days and all was good again. I did buy a heatsink set for a RPi and stuck them on the driver chips (plus a few others back there) on the replacement buddy board. I also printed a new electronics cover with a fan and rocker switch to keep air moving over the boards back there. I figured it couldn't hurt. Cheers!
Prusa has to take this serious. They are under a lot of pressure and one of the way they can distinct themselves from the competition is through support. I am disappointed they did not try to learn something from your incident. Nice fix however. Great content as always.
What should they learn then? Make a tutorial about how to solder a motor driver? It is obvious that a normal user has to pay for the replacement part when out of warranty. Sometimes ic's go bad, it is what it is.
@@langphnot at all what I meant. They should be asking better question to narrow down the problem through basic troubleshooting. According to Robert the testing proposed was taking large parts of the machine apart. Maybe the tech should have been asking more questions about Roberts skill level. My experience with support they pretty fast asked if i had a multi meter at hand. In this case it could have helped the process along.
@@talbech They could do that of course. It probably is about cost: it will be more expensive and if your competitors do not offer that, it suffices to be just a little better than them.
@@talbech Agreed. Taking apart a printer seems like a bad 1st step for customer of unkown skill level (so by default inexperienced), who knows what else they are going to mess up pulling it together and putting it back together. Robert has done a great way of troubleshooting by cross connecting known good motors & drivers and unkown motors & drivers.
A $4,200 machine. Overloading one $3 driver with two motors and no heat dissipation... I get that there's a profitability element, but $3 (or an even cheaper aluminum heatsink) sounds like a pretty reasonable inclusion for the long-term reliability of a supposedly "premium" machine.
Exactly my thoughts. "it doesn't hurt" is what comes to mind. I love designing flagship products because you don't usually have to 'value engineer' everything. You can do it the way it should be done, rather than worrying about the final cost.
I’d love to have this machine. I’d love to have a Prusa. As an engineer who discovered 3d printer sans covid I quickly dove into history, etc… and realized Prusa’s contributions to the field. That said, I’ve got three printers now, one Anet, one Sovol, and recently the K1SE by Creality. As much as I’d still like a Prusa I have a hard time justifying the cost. Next will be a build and I’m leaning between RatRig and Voron at this point. Nevertheless, this is a beautiful printer. I’d expect it to be flawless. HOWEVER, NEVER, EVER, EVER BUY THE FIRST VERSION OF ANYTHING. That’s my mantra. I don’t want to beta test your equipment.
@TheJacklwilliams I can't speak to Ratrigs, but my Voron2.4 300 is my workhorse, and I honestly don't even use my prusa anymore. Voron team are great people and the documentation, though kind of scattered, is all very well done and easy to understand.
I had the buddy board overheat this summer (30C ambient + enclosure). That is when I added a fan to the back, dropping the 95-100C measured to about 50C. Hoping that it will prevent these kind of failures.
Pretty crazy to see thats how the support went and how it died. For reference I have a 5 tool as well with 1210 hours print time in 8 months, 40k tool changes with very few problems mechanically with the printer, and was one of the first batch after the switch to 0.4mm nozzles. I am not technically savvy as you and wouldnt have been able to troubleshoot like you did, so even though it stinks it didnt work as expected, im glad you shared your results with us! Videos like this do need to come out, and maybe I am in the lucky minority of true "it just works" XL owners, but its definitely worked to my expectation at least for a $4k machine.
@RobertCowanDIY and its important to see, these are machines we expect to work for years nearly non stop and businesses rely on them - if this becomes a common problem in the coming years both users and Prusa needs to be aware. Just like cars, if this is a fundamental issue, a recall or free replacement part should be in order regardless of warranty. I am glad you at least documented it and shared!
The Prusa chat knows me by name lol. I have probably spent 30-40 hours over several months relating to different issues on my xl. Prusa has done some things well but they need work with support. My machine is running great now but with lots of work. Let's just say my next machine will be the larger Bamboo Machine. I like my machine but the XL was shipped way to soon with to many issues. Its gotten loads better since the first ship date but Prusa is falling behind the curve. Great video Robert. The review on mine might be a bit spicer. lol. Also chart is much faster than email. Their email response for tech support is very slow.
Same here. My XL has been a disaster and I am currently waiting for a carton to return it for repair. It has never functioned correctly, my warranty is nearly exhausted and, and I am facing ~$500 to ship it to Prusa (excessive because I live in Hawaii). I also have a Mk4S/enclosure/MMU3. While it produces excellent prints, I experience endless error messages, the effort needed to keep it operational is ridiculous, and the MMU3 is a Rube Goldberg contraption. My wife has had an X1C carbon for about 2 years. I envy its reliability, simplicity, and compactness. I ordered an X1C recently, and I will be taking a close look at their forthcoming large model.
That’s what so insane - the XL wasn’t even shipped soon. They spent almost half a decade making the damn thing after all the delays. How was this sort of thing not caught?
@@rob_over_9000 I know. I preordered one and waited 2 years! When it finally was shipping, I cancelled my order, but changed my mind a few months later.
I’ve gone back and forth in my mind on getting this exact machine and have had similar issues with Prusa in the past. Now it’s definitely off the table for me.
@ that’s what I’ve been waiting for since I’ve already invested in multiple Bambu X1c’s but I’m honestly worried that their “Large Format Offering” will be a Whopping 325x325x350 or something just underwhelming! LoL I’ve actually been using a Quidi4+ that belongs to a friend that ordered it on sale and had it delivered to my house while he’s gone the month of November. That’s the Cost of Babysitting! Ha. This Qidi4+ is quite impressive for $799 and is putting out equal quality to my X1C’s plus being able to print much larger. The problem is the size for most people…they want to be able to print much larger but don’t want a Much Larger Printer! Haha In my case, I don’t care if it requires a forklift or gantry-crane to get assembled and in place! I just want Bigger Bambu! Haha
We got a XL at work, worst printer experience we have ever had. The printer did not work well at all in several aspects. After going back and forth with support and getting nowhere we eventually opted to return it. Luckily the return process was a little bit easier. Of the 8 real prints we tried to do only one had zero issues.
I find the chat support online has been amazing. ive used it 4 time between bad wifi chips, Bad thermistors or general questions and they have been nothing but amazing. Quick and speedy.
I've been doing this for a few years myself and I 100% agree with everything you say in this video. I have always been one to recommend prusa, especially when most brands won't take any responsibility for their printers. I hope they're nothing short of embarrassed for putting one driver on the z axis, makes sense on a mk3 trying to keep the cost low, but the XL is another story. They went through the effort of having 16 independent bed heaters, but they could have independent stepper drivers for the z? Come on man, most are onto 3-4 axis z.
I would suggest to use tin foil around the chip you are working on. There are so many passive components that have much smaller mass and can heat up quicker then the IC. This will stop the solder of the smaller components to melt and them to fly all over - dont ask how i know. Another tip is to preheat the whole board from either side a bit, before you start flowing the component into place.
I've used kapton tape before for the same reason. For this board, it's easy enough to do it like I did. I've done hot air rework on probably several hundred boards, it's just been a few years since I've done it.
@ I did not really mean it for you, as you clearly showed your capabilities. More for people with less or no experience, that might just try since it looked so easy !
Your presented engineering design problems has given me second thoughts about buying this machine. I built a mk2.5 printer in 2017 with upgrade to 2.5S. To date i have had minimal problems with it.
Why? If it is not a common problem, it is not likely it will be a faulty bach. Testing the Z-motors can be done easier, but the suggested way works and has las risks toasting a X or Y driver. The solution to replace the buddy board is OK for more than 95% of the users, as soldering a new driver is not something everybody can do. Just replacing the buddy board is quite simple.
It's funny you mention the troubleshooting, because I recognize that technique of swapping the motors from something Prusa support actually had me do. I contacted Prusa a few years ago about my MK3 and they actually had me try what you did (swapping the motor connection on the board) which quickly narrowed the problem to the extruder motor. It feels like it's the quality of the support that has been impacted negatively by their growth. I used to be able to get through to them in chat. Since the XL came out, I never get through. Any time I've tried chatting, the estimated wait starts at 30 minutes but it ends up being longer so that I end up trying more different things to fix it myself, so I've genuinely never had chat support for my XL. We could speculate about high demand from more sales, new users getting into the hobby, the number of chats agents need to handle at the same time, new additions to the support team, etc, no way to know for sure but it's probably a combination of things.
The XL is not as easy to troubleshoot by swapping cables around, but this particular issue it made easier as the connectors are right next to each other
I need to say that I have never had a problem with Prusa's support. I have had some issues with my MK4, which was my fault (I was complete beginner), and they have always helped me immediately.
You revealed a possible confluence of issues in my opinion. 1) driver chip at high load vs spec. 2) added enclosure increases ambient on one side of enclosure 3) room ambient temp could add to issue. Failure result. I removed the cover to that enclosure so far as I like the print enclosure to run warm to help print stay down and better layer adhesion. Thanks for info!!
Hi @RobertCowanDIY , I am just looking into this after searching again about the XL ad other competitors in the net. Firstly. I admire your patience an gratefulness against Prusa in this subject. Congrats, and I think this is a very good move. Being cool in the first way. Not everyone would be so (me not - definitely not). That said ... in Germany, we have a legal term for this: "Versteckter Mangel" ("Hidden defect"). This means, if a product has a "build in" flaw, like here, where the construction can lead to such a failure, the manufacture HAS TO replace this part without cost. Then this issue has nothing to do with guarantee regulation, but the manufacturer is legally in duty to fix ... I personally see this matches very clearly here - you very clearly showed why: - No heat sink in the driver chip - No fan or ventilation - Not respecting the manufacture's advice to use this driver for single motor only. I am not an Electronic engineer, but I am doing a lot of IoT and electronics with Steppers and board. So I can subscribe anything you said and showed off. I do mainly car for old telescope mounts getting going them again with new driver boards and steppers. I heavily rely on my 3D printer (a Prusa MK3S) and really had been considering buying a XL for my workshop. Furthermore, I am Senior IT-specialist and deal a lot with requirements engineering. I have neither the skill, nor the time to make such a detailed analysis. But I am a little shocked to hear not having any cooling or ventilation at all for the driver board and using the drivers off specs. Which for me must obviously lead to this error. To keep things short: sadly, we are obviously on our own when it comes to support (I mean: real support that leads us in the right direction, fast and in a professional way). Prusa is not an excuse here. But this is as it is. The most important things because of this fact is a good maintenance of and to any part of the printer. If I look at the cable management, this makes me shudder. Believe me, I had my repair experiences with the MK3S without Prusa support getting to fix things done by my self. What I can say: when I comes to cabling, Prusa is really not something great. But OK. I have to sleep over this 🙂And probably I will not spend my money on a Creality K2 Plus, but wait, and wait, and wait, until “childhood diseases” are fixed and addressed, buy the second iteration and will stay with Prusa. Thank you for your overwhelming patience - that is really exemplary, and we can all take a leaf out of your book. I hope, people at Prusa will appreciate this as well and react on this. Just one end note: In Germany we learn a harsch lesson in the moment: not dealing with customers real needs will lead at the end to real big problems (I am talking about german cars industry). But as I said, let's not overreact, but see and give Prusa the time to make things better. Point ;-) Cheers Axel avvp.de
Robert thank you very much for this video. I will pre-emptively install driver heatsinks and print the board cover with fan to keep the temperaturea down - hopefully to prevent this happening to me as well. QFN resoldering is not something I would want to go into!!
An excellent explanation, it was concise and factual, providing both the description of issue and detail resolution. Which allows us as the community to make an educated decision in a future purchase. I’m owner of a Prusa mk4 and have upgrade to the mk4s without encountering any issues with the printer. We all understand Prusa’s value within the 3D printer community and the many innovations found in XL. Also understanding some challenges will occur with any new product line and bringing more production(circut-board) in-house. Our hope is Prusa receives your finding in a positive manner and applies it to a future release of the product. Also receives your input of troubleshooting the issue. Prusa seems committed to product improvement. Which we’ve seen as recent as the MK4 to MK4S and both software and firmware updates over the years. Thank you very much.
Yeah... you are 100% correct in your conclusion... disappointing failure. When you told them it was a driver chip, they should've made an exception and sent you a replacement board. This is either an unusual, rare failure, or a sign of a weak-point in the design.
A 1 yr warranty is ridiculous on such an expensive machine. Here in NZ that simply wouldn't fly legally, our consumer laws would over-ride their warranty.
I doubt it. Consumer laws typically cover cases where a product is defective from the start. A product breaking after a year isn't going to be covered by that. Otherwise Apple would have trouble in NZ given they never offer more than 1 year warranty for any of their products. That said Prusa could have gotten an almost free PR win by making an exception here. There can't be that many cases of a printer breaking right after warranty.
Very good and logical troubleshooting !👍 It is surprising that Prusa did not tell you this method of investigation first. This chip and its use could be a weakness in the design of the board. I agree with the fact that Prusa could have increase the warranty to 3 or 4 years for the XL. (it's not a cheap machine !)
Honestly, I’m pretty disappointed that they are using a single driver for the Z axis. When the XL was finally released, I felt like having a dual z was a mistake anyway. Using a single driver is what Creality did with the CR10S - a printer that came out something like 7 years ago. It was.. fine, I guess, but that printer was something like $400, not $3,500. I am glad I ended up canceling the XL, and decided to refurbish my Jubilee instead. The Jubilee has a slightly smaller printable area, but the toolchanging mechanism and printer overall is a much better design imo. Plus it has a triple Z with automatic bed leveling, which should (imo) be 100% standard these days for any printer that has a printable area over ~250mm.
@ agreed. Especially for such an expensive printer. I could see a fair argument for it if they were charging something like $1,800 for the 5 toolhead version. But for $3,500 it's hard to justify. If you go with E3d Revo Roto toolheads, and the Duet CAN toolhead boards, as well as a Duet 3 MB6HC board, you're still under $1,500 for 5 toolheads, as I recall. For the price they're charging, you could get that setup and still have ~$2,000 leftover for a motion platform. Even at a 20% margin, they would have something like $1,000 left over for the motion platform at retail prices. The value proposition just isn't there - which is a shame, because I absolutely love the concept.
Its highly disapointing to have an issue like this on a 4k product with the little use it had. Its good that it happened to an experienced electronics wizard like you as others can learn from this. I did have one of these on order but pulled out as I ended up purchasing a Raise E2 that was used and its been ok.
@@RobertCowanDIY Fair enough, I'm not very familiar with the chips and their prices. I was mostly comparing it to other boards, I suppose, but they might be lower-spec.
I disagree, the chips alone are probably more than $70 dollars, add in the passives, manufacturing, firmware, R&D, sales, support and shipping and the price is almost reasonable.
@@lbgstzockt8493 I'll push back on this a bit. I'd estimate the BOM cost of this board at around $35 for parts and another $20-$30 for assembly and additional labor, depending on quantity. You might be looking at retail or digikey/mouser prices. The retail price of the motor drivers is around $8.50, but they're not paying that. The quantity pricing is much closer to $2.50. The wifi module is about as cheap as you can get and the processor is fairly common. The passives are fractions of a penny and you pay more for placing them than they're worth. I have about a decade in mid-scale electronics manufacturing, and that's just my quick take.
The "good support" was one of the Pro's for Prusa in the comparison with Bamboo... I also had two negative experiences with Prusa support. I would love to see improvements here. Thank you Robert for the great video.
Some anecdotal information. I run 9 MK4, 4 XL, 10 MK3S, and 1 SL1S. Almost all of them have well in excess of 400 days of print time some of them are well over 1000 days. In all that time I have never had a driver or any component on the any of the main boards fail. There are certainly things I wish Prusa would design better/differently, but I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that they sell these printers as kits too. Not that using one driver for two motors has anything to do with it being sold as a kit. I have also always started with their live chat, which can sometimes have long queue times, but I almost always get through troubleshooting and a resolution within one day. It does seem like they could have resolved your issue via email much faster and with better troubleshooting recs. For all those Prusa's I run, I have maybe 5-6 times a year were there is and issue that requires me to reach out to Prusa support and while it would be nice to see a longer warranty for printers with their "workhorse reputation," Prusa has been very good about honoring the warranty without any pushback when within that first year.
I realize (and admitted) mine is an isolated case. What concerned me most was the poor troubleshooting and not allowing a grace period for the warranty.
@@RobertCowanDIY I totally agree! I think you gave very fair feedback. I've been seeing a lot of bagging on Prusa these days in the comments section, and just felt like jumping in with my extensive experience with them to counter that a liitle. I do think Prusa needs to do a more to stay competitive, but I also think they are doing a lot of really good things.
@@RobertCowanDIYI don’t think a “grace period” for the warranty is reasonable. If they started doing this everyone would start talking about it and be pissed when they didn’t get special treatment. That kind of a policy only works when your customers don’t talk to each other. Extending the standard warranty would make more sense.
i have a 5 head xl that i got in june 2024, so far its been good. It will be interesting to see if other buddy boards suffer the same problem. Time will tell.
I thought we were past the point of having to replace individual IC chips and hack our 3D printers back to life, so this is kind of embaressing coming from Prusa of all people with their flagship model none the less.... Good job with the repair and thanks for the interesting video!
You got it wrong. This is a feature, not a flaw. Prusa wanted Robert to get in touch with the old ways, to pay hommage to the days of having to have soldering skills to run a 3D printer. Without this broken driver, without this feature, he wouldn't have known how great a company it really is and how far along we have come.
Awesome video! Loved seeing a alternate fix rather than just replacing the board. I've never had to use Prusa support but I have for Bambu. One of the pods in the AMS went bad. I sent them a video on the app and they had a replacement shipped out the next day. I was well outside the warranty but they never even asked. Not saying one is better than the other. I like and use both brands. Just sharing my personal experience.
Since you're asking "Why", I have a theory for you. About a month ago I started noticing my XL's build plate getting katy wampus, just like yours was at the beginning of the video. I would re-run z-calibration, and it would re-level perfectly, but then after a few big prints I'd notice the tilt would return. Since then, I've become diligent about double-checking that the build plate is actually level and running z-calibration. I've also been more diligent about lubing the ball screw, and I haven't noticed the issue in weeks now. Here's my theory - when the build plate is cockeyed, there's extra strain put on the z-axis steppers to move the bed up and down. Since the z-axis driver is already near max limits by powering dual steppers, this extra bit of strain is enough to overwork the driver, and ultimately kill it. Regarding the repair cost, I'm of a split opinion. Sure, spending $125 on what feels like a unnecessary repair sucks. But it's also only 3% of your purchase price, so it's not a huge investment to keep such an expensive machine running. It could have been worse, had they not used the modular PCB approach. Personally, my 5-tool XL just passed 2000 hours of print time, and outside of a requirement for regular lubrication it's been defect free.
@@starguy9 Yes, I do have a CNC. It started life as a Shapeoko 2, but I expanded it to 3' x 6'. But it wasn't strong enough, so I designed a fully custom gantry, x-axis and z-axis and changed the controller over to an Acorn. So at this point it finally works great, but it doesn't look anything like a Shapeoko. For the amount of money I've sunk into customizing it, I probably would have been better off buying a real CNC, probably from someone like Mill Right.
@@PaulStevensonPinball That would make sense _if_ that's how stepper drivers worked. Unfortunately according to every stepper driver I've ever seen, and their low power modes when not moving or spread cycle etc, stepper motors don't draw any more or less current dependant on the load. They're fed a certain amount of current and that's it.
@@BeefIngotSorry, unfortunately you're only considering half the picture. While a stepper driver does limit the current, the stepper motor only consumes what it needs to handle the immediate load. When spinning freely, a stepper motor may only consume a small fraction of a 2A driver limit. When overloaded, common stepper motor symptoms are excessive current, loss of torque, and overheating. While I would agree that even an overworked stepper motor would not be able to pull more power than the stepper driver limit, this does not preclude Prusa from having set said limit too high. Under normal operating conditions, the lightly loaded steppers stay well below the driver's set limit and heat dissipation capabilities. But when the bed is not level, the additional torque demands may max out the current draw, potentially revealing the driver chip is not up to the task as configured by Prusa.
Others have suspected they're for a heatsink ;-) But that's just suspicion. They're not used for anything, other than making it harder to remove the chip.
Great video, on my next print I will probably monitor the temps on the drivers and mcu via the settings to see what they get up to. There's a few posts on the prusa subreddit and forums of them getting over 90c which is borderline too hot for my liking. They definitely should consider adding heatsinks and active cooling in that electronics box.
I’ve always used the chat and got excellent service. Had a bad board on my XL. They stayed on the chat with me for over 2 hrs trouble shooting. Then overnighted the board to me.
Couple tips for removing the flux better/more completely if you aren't going the deionized water route. Use a mix of ethanol and isopropyl alcohol; That will remove both polar and non-polar compounds from the board. It's cheaper than good flux remover which is typically a mix of isopropyl and n-heptane. After scrubbing with the brush, put a Kimwipe on the board and "brush" it in. The wipe will absorb most of the dissolved flux instead of just smearing it around. Kimwipes won't leave lint on the board.
potentially. there is very little room on the top of the board and it could still get too hot. others have had issues with overheating errors, even in temperature controlled environments. I'll keep an eye on it. Prusa has actually advised people against the fan modifications saying it will cause further issues. strange stuff.
During normal operation the Z-axis does not heat up. Compared to the x and y axis it is rarely used. The main use is at the start and end of a print. To prevent overheating, Prusa choose to move the z-axis quite slow. The motors are capable of much faster speeds, but as the driver has to handle two motors that could heat up the driver chip beyond save operating temperatures. Two drivers would be better and makes faster movements possible, but would increase the cost.
@ Ah yes and no. the Z axis needs hold current presumably, to hold the motors in place. Unless there is some mechanical solution in place. Where X and Y usually get away with less to no position hold, as it continuously travels. Another thing is back current / EMF when the motors release. It is one thing to have one motor back-feed into the driver, but it might be an edge case when two motors with slight offset inductively backfeeed at the same time.
@@wilsistermans1118 The cost increase would be under $5. I'm assuming the passives, quantity pricing on the chip as well as extra pick and place time. I'm assuming modest quantities, it could be as low as $4.
A Main reason to bye an expensive printer is the support you can expect. I was planning to bye a prusa but after I have seen your video I doubt Prusa can give that high Level support. Thank You for the troubleshooting video, which you gave for free.
Wow, so many parallels, I also work in electronic manufacturing (engineering through to final assembly, I'm the only staff member). I use the same Hakko irons and have one with the green handle, I use the same style of hot air gun even the same tip wiping unit. I do use paste for re-flow though. I also use quite a few different 3D printers but I will likely not consider Prusa any time soon. I have a few Bambu and Qidi printers and have found the service to be above expectations with both these companies. Qidi in fact simply sent a spare part just on an email description of an issue, no pictures required and completely free of charge, printer was still in warranty though. Seems like Prusa could do a little better specially at the price premium of the product.
Really really disappointed in this. I had a great support experience with my mini, when the bed thermistor gave out. Sent pictures that they had pinched a lead from factory, and they immediately sent a spare bed. This XL launch has just been so sad. I really want prusa to be the western competitor, showing that we can still make high end devices, but with support like this I don't see any justifications left for the cost of the XL. My next printer, if I get one, will probably be a Bambu, and I don't like that ☹️
The sad thing is I barely use the XL anymore because the print quality is sub-par. I use my Bambus most of the time and I only went to use this because all my other printers were busy. So the one time I go to use it and the motor driver dies because they're driving two motors with it (which the datasheet says not to do)? Yeah, I'm not thrilled.
@RobertCowanDIY yeah , no spending that much for only a year oh boy I can't wait until the rest of the 3D printing industry catches up cuz this machine is way too much for what it is it's just the first
Thanks for the honest review. The 4000+ euro price tag with the enclosure was already too much for me, but if the build quality and design didn't match that price, then I'll just wait for printers from other manufacturers and use the X1C for now for most multicolor print projects. With the Xl I was hoping to cut down on time and waste and utilize the full build volume.
I think one of the problems, with the Electronics is, that the board on the back gets extremely hot. When I researched, if I should get an XL or not, and if I should buy 2TH or 5TH, I saw people reporting that problem. For my experience with Prusa is mixed.. I had a semi good case and a really good case with them. The semi good case I had was with my MK3S+/MK4. I ordered my MK3S+ a bit more than a month before they released the MK4, and I wrote them and asked if I can still send it back to them. They said no and I also get why they did it, but still, buyer’s remorse was still going strong. We send some E-Mails back and forth, arguing about that, and in the end I got the difference refunded between the old and the new price. In the end I was able to sell the MK3S+ and buy the MK4 for like 50-100 bucks more than I would have paid otherwise. The other problems I had, was wired noises with my MK4, and buying the wrong version of the MMU3. Both they handled really well. For the wired noises, it was a problem with the Y-Motor and they send me a new one. And with me buying the wrong version of the MMU3, they send out the parts I needed for the MK4 version. My overall experience is, that chatting to the live support, is much better, than writing an E-Mail to them.
I think you might have experienced poor support specifically because of the printer and its cost. It’s a printer that is sort of outside of the budget for most hobbyists (especially the 5T), so maybe the assumption is “companies just want the thing to work, so replace the drivers and move on”. If you’ve spent 5k on a printer, then a $150 opex is quite insignificant (from a company perspective), compared to having it out of commission for weeks. I do like what you’ve raised about the driver driving both Z motors. I’d love to hear an explanation from Prusa on that. That and the counter lever design are the biggest design oddities I’ve seen in this printer. I’m so tempted by it, but…
Should we consider adding heat sinks to the Z axes of our XL's? I have noticed that Prusa seem to under cool their chips in general. For instance, the MK 3 I used at work would give me errors if the ambient temp was too high. I added some heat sinks and a fan, which solved that problem.
Mine with enclosure got uncomfortably hot so i changed the metal rear plate for a plastic one with air vents in it. printables 859870-improved-prusa-xl-buddy-cover
I designed control boards for RepRap 3d printers for a while and it is a common issue with integrated stepper motor drivers on one pcb boards without heatsinks. These chips gets quite hot and create tension which eventualy break all tmc's. My recomendation is to replace all drivers not only Z and add heatsinks. Why Prusa didn't add heatsinks? Because these failures are rare and it it cost effective not to add any.
The issue is that at a certain level you should hire a professional engineers and a production manager. Prusa doesn’t have experience in core xy, their experience is based on I3 and they kept on improving it slightly over the years . Seems they went big with XL without spending a decent amount on R&D and hiring a professional engineers. If you throw peanuts only monkeys come. Great video I love your channel and I love the way you went with the diagnosis. As a mechatronics engineer specialized in cranes I believe if you start dismantling components in your diagnosing process you will end up making more issues instead of resolving the main issue.
I also have an XL but I also purchased two MK 3.5 kits. I also had an issue with the mk3.5 upghrade kits that the bed leveling did not work at all. I contacted support and they basically told me "oh that sucks" and did not offer any sort of help. People praise their support but its only good for the machines that have been around for 10 years. Anything new they are making is pretty much unsupported. If my Xl breaks Im screwed.
I'm surprised that there aren't any heatsinks on the drivers. They do run fairly hot especially when you're driving two motors with just one driver. At least there should be some active airflow across the drivers and the rest of the electronic bay. Such a weird cost cutting measure when a fan is just a few cents from their perspective.
The daughtercard with everything on it screams chip shortage fix to me. Being able to swap a small board in the case that you can't get enough of the MCU for your PCBs seems like a good way to avoid scrapping a ton of PCBs. I definitely agree with you that the supporting design around the drivers just really isn't great. Thermally, driver wise, and setup wise. Especially for something with a short warranty... I'd also be curious if those drivers can talk via I2C since that may give Prusa a form of diagnostic.
Wow this is so bad. The main issue here is that 5000$ semi-pro machine only has one year of warranty, that is beyond horrible and it should at least have 3-5, this is not a cheap 100$ toy. And that poor driver is cooking, what were they thinking with that lack of cooling or even a basic 2 cent heatsink?? Thank you a lot for showing this.
You go on the prusa subreddit, say that you have an issue with a prusa, and u get 80 downvotes (literally happened 2 days ago). Prusa users are a cult, in the majority, and hate when you say something is not working, although they are all praising the support, so much that i posted to them “if you know how good is the support for several times, isn’t the time to ask yourself on WHY you have to contact them so many times?”. Being in the 3D printing business, i kinda liked the prusa UNTIL i got one, which is the XL. From there, i hate the heavy branding and all the credits to this joke of Josef Prusa, very egocentric, hate the fact that print quality is downright BAD for a 3000$ printer (with enclosure) and their userbase. Never again a prusa.
Yep, looking at the comments in THIS video, it mirrors that. "I've been talking with support for 3 months and they're always helpful!" If they were helpful, it would be a week, not 3 months. They should know their product better than anyone else and should get problems resolved swiftly.
@@RobertCowanDIYWhen I had my Prusa Mk3S, there were multiple times that I ran into weird issues. Since I am actually fairly experienced with 3d printing every time I had a problem and turned to support it was not a super simple to solve/diagnose problem. All 3 times I asked Prusa support to help they were utterly useless. The worst case was when I was printing CF Nylon and had the extrusions wider than usual which I couldn't understand since I was using a NozzleX and assumed it would last forever. Pruss support said I was printing too fast and I should print at like 1/4th and then when that failed 1/8th the speed of my carefully tuned profiles. That did nothing. Turned out the NozzleX is only warrantied for like 10kg of PA-CF and had simply worn out and replacing it fixed the problem. But I was baffled that the supposedly god tier Prusa support would fail to identify a worn nozzle as that must be a pretty common issue. My experience with Bambu lab has been night and day. I have been sent links to extremely thorough wiki pages with video guides and instructions to walk through repairs and free parts to replace a damaged camera and filament sensor which so far are the only things that failed besides again a worn nozzle or two and extruder gears needing to be cleaned after 1600 hours of use. And that's on my second bambu machine! A P1S, since the X1C has like 2500hrs on it and still going strong.
@@RobertCowanDIY but after spending an insane amount of their own time and some of their own money on spare parts, they'll still turn around and say "See how awesome the repairability of Prusas is?? And their machines are so reliable!!"
Very interesting. Sounds like they don't have the XL figured out yet like they have the Mk3 series. I've been chewing on getting one of those as my first IDEX setup to do some more complex stuff but this gives me pause. Not that I'm really worried about the chip/driver failure, just the general state of the XL series. Thanks for posting this.
First off this video was awesome! The "Pursa Tech" might have been working from a tech support call sheet which could have been the first thing they came across for that problem. Owning printers of all kinds one knows to swap the cables and test drivers it the first thing you do regarding your problem. Maybe the tech person was not that experience in these matters which from the help you received seems to be the case. Not having the technical ability to replace a chip think of the time it would have taken for anyone else just to swap a board as soon as it arrived in the mail but they didn't even suggest that at anytime.
Prusa better admit that this was a major customer service screw up. As one of the last remaining non-Chinesium brands, they would be my go-to for future printer purchases to add to my farm. If the machine was out of warranty by a mere 1 month, they should have at least offered a nice discount on the new board. This isn't a $300 low end machine, and with that higher printer price should come better support than this. Please keep us updated if there are any follow ups to this. Also consider doing a more in depth video of replacing a chip.
Yep. I run a company that sells hardware devices at around this price point. I know how we operate. I would have offered a free board in exchange for some data (how long has it been running, conditions of the space, etc, etc) OR a discounted rate on a replacement.
Prusa support has 24 online chat. It may take them 20-30 to assist you at time but they will usually get to you. And will usually be able to rectify there and then if not it becomes an email volley..
We have an XL 5 head with enclosure at work and we have had issues with layer shifts. Filament ran out did not trigger correctly and it z homed about half an inch above the print. The cost of this printer that should just work, the time to troubleshoot and diagnosis of the layer shifting plus the failed prints it's alot of money. I personally would not recommend an XL because it's not up to Prusa standard. The enclosure feels rushed. Our mk3 and MK4 are great and I would highly recommend them.
Honestly I haven't noticed that both motors are driven by the same chip. I assumed there's some amount of mechanical bed leveling during probing. I haven't touched Z screws since getting the XL half a year ago, but the alignment seems to hold fine so far.
I just started watching this but holy crap if true. This is something even cheap printers haven't been doing lately. Heck, the Mk4s doesn't do this. I just feel like at this price, that's a hell of a way to cheap out. You'd think they'd at bare minimum have a mechanical linkage between the sides to keep them in alignment.
Thanks for the video. I kind of agree with your policy of the 1 month of leeway, especially with the premium they are charging because support is supposed to be their calling card
It's a Hakko FX-951. It's my go-to iron. I have a Metcal sitting right next to it that I rarely use. You can 'hot-swap' nozzles without touching anything hot, which is really slick.
What's a bit crazy is that Prusa's have a 2 year warrenty in the EU (by law). So if this happened to someone in the EU after 13 months of owning the printer it should still be covered. But it's not great if the Buddy XL board fails after so little amount of time.
Wonder if PRUSA warranty start date is from date of order or delivery. Received mine July 23'. It took 3 months before the first SUCCESSFUL print. I was not a happy camper staring at the giant anchor in my living room. Finally with many emails and hours of video with PRUSA, dismantle/reassembly instructions that sometimes made no sense, it worked. They did have me reprint a handful of newer parts mine did not have. (I had decided to keep my MX3S fortunately). Especially the caps on top of the Z axis threaded rods. For whatever reason they were causing most of the problems. Finally all's well and it's been doing great. You mentioned how tight everything is on the backside and possible lack of air flow. Since you now have the enclosure do you think that may have anything to do with chip failure? I don't have a enclosure yet. A lot to keep in mind though. Thanks for sharing.
Would be useful to know how warm it gets in the compartment with the buddy board. Do you have thermocouples? I’ve had mine about as long as you and have not found it to be “it just works” as my Mk3’s. I had to buy .4 nozzles for it during the warranty period because of oozing and I’m still having ooze issues even with very carefully dried filament. I’d still rather have this machine over a Bamb but the faith I have in Prusa to get the bugs worked out isn’t infinite.
Owner of a XL 5TH, MK4S, and Min+ and have really enjoyed all of them with very few issues, only needing to speak to support a few times which always went well, but you make some very valid points and this is a frustratingly bad miss on Prusa's support. I hope they see this (I'm sure they will) and learn and improve from it. In terms of the failed IC, I'm curious for your thoughts, I'm sure this is an off the shelf part that has some expected failure rate and this seems like just bad luck. Do you think that's the case or is there something inherently bad in the design that Prusa could improve on? I'm aware of the MCU overheat issue which I think is on that same board, which is why I have the fan mod installed - maybe this is a related cooling issue? Just a measly ME here, not an EE lol
I think it's bad luck with a healthy dose of the implementation not helping it's luck. If it had died with a heatsink and active cooling AND discrete drivers for each motor, I'd be a bit more shocked. Without cooling (up top of where all the heat from the power supplies accumulates) and it running two motors? Yeah, it's less shocking. I'm beginning to think Prusa has a hard time learning. Look at what they released after the HUGE market shift in the last year.
@@RobertCowanDIY Agreed. I hope Prusa learns and pulls some rabbits out of the hat soon because I much rather support their community than the other… Also "I think it's bad luck with a healthy dose of the implementation not helping it's luck" is a great way of putting it. If you aren't aware, this mod adds a fan to that board which l've done and it definitely helps. I hate that Prusa leaves fixes like this up to the community but dang do I love my XL: Search Printables for“Improved Prusa XL Buddy Cover” (I can’t post the link in UA-cam I guess).
@@RobertCowanDIY Agreed. I hope Prusa learns and pulls some rabbits out of the hat soon because I much rather support their community than the other... Also "I think it's bad luck with a healthy dose of the implementation not helping it's luck" is a great way of putting it. If you aren't aware, this mod adds a fan to that board which l've done and it definitely helps. I hate that Prusa leaves fixes like this up to the community but dang do I love my XL: Search Printables for "Improved Prusa XL Buddy Cover" (I can't post the link in UA-cam I guess).
You could probably also try do resistance measurements on the outputs from the driver to GND/ rail, they would possibly show some kind of difference, due to open or shorted driver.
From what i can see on mine, it pushes the Z up to the top on print start which mechanically levels it out assuming the difference was small to start with.
Thanks for this video. Reading the prusa subreddit or other places where people that really like prusa hang out make me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. You'll see people spend a dozen hours and $50 worth in parts to fix an issue their printer shipped with and go "Isn't Prusa awesome, I can buy these spare parts for reasonable prices and fix my own printer". The XL is really cool, but it's sold at a very premium price, while not being a polished product. Now, I'm not 12 years old and I don't feel loyalty to any brand, and dismissing people as fanboys is dumb. But I think Prusa currently lives off their past reputation and a core audience that will buy just about anything they put out while loudly shouting in online forums about how reliable their machines are.
have to say i had the board on my 2nd toolhead die, thankfully i was still under warranty but i haven’t had the time to replace the board in 2 months, hope the board swap works
i have a 5 head xl, no issues yet, pretty happy with it, but reading your issue i am relieved to have the two years warranty here in europe and i have been disappointed with prusa customer relations recently and start to loose the passion for the brand
I have owned couple Prusas and lack of cooling on stepper drivers have always baffled me. it may not seems to be needed but even 20 cent passive heatsink helps...
Good work going through the steps to find the issue. Then having the tools and skill to fix it. The Z may benefit from the phase stepping being recalibrated.
Prusa needs to get this fixed fast, this is a $3500 machine, not an ender. Seems like the XL was rushed to market because Bambu Lab is destroying their market share. I love my Bambu machine, but I want Prusa to do well because they contribute so much to open source and set the standard for customer support and reliability. Their premium price should ensure a premium product
I'm going back and forth with my choice for the next printer. I want a reasonably large bed, decent quality and at least two toolheads, so my candidates are the Prusa XL and the fully kitted out Ratrig V-Core 4. I'm still gravitating towards the XL because from what I've heard the Ratrigs, similar to Vorons, take dozens of hours to assemble and honestly I want the printer to be a tool rather than becoming its own project. A case like this is quite unfortunate, though it could be an outlier. I also hear people praising Bambulab right now like they did with Prusa years ago, yet I am not very impressed with my A1 Mini's firmware quality and default profiles. For example the firmware already crashed a couple times within weeks, does not have a way to stop a filament (un)loading process, and the way its input handling works can lead to situations where what the printer is doing is completely out of sync with the user interface. But I can't complain, it's cheap and still quite impressive for the price.
Great video. Perhaps they need to work on a standard checklist. I agree with you on having just the one drive chip. Not sure it's a good idea. As you mentioned there are no heatsinks on those driver chips. I had a similar problem with a different machine. To little cooling on the driver chip. Needless to say they did upgrade subsequent iterations. Let us know how it goes in a later video.
the MK4 and MK4S also have one motor driver for the two Z motors. Do you think this will also cause problems for these printers? Just placed my MK4S in an original Prusa enclosure. 😢
@RobertCowanDIY I think these broke due to overheating. These drivers normally have heat sinks for passive cooling. If two motors are connected to one driver, the power that the chip must deliver also doubles. At least that's my theory. Maybe I will also place heat sinks on the drivers with possibly a fan for active cooling.
@@RobertCowanDIY The weight of the XL bed is much higher than the gantry on the MK4, so I would guess it's much higher stress, even if it's not so much used compared to x-y axis, imagine when printing multiple kg prints on this bed.
I would switch out that solid metal board cover - no airflow. There are a few ventilated covers available on Printables. I got some board overheat errors early on that I traced to this. Haven't had a problem since I installed the ventilated cover. Maybe the driver on your board overheated without triggering an overheat warning. Also, never have reflowed a package like that - how do you know if the leads are all connected? Super awesome that you did your own troubleshooting and fix. Hey, where's your HT90?
I have been a long-time watcher of this channel and am finally a follower.
I am a 5-head semi-assembled XL owner. My machine was delivered around this time last year, so it will soon be out of warranty.
Recalling my warranty experience, my XL sat in the box for about three weeks before I started the assembly process. One of the extruders was DOA and not extruding the filament (it seems that I might be the first person to get a replacement for the complete extruder assembly with the serial number for the replacement part 001). I needed to call DHL to pick up the faulty part, and they shipped out the replacement one 2 to 3 days after the successful delivery of the faulty one.
It took me around 20 days back and forth last December to get everything sorted, but I finally got the replaced part delivered before Christmas last year with an 'upgraded' 0.4mm nozzle. I managed to swap out all my 0.6 nozzles with 0.4mm ones this January.
As a mechanical engineer and DIY electronics enthusiast, I find it concerning that Prusa did not use two drivers or a step-up driver for the Z-axis motor. TMC2130 chip is the older product line now and must be pretty cheap. A different design choice, like swapping with a more powerful chip, is necessary, especially when the TMC2130 driver needs to drive two Z-axis motors and hold the bed and the parts during the print.
Alternatively, they should place heat sinks for the motor drivers. Many AliExpress sellers sell those TMC2130 modules with free heat sinks, so there must be a reason for this.
I believe I am relatively self-sufficient and like your DIY skill level, such as replacing the USB-C port for the Nintendo Switch. I own different kinds of soldering tools and a rework station. I don't mind reflowing the chip, but Prusa should've honoured the warranty, considering we were the early backers for XL models. Recently, after watching your video, I got my XL upgraded with its original enclosure.
It's disheartening to see that in the current economic atmosphere, brand/customer loyalty seems to have lost its value.
Thanks for the transparency Robert. I wish more youtubers had your "no bullshit, here's the facts" kinda style.
The big difference, this is just my hobby. So many other channels rely on views and sponsorships to pay their mortgage. YOU are their product.
I'll have to agree on that! I am always genuinely happy when there's a new video out and will always watch it even when the topic itself is not really my thing.
I'm not subsribed to a lot of other channels that make me feel the same.
@@themechanix393 aww, thanks.
@@RobertCowanDIY Still, thanks so much.
I do think a lot of those creators don't go to bed happy at night. They tell themselves they are independent, heck they tell us all the time with the "these are my own thoughts and X brand had no influence on what I am to say".
But they don't admit the pressures they are under to be positive so as to be first in line when the next thing comes out, so they can rush out a review for traffic. If they get taken off the list, they miss out on all the traffic.
Also, I 100% believe that the way they skirt having to be negative when sent a bad product is to not even review it. Which is almost shilling in itself as you are keeping the truth hidden and the outright shills will gladly post and thus the overall picture will be skewed.
Actually, this was more or less just confirmed in a comment I saw the other day. A fairly big channel posted on another fairly big channel saying something like: "Yeah, the printer they sent me was actually alright, I kinda liked it. But some things I really don't like about it - so, I told them directly and good to see they have now improved it in the new version" (paraphrasing here).
I checked his channel and didn't see a review about said printer at all. Maybe he told his patreons, maybe reddit, I don't know. But the mechanism is real and I wouldn't be surprised of it's happening more and more.
@@RobertCowanDIYwhat bothers me most about this is that they did it bother to just invest 5$ more for a 2nd driver and heatsinks......and that's from prusas, who only serve customers that are willing to spend more for proper engineering.......
That said, the customer support, in 99% responds to less technically inclined ppl than you, so they have to go the foolproof way.....I have seen everything from xht-cinnectors plugged in the wrong way, missing screws&wires, the printer being not turned on, pinched cables ECT.....ppl are a lot more stupid than you might think 😂
I have to give a huge shoutout to Prusa on this one!
I love how they treat a well respected influencer with the exact same level of service/disregard as I would assume they do a normal customer.
Also, "unexpected wear" is great CorpSpeak. It sounds like marketing taught the engineers how to say "yeah, we rushed this out the door and didn't test it for long enough".
Well done marketing!
I guess I should add the usual disclaimer now: Thanks to Prusa for what they have done for the industry/hobby. It can't be underestimated. But maybe they drank the KoolAid served up by their fan base and actually think they can't do better.
Anyhow, thanks to Robert for being so transparent. Love it and really a breath of fresh air.
I don't think all customer support must learn UA-camrs by name, this is not how it works. He obviously went through the normal process instead of reaching out to contacts he knew. There is nothing to praise(or criticize) about their support in this specific case, at least in my opinion.
@@JiajuChen I was being sarcastic, but yes, I vastly prefer that they treat everyone equally.
That said, to propose a teardown instead of swapping motor leads was less than stellar advice. Especially since others here have had the same issue and their tech support actually did propose the "less invasive", way faster trouble shooting method - so, at the very least, they could streamline their manual.
As stated in the video, they were under no obligation to extend the warranty, but I would personally have done it. Keep it mind, this product already had a bad start to life. It wouldn't have cost them much to send a new board for free to create some goodwill.
@@JiajuChen Having "fanboys" say that their decision for "paying the extra buck" is because of the fantastic support seems like a thing of the past. The last 3 times I've needed support from Prusa it took ages. And the results weren't something to be proud of.
Hi Robert, nice video as always. I too had a driver failure on my XL. It happened 2 months into ownership. Support had me swap motor cables as you did and video movement of the head/bed with cables in correct plugs and swapped. That confirmed the failure of an XY driver (left side in my case) and not a cable or motor failure. They got me a replacement buddy board in two days and all was good again.
I did buy a heatsink set for a RPi and stuck them on the driver chips (plus a few others back there) on the replacement buddy board. I also printed a new electronics cover with a fan and rocker switch to keep air moving over the boards back there. I figured it couldn't hurt. Cheers!
Prusa has to take this serious. They are under a lot of pressure and one of the way they can distinct themselves from the competition is through support. I am disappointed they did not try to learn something from your incident. Nice fix however. Great content as always.
Btw I had great experience with Prusa support when my thermistor stopped worked after a few weeks.
What should they learn then? Make a tutorial about how to solder a motor driver? It is obvious that a normal user has to pay for the replacement part when out of warranty. Sometimes ic's go bad, it is what it is.
@@langphnot at all what I meant. They should be asking better question to narrow down the problem through basic troubleshooting. According to Robert the testing proposed was taking large parts of the machine apart. Maybe the tech should have been asking more questions about Roberts skill level. My experience with support they pretty fast asked if i had a multi meter at hand. In this case it could have helped the process along.
@@talbech They could do that of course. It probably is about cost: it will be more expensive and if your competitors do not offer that, it suffices to be just a little better than them.
@@talbech Agreed. Taking apart a printer seems like a bad 1st step for customer of unkown skill level (so by default inexperienced), who knows what else they are going to mess up pulling it together and putting it back together. Robert has done a great way of troubleshooting by cross connecting known good motors & drivers and unkown motors & drivers.
A $4,200 machine. Overloading one $3 driver with two motors and no heat dissipation... I get that there's a profitability element, but $3 (or an even cheaper aluminum heatsink) sounds like a pretty reasonable inclusion for the long-term reliability of a supposedly "premium" machine.
Exactly my thoughts. "it doesn't hurt" is what comes to mind. I love designing flagship products because you don't usually have to 'value engineer' everything. You can do it the way it should be done, rather than worrying about the final cost.
I’d love to have this machine. I’d love to have a Prusa. As an engineer who discovered 3d printer sans covid I quickly dove into history, etc… and realized Prusa’s contributions to the field. That said, I’ve got three printers now, one Anet, one Sovol, and recently the K1SE by Creality. As much as I’d still like a Prusa I have a hard time justifying the cost. Next will be a build and I’m leaning between RatRig and Voron at this point. Nevertheless, this is a beautiful printer. I’d expect it to be flawless. HOWEVER, NEVER, EVER, EVER BUY THE FIRST VERSION OF ANYTHING. That’s my mantra. I don’t want to beta test your equipment.
Prusa doesnt care, and you bought a printer based on promise way over priced.
@TheJacklwilliams I can't speak to Ratrigs, but my Voron2.4 300 is my workhorse, and I honestly don't even use my prusa anymore. Voron team are great people and the documentation, though kind of scattered, is all very well done and easy to understand.
@ Agreed and i havent even built mine yet. Trident in 2025.
The way you approach a problem, how you explain it and how logical your reasoning is earned you another subscriber :)
I had the buddy board overheat this summer (30C ambient + enclosure). That is when I added a fan to the back, dropping the 95-100C measured to about 50C. Hoping that it will prevent these kind of failures.
On printables: 859870-improved-prusa-xl-buddy-cover for a 60mm fan, but there are multiple models for some different fans.
@@doranku Thanks for the info, downloading that right now.
I had this problem as well this summer.
I also installed a similar mod, it really should have a fan from the factory.
I have a fan for my Buddy Board from remix print I put up on Printables. Now I can print in the garage in the summer.
Pretty crazy to see thats how the support went and how it died. For reference I have a 5 tool as well with 1210 hours print time in 8 months, 40k tool changes with very few problems mechanically with the printer, and was one of the first batch after the switch to 0.4mm nozzles.
I am not technically savvy as you and wouldnt have been able to troubleshoot like you did, so even though it stinks it didnt work as expected, im glad you shared your results with us!
Videos like this do need to come out, and maybe I am in the lucky minority of true "it just works" XL owners, but its definitely worked to my expectation at least for a $4k machine.
Most likely my experience is an outlier, but it still happened.
@RobertCowanDIY and its important to see, these are machines we expect to work for years nearly non stop and businesses rely on them - if this becomes a common problem in the coming years both users and Prusa needs to be aware.
Just like cars, if this is a fundamental issue, a recall or free replacement part should be in order regardless of warranty. I am glad you at least documented it and shared!
The Prusa chat knows me by name lol. I have probably spent 30-40 hours over several months relating to different issues on my xl. Prusa has done some things well but they need work with support. My machine is running great now but with lots of work. Let's just say my next machine will be the larger Bamboo Machine. I like my machine but the XL was shipped way to soon with to many issues. Its gotten loads better since the first ship date but Prusa is falling behind the curve. Great video Robert. The review on mine might be a bit spicer. lol. Also chart is much faster than email. Their email response for tech support is very slow.
Same here. My XL has been a disaster and I am currently waiting for a carton to return it for repair. It has never functioned correctly, my warranty is nearly exhausted and, and I am facing ~$500 to ship it to Prusa (excessive because I live in Hawaii).
I also have a Mk4S/enclosure/MMU3. While it produces excellent prints, I experience endless error messages, the effort needed to keep it operational is ridiculous, and the MMU3 is a Rube Goldberg contraption.
My wife has had an X1C carbon for about 2 years. I envy its reliability, simplicity, and compactness. I ordered an X1C recently, and I will be taking a close look at their forthcoming large model.
Shipped too soon 😂 after a year delay
That’s what so insane - the XL wasn’t even shipped soon. They spent almost half a decade making the damn thing after all the delays. How was this sort of thing not caught?
@@rob_over_9000 I know. I preordered one and waited 2 years! When it finally was shipping, I cancelled my order, but changed my mind a few months later.
Not to forget: PRUSAs success comes from building on open source heavily.
Hi Robert,
Wanted to complement you on your presentation and professionalism regarding your emotions.
It shows integrity.
Thank you
Thank YOU!
I’ve gone back and forth in my mind on getting this exact machine and have had similar issues with Prusa in the past. Now it’s definitely off the table for me.
bambu dropping a large format machine soon
@ that’s what I’ve been waiting for since I’ve already invested in multiple Bambu X1c’s but I’m honestly worried that their “Large Format Offering” will be a Whopping 325x325x350 or something just underwhelming! LoL
I’ve actually been using a Quidi4+ that belongs to a friend that ordered it on sale and had it delivered to my house while he’s gone the month of November. That’s the Cost of Babysitting! Ha. This Qidi4+ is quite impressive for $799 and is putting out equal quality to my X1C’s plus being able to print much larger.
The problem is the size for most people…they want to be able to print much larger but don’t want a Much Larger Printer! Haha
In my case, I don’t care if it requires a forklift or gantry-crane to get assembled and in place! I just want Bigger Bambu! Haha
Thank you! your video help me to reconsider buying this xl. I will wait couple of months and see what bambu has to offer.
We got a XL at work, worst printer experience we have ever had. The printer did not work well at all in several aspects. After going back and forth with support and getting nowhere we eventually opted to return it. Luckily the return process was a little bit easier. Of the 8 real prints we tried to do only one had zero issues.
Ah yes, a notification for a two day old video. Thanks UA-cam. You are one of the platforms of all time.
Hehe. I really don't think UA-cam likes my channel much.
I find the chat support online has been amazing. ive used it 4 time between bad wifi chips, Bad thermistors or general questions and they have been nothing but amazing. Quick and speedy.
I've been doing this for a few years myself and I 100% agree with everything you say in this video. I have always been one to recommend prusa, especially when most brands won't take any responsibility for their printers. I hope they're nothing short of embarrassed for putting one driver on the z axis, makes sense on a mk3 trying to keep the cost low, but the XL is another story. They went through the effort of having 16 independent bed heaters, but they could have independent stepper drivers for the z? Come on man, most are onto 3-4 axis z.
Keep at it Robert!
Your videos have been a huge help to the community.
I appreciate that!
Very great video. It's rare finding someone who can repair boards. I did that for many years. I subscribed.
Awesome, thanks for the sub!
I would suggest to use tin foil around the chip you are working on. There are so many passive components that have much smaller mass and can heat up quicker then the IC. This will stop the solder of the smaller components to melt and them to fly all over - dont ask how i know.
Another tip is to preheat the whole board from either side a bit, before you start flowing the component into place.
I've used kapton tape before for the same reason. For this board, it's easy enough to do it like I did. I've done hot air rework on probably several hundred boards, it's just been a few years since I've done it.
@ I did not really mean it for you, as you clearly showed your capabilities. More for people with less or no experience, that might just try since it looked so easy !
Your presented engineering design problems has given me second thoughts about buying this machine. I built a mk2.5 printer in 2017 with upgrade to 2.5S. To date i have had minimal problems with it.
A LOT has changed in the 3d printing world, but very little had changed with prusa since then
Found your channel tonight, subscribed after this one (3rd vid of yours watched). Very professional.
Thanks! I really appreciate it
I agree with you on this shame on them for not being more pro active in a resolution
Why? If it is not a common problem, it is not likely it will be a faulty bach. Testing the Z-motors can be done easier, but the suggested way works and has las risks toasting a X or Y driver. The solution to replace the buddy board is OK for more than 95% of the users, as soldering a new driver is not something everybody can do. Just replacing the buddy board is quite simple.
It's funny you mention the troubleshooting, because I recognize that technique of swapping the motors from something Prusa support actually had me do. I contacted Prusa a few years ago about my MK3 and they actually had me try what you did (swapping the motor connection on the board) which quickly narrowed the problem to the extruder motor. It feels like it's the quality of the support that has been impacted negatively by their growth. I used to be able to get through to them in chat. Since the XL came out, I never get through. Any time I've tried chatting, the estimated wait starts at 30 minutes but it ends up being longer so that I end up trying more different things to fix it myself, so I've genuinely never had chat support for my XL. We could speculate about high demand from more sales, new users getting into the hobby, the number of chats agents need to handle at the same time, new additions to the support team, etc, no way to know for sure but it's probably a combination of things.
The XL is not as easy to troubleshoot by swapping cables around, but this particular issue it made easier as the connectors are right next to each other
I need to say that I have never had a problem with Prusa's support. I have had some issues with my MK4, which was my fault (I was complete beginner), and they have always helped me immediately.
I only had to wait 10 mins last month for the support chat.
@@exuvo And 10 minutes are a lot? :D
You revealed a possible confluence of issues in my opinion. 1) driver chip at high load vs spec. 2) added enclosure increases ambient on one side of enclosure 3) room ambient temp could add to issue. Failure result. I removed the cover to that enclosure so far as I like the print enclosure to run warm to help print stay down and better layer adhesion. Thanks for info!!
Hi @RobertCowanDIY ,
I am just looking into this after searching again about the XL ad other competitors in the net.
Firstly. I admire your patience an gratefulness against Prusa in this subject. Congrats, and I think this is a very good move. Being cool in the first way. Not everyone would be so (me not - definitely not).
That said ... in Germany, we have a legal term for this: "Versteckter Mangel" ("Hidden defect"). This means, if a product has a "build in" flaw, like here, where the construction can lead to such a failure, the manufacture HAS TO replace this part without cost. Then this issue has nothing to do with guarantee regulation, but the manufacturer is legally in duty to fix ...
I personally see this matches very clearly here - you very clearly showed why:
- No heat sink in the driver chip
- No fan or ventilation
- Not respecting the manufacture's advice to use this driver for single motor only.
I am not an Electronic engineer, but I am doing a lot of IoT and electronics with Steppers and board. So I can subscribe anything you said and showed off. I do mainly car for old telescope mounts getting going them again with new driver boards and steppers. I heavily rely on my 3D printer (a Prusa MK3S) and really had been considering buying a XL for my workshop.
Furthermore, I am Senior IT-specialist and deal a lot with requirements engineering. I have neither the skill, nor the time to make such a detailed analysis. But I am a little shocked to hear not having any cooling or ventilation at all for the driver board and using the drivers off specs. Which for me must obviously lead to this error.
To keep things short: sadly, we are obviously on our own when it comes to support (I mean: real support that leads us in the right direction, fast and in a professional way). Prusa is not an excuse here. But this is as it is. The most important things because of this fact is a good maintenance of and to any part of the printer. If I look at the cable management, this makes me shudder. Believe me, I had my repair experiences with the MK3S without Prusa support getting to fix things done by my self. What I can say: when I comes to cabling, Prusa is really not something great.
But OK. I have to sleep over this 🙂And probably I will not spend my money on a Creality K2 Plus, but wait, and wait, and wait, until “childhood diseases” are fixed and addressed, buy the second iteration and will stay with Prusa.
Thank you for your overwhelming patience - that is really exemplary, and we can all take a leaf out of your book. I hope, people at Prusa will appreciate this as well and react on this.
Just one end note:
In Germany we learn a harsch lesson in the moment: not dealing with customers real needs will lead at the end to real big problems (I am talking about german cars industry). But as I said, let's not overreact, but see and give Prusa the time to make things better.
Point ;-)
Cheers Axel
avvp.de
Robert thank you very much for this video. I will pre-emptively install driver heatsinks and print the board cover with fan to keep the temperaturea down - hopefully to prevent this happening to me as well. QFN resoldering is not something I would want to go into!!
I really appreciate your videos. Totally unbiased and as a Prusa owner I totally understand your disappointment with the support experience.
An excellent explanation, it was concise and factual, providing both the description of issue and detail resolution. Which allows us as the community to make an educated decision in a future purchase. I’m owner of a Prusa mk4 and have upgrade to the mk4s without encountering any issues with the printer. We all understand Prusa’s value within the 3D printer community and the many innovations found in XL. Also understanding some challenges will occur with any new product line and bringing more production(circut-board) in-house. Our hope is Prusa receives your finding in a positive manner and applies it to a future release of the product. Also receives your input of troubleshooting the issue. Prusa seems committed to product improvement. Which we’ve seen as recent as the MK4 to MK4S and both software and firmware updates over the years. Thank you very much.
Yeah... you are 100% correct in your conclusion... disappointing failure. When you told them it was a driver chip, they should've made an exception and sent you a replacement board. This is either an unusual, rare failure, or a sign of a weak-point in the design.
A 1 yr warranty is ridiculous on such an expensive machine. Here in NZ that simply wouldn't fly legally, our consumer laws would over-ride their warranty.
I doubt it. Consumer laws typically cover cases where a product is defective from the start. A product breaking after a year isn't going to be covered by that. Otherwise Apple would have trouble in NZ given they never offer more than 1 year warranty for any of their products.
That said Prusa could have gotten an almost free PR win by making an exception here. There can't be that many cases of a printer breaking right after warranty.
Very good and logical troubleshooting !👍 It is surprising that Prusa did not tell you this method of investigation first. This chip and its use could be a weakness in the design of the board. I agree with the fact that Prusa could have increase the warranty to 3 or 4 years for the XL. (it's not a cheap machine !)
Honestly, I’m pretty disappointed that they are using a single driver for the Z axis. When the XL was finally released, I felt like having a dual z was a mistake anyway. Using a single driver is what Creality did with the CR10S - a printer that came out something like 7 years ago. It was.. fine, I guess, but that printer was something like $400, not $3,500.
I am glad I ended up canceling the XL, and decided to refurbish my Jubilee instead. The Jubilee has a slightly smaller printable area, but the toolchanging mechanism and printer overall is a much better design imo. Plus it has a triple Z with automatic bed leveling, which should (imo) be 100% standard these days for any printer that has a printable area over ~250mm.
Yeah, Prusa cut corners in areas they shouldn't have.
@ agreed. Especially for such an expensive printer. I could see a fair argument for it if they were charging something like $1,800 for the 5 toolhead version. But for $3,500 it's hard to justify. If you go with E3d Revo Roto toolheads, and the Duet CAN toolhead boards, as well as a Duet 3 MB6HC board, you're still under $1,500 for 5 toolheads, as I recall. For the price they're charging, you could get that setup and still have ~$2,000 leftover for a motion platform. Even at a 20% margin, they would have something like $1,000 left over for the motion platform at retail prices.
The value proposition just isn't there - which is a shame, because I absolutely love the concept.
Its highly disapointing to have an issue like this on a 4k product with the little use it had. Its good that it happened to an experienced electronics wizard like you as others can learn from this. I did have one of these on order but pulled out as I ended up purchasing a Raise E2 that was used and its been ok.
The fact that that tiny board, with just 3 stepper drivers, a wifi chip, and some CPU is so expensive to replace is bonkers!
It's not TOO crazy considering the BOM of the ICs, but there's certainly a markup on it, which is why I fixed it instead of buying one.
Try finding a replacement PSU for the Prusa Mini for less than like $80. 'Genuine' Prusa replacement parts are unnecessarily expensive.
@@RobertCowanDIY Fair enough, I'm not very familiar with the chips and their prices. I was mostly comparing it to other boards, I suppose, but they might be lower-spec.
I disagree, the chips alone are probably more than $70 dollars, add in the passives, manufacturing, firmware, R&D, sales, support and shipping and the price is almost reasonable.
@@lbgstzockt8493 I'll push back on this a bit. I'd estimate the BOM cost of this board at around $35 for parts and another $20-$30 for assembly and additional labor, depending on quantity. You might be looking at retail or digikey/mouser prices. The retail price of the motor drivers is around $8.50, but they're not paying that. The quantity pricing is much closer to $2.50. The wifi module is about as cheap as you can get and the processor is fairly common. The passives are fractions of a penny and you pay more for placing them than they're worth. I have about a decade in mid-scale electronics manufacturing, and that's just my quick take.
The "good support" was one of the Pro's for Prusa in the comparison with Bamboo... I also had two negative experiences with Prusa support. I would love to see improvements here. Thank you Robert for the great video.
decepcionado con el soporte de Prusa. Me replanteo seriamente la compra del XL. Gran video, gran solucion, y excelentemente explucado. Gracias.
Some anecdotal information. I run 9 MK4, 4 XL, 10 MK3S, and 1 SL1S. Almost all of them have well in excess of 400 days of print time some of them are well over 1000 days. In all that time I have never had a driver or any component on the any of the main boards fail. There are certainly things I wish Prusa would design better/differently, but I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that they sell these printers as kits too. Not that using one driver for two motors has anything to do with it being sold as a kit. I have also always started with their live chat, which can sometimes have long queue times, but I almost always get through troubleshooting and a resolution within one day. It does seem like they could have resolved your issue via email much faster and with better troubleshooting recs. For all those Prusa's I run, I have maybe 5-6 times a year were there is and issue that requires me to reach out to Prusa support and while it would be nice to see a longer warranty for printers with their "workhorse reputation," Prusa has been very good about honoring the warranty without any pushback when within that first year.
I realize (and admitted) mine is an isolated case. What concerned me most was the poor troubleshooting and not allowing a grace period for the warranty.
@@RobertCowanDIY I totally agree! I think you gave very fair feedback. I've been seeing a lot of bagging on Prusa these days in the comments section, and just felt like jumping in with my extensive experience with them to counter that a liitle. I do think Prusa needs to do a more to stay competitive, but I also think they are doing a lot of really good things.
@@RobertCowanDIYI don’t think a “grace period” for the warranty is reasonable. If they started doing this everyone would start talking about it and be pissed when they didn’t get special treatment. That kind of a policy only works when your customers don’t talk to each other. Extending the standard warranty would make more sense.
@@TeamVelocityit's pretty normal for companies that care about their reputation as premium brands to replace things out of warranty.
Been on fence. I will be getting Bamboo unit. Thanks for posting this!!
i have a 5 head xl that i got in june 2024, so far its been good. It will be interesting to see if other buddy boards suffer the same problem. Time will tell.
It's purely anecdotal, but others have mentioned issues after adding the enclosure. It could increase the amount of heat stuck in the metal.
@ i have the enclosure but only for a couple of month.
Damn fine troubleshooting and failure analysis, Robert.
Thanks for sharing this honestly. That's gotta be frustrating.
Yeah, it is/was. BUT, I got to show people hot air rework and how to fix stuff, so it's all good.
I thought we were past the point of having to replace individual IC chips and hack our 3D printers back to life, so this is kind of embaressing coming from Prusa of all people with their flagship model none the less.... Good job with the repair and thanks for the interesting video!
You got it wrong. This is a feature, not a flaw. Prusa wanted Robert to get in touch with the old ways, to pay hommage to the days of having to have soldering skills to run a 3D printer. Without this broken driver, without this feature, he wouldn't have known how great a company it really is and how far along we have come.
Awesome video! Loved seeing a alternate fix rather than just replacing the board. I've never had to use Prusa support but I have for Bambu. One of the pods in the AMS went bad. I sent them a video on the app and they had a replacement shipped out the next day. I was well outside the warranty but they never even asked.
Not saying one is better than the other. I like and use both brands. Just sharing my personal experience.
Thanks for watching!
Since you're asking "Why", I have a theory for you. About a month ago I started noticing my XL's build plate getting katy wampus, just like yours was at the beginning of the video. I would re-run z-calibration, and it would re-level perfectly, but then after a few big prints I'd notice the tilt would return. Since then, I've become diligent about double-checking that the build plate is actually level and running z-calibration. I've also been more diligent about lubing the ball screw, and I haven't noticed the issue in weeks now. Here's my theory - when the build plate is cockeyed, there's extra strain put on the z-axis steppers to move the bed up and down. Since the z-axis driver is already near max limits by powering dual steppers, this extra bit of strain is enough to overwork the driver, and ultimately kill it.
Regarding the repair cost, I'm of a split opinion. Sure, spending $125 on what feels like a unnecessary repair sucks. But it's also only 3% of your purchase price, so it's not a huge investment to keep such an expensive machine running. It could have been worse, had they not used the modular PCB approach. Personally, my 5-tool XL just passed 2000 hours of print time, and outside of a requirement for regular lubrication it's been defect free.
Im curious if you have any home cnc setups? I just think you do your pm well and im in the market for a cnc.
@@starguy9 Yes, I do have a CNC. It started life as a Shapeoko 2, but I expanded it to 3' x 6'. But it wasn't strong enough, so I designed a fully custom gantry, x-axis and z-axis and changed the controller over to an Acorn. So at this point it finally works great, but it doesn't look anything like a Shapeoko. For the amount of money I've sunk into customizing it, I probably would have been better off buying a real CNC, probably from someone like Mill Right.
@@PaulStevensonPinball That would make sense _if_ that's how stepper drivers worked. Unfortunately according to every stepper driver I've ever seen, and their low power modes when not moving or spread cycle etc, stepper motors don't draw any more or less current dependant on the load. They're fed a certain amount of current and that's it.
@@BeefIngotSorry, unfortunately you're only considering half the picture. While a stepper driver does limit the current, the stepper motor only consumes what it needs to handle the immediate load. When spinning freely, a stepper motor may only consume a small fraction of a 2A driver limit. When overloaded, common stepper motor symptoms are excessive current, loss of torque, and overheating. While I would agree that even an overworked stepper motor would not be able to pull more power than the stepper driver limit, this does not preclude Prusa from having set said limit too high. Under normal operating conditions, the lightly loaded steppers stay well below the driver's set limit and heat dissipation capabilities. But when the bed is not level, the additional torque demands may max out the current draw, potentially revealing the driver chip is not up to the task as configured by Prusa.
No heat sink? then what are those threaded lugs on the board for?
Others have suspected they're for a heatsink ;-) But that's just suspicion. They're not used for anything, other than making it harder to remove the chip.
Hey Robert, What did you end up doing with the stratasys reprap? That thing would make a great high temperature printer.
It's OLD. I abandoned it years ago because it's ancient technology and a modern Bambu is lightyears ahead of it.
Great video, on my next print I will probably monitor the temps on the drivers and mcu via the settings to see what they get up to. There's a few posts on the prusa subreddit and forums of them getting over 90c which is borderline too hot for my liking. They definitely should consider adding heatsinks and active cooling in that electronics box.
I’ve always used the chat and got excellent service. Had a bad board on my XL. They stayed on the chat with me for over 2 hrs trouble shooting. Then overnighted the board to me.
Was your printer under warranty?
Couple tips for removing the flux better/more completely if you aren't going the deionized water route. Use a mix of ethanol and isopropyl alcohol; That will remove both polar and non-polar compounds from the board. It's cheaper than good flux remover which is typically a mix of isopropyl and n-heptane. After scrubbing with the brush, put a Kimwipe on the board and "brush" it in. The wipe will absorb most of the dissolved flux instead of just smearing it around. Kimwipes won't leave lint on the board.
Great tip! I'm used to having access to more supplies, but we now use a contact manufacturer, so we don't have that stuff in our lab
maybe put a small heat sink onto the Z axis driver, that could prevent future issues.
potentially. there is very little room on the top of the board and it could still get too hot. others have had issues with overheating errors, even in temperature controlled environments. I'll keep an eye on it. Prusa has actually advised people against the fan modifications saying it will cause further issues. strange stuff.
During normal operation the Z-axis does not heat up. Compared to the x and y axis it is rarely used. The main use is at the start and end of a print. To prevent overheating, Prusa choose to move the z-axis quite slow. The motors are capable of much faster speeds, but as the driver has to handle two motors that could heat up the driver chip beyond save operating temperatures. Two drivers would be better and makes faster movements possible, but would increase the cost.
@ Ah yes and no. the Z axis needs hold current presumably, to hold the motors in place. Unless there is some mechanical solution in place. Where X and Y usually get away with less to no position hold, as it continuously travels.
Another thing is back current / EMF when the motors release. It is one thing to have one motor back-feed into the driver, but it might be an edge case when two motors with slight offset inductively backfeeed at the same time.
@@wilsistermans1118 The cost increase would be under $5. I'm assuming the passives, quantity pricing on the chip as well as extra pick and place time. I'm assuming modest quantities, it could be as low as $4.
@@wilsistermans1118 just because the z isn't moving there is still holding current on the steppers which heats up the drivers just as much
good video, Robert!
A Main reason to bye an expensive printer is the support you can expect. I was planning to bye a prusa but after I have seen your video I doubt Prusa can give that high Level support. Thank You for the troubleshooting video, which you gave for free.
Wow, so many parallels, I also work in electronic manufacturing (engineering through to final assembly, I'm the only staff member). I use the same Hakko irons and have one with the green handle, I use the same style of hot air gun even the same tip wiping unit. I do use paste for re-flow though. I also use quite a few different 3D printers but I will likely not consider Prusa any time soon. I have a few Bambu and Qidi printers and have found the service to be above expectations with both these companies. Qidi in fact simply sent a spare part just on an email description of an issue, no pictures required and completely free of charge, printer was still in warranty though. Seems like Prusa could do a little better specially at the price premium of the product.
Really really disappointed in this. I had a great support experience with my mini, when the bed thermistor gave out. Sent pictures that they had pinched a lead from factory, and they immediately sent a spare bed.
This XL launch has just been so sad. I really want prusa to be the western competitor, showing that we can still make high end devices, but with support like this I don't see any justifications left for the cost of the XL.
My next printer, if I get one, will probably be a Bambu, and I don't like that ☹️
The sad thing is I barely use the XL anymore because the print quality is sub-par. I use my Bambus most of the time and I only went to use this because all my other printers were busy. So the one time I go to use it and the motor driver dies because they're driving two motors with it (which the datasheet says not to do)? Yeah, I'm not thrilled.
What is the warranty on an XL I was assuming it was like three years or even five years for the amount of money you pay
In the US, it's 1 year. I can confirm this is true ;-)
@RobertCowanDIY yeah , no spending that much for only a year oh boy I can't wait until the rest of the 3D printing industry catches up cuz this machine is way too much for what it is it's just the first
Thanks for the honest review. The 4000+ euro price tag with the enclosure was already too much for me, but if the build quality and design didn't match that price, then I'll just wait for printers from other manufacturers and use the X1C for now for most multicolor print projects. With the Xl I was hoping to cut down on time and waste and utilize the full build volume.
I think one of the problems, with the Electronics is, that the board on the back gets extremely hot. When I researched, if I should get an XL or not, and if I should buy 2TH or 5TH, I saw people reporting that problem. For my experience with Prusa is mixed.. I had a semi good case and a really good case with them. The semi good case I had was with my MK3S+/MK4. I ordered my MK3S+ a bit more than a month before they released the MK4, and I wrote them and asked if I can still send it back to them. They said no and I also get why they did it, but still, buyer’s remorse was still going strong. We send some E-Mails back and forth, arguing about that, and in the end I got the difference refunded between the old and the new price. In the end I was able to sell the MK3S+ and buy the MK4 for like 50-100 bucks more than I would have paid otherwise. The other problems I had, was wired noises with my MK4, and buying the wrong version of the MMU3. Both they handled really well. For the wired noises, it was a problem with the Y-Motor and they send me a new one. And with me buying the wrong version of the MMU3, they send out the parts I needed for the MK4 version. My overall experience is, that chatting to the live support, is much better, than writing an E-Mail to them.
I think you might have experienced poor support specifically because of the printer and its cost. It’s a printer that is sort of outside of the budget for most hobbyists (especially the 5T), so maybe the assumption is “companies just want the thing to work, so replace the drivers and move on”. If you’ve spent 5k on a printer, then a $150 opex is quite insignificant (from a company perspective), compared to having it out of commission for weeks.
I do like what you’ve raised about the driver driving both Z motors. I’d love to hear an explanation from Prusa on that. That and the counter lever design are the biggest design oddities I’ve seen in this printer. I’m so tempted by it, but…
You might be right. By that same thinking, they could have made the decision to extend the warranty for the US market though...
The XL. The gift that keeps giving 😮
Should we consider adding heat sinks to the Z axes of our XL's? I have noticed that Prusa seem to under cool their chips in general. For instance, the MK 3 I used at work would give me errors if the ambient temp was too high. I added some heat sinks and a fan, which solved that problem.
I don't know, I run mu mk 3s in 40-45c regularly, and they all work well, as is Mk4. A heatsink suggestion might be a great preventative step, though
Mine with enclosure got uncomfortably hot so i changed the metal rear plate for a plastic one with air vents in it. printables 859870-improved-prusa-xl-buddy-cover
I designed control boards for RepRap 3d printers for a while and it is a common issue with integrated stepper motor drivers on one pcb boards without heatsinks. These chips gets quite hot and create tension which eventualy break all tmc's. My recomendation is to replace all drivers not only Z and add heatsinks.
Why Prusa didn't add heatsinks? Because these failures are rare and it it cost effective not to add any.
The issue is that at a certain level you should hire a professional engineers and a production manager. Prusa doesn’t have experience in core xy, their experience is based on I3 and they kept on improving it slightly over the years . Seems they went big with XL without spending a decent amount on R&D and hiring a professional engineers.
If you throw peanuts only monkeys come. Great video I love your channel and I love the way you went with the diagnosis. As a mechatronics engineer specialized in cranes I believe if you start dismantling components in your diagnosing process you will end up making more issues instead of resolving the main issue.
That was my thought. Taking off the bed is just asking for further issues.
I also have an XL but I also purchased two MK 3.5 kits. I also had an issue with the mk3.5 upghrade kits that the bed leveling did not work at all. I contacted support and they basically told me "oh that sucks" and did not offer any sort of help. People praise their support but its only good for the machines that have been around for 10 years. Anything new they are making is pretty much unsupported. If my Xl breaks Im screwed.
I'm surprised that there aren't any heatsinks on the drivers. They do run fairly hot especially when you're driving two motors with just one driver. At least there should be some active airflow across the drivers and the rest of the electronic bay. Such a weird cost cutting measure when a fan is just a few cents from their perspective.
The daughtercard with everything on it screams chip shortage fix to me. Being able to swap a small board in the case that you can't get enough of the MCU for your PCBs seems like a good way to avoid scrapping a ton of PCBs.
I definitely agree with you that the supporting design around the drivers just really isn't great. Thermally, driver wise, and setup wise. Especially for something with a short warranty... I'd also be curious if those drivers can talk via I2C since that may give Prusa a form of diagnostic.
Wow this is so bad. The main issue here is that 5000$ semi-pro machine only has one year of warranty, that is beyond horrible and it should at least have 3-5, this is not a cheap 100$ toy.
And that poor driver is cooking, what were they thinking with that lack of cooling or even a basic 2 cent heatsink?? Thank you a lot for showing this.
Good thing then the we have at least 2 years warranty in here in the EU.
@@HPijl666 yeah, at least that
Prusa doesnt care, open your eyes. Its outdated tech, and the tech they use as long as it functions its okay. They care for your money, thats all
@@TheOneAndOnlySatan yeah I know, they have so many cons so I hoped they could at least offer more warranty, but they don't even do that, very sad
You go on the prusa subreddit, say that you have an issue with a prusa, and u get 80 downvotes (literally happened 2 days ago). Prusa users are a cult, in the majority, and hate when you say something is not working, although they are all praising the support, so much that i posted to them “if you know how good is the support for several times, isn’t the time to ask yourself on WHY you have to contact them so many times?”.
Being in the 3D printing business, i kinda liked the prusa UNTIL i got one, which is the XL. From there, i hate the heavy branding and all the credits to this joke of Josef Prusa, very egocentric, hate the fact that print quality is downright BAD for a 3000$ printer (with enclosure) and their userbase. Never again a prusa.
Yep, looking at the comments in THIS video, it mirrors that. "I've been talking with support for 3 months and they're always helpful!" If they were helpful, it would be a week, not 3 months. They should know their product better than anyone else and should get problems resolved swiftly.
@@RobertCowanDIYWhen I had my Prusa Mk3S, there were multiple times that I ran into weird issues. Since I am actually fairly experienced with 3d printing every time I had a problem and turned to support it was not a super simple to solve/diagnose problem. All 3 times I asked Prusa support to help they were utterly useless. The worst case was when I was printing CF Nylon and had the extrusions wider than usual which I couldn't understand since I was using a NozzleX and assumed it would last forever. Pruss support said I was printing too fast and I should print at like 1/4th and then when that failed 1/8th the speed of my carefully tuned profiles. That did nothing. Turned out the NozzleX is only warrantied for like 10kg of PA-CF and had simply worn out and replacing it fixed the problem. But I was baffled that the supposedly god tier Prusa support would fail to identify a worn nozzle as that must be a pretty common issue.
My experience with Bambu lab has been night and day. I have been sent links to extremely thorough wiki pages with video guides and instructions to walk through repairs and free parts to replace a damaged camera and filament sensor which so far are the only things that failed besides again a worn nozzle or two and extruder gears needing to be cleaned after 1600 hours of use. And that's on my second bambu machine! A P1S, since the X1C has like 2500hrs on it and still going strong.
Any ideas for XL alternative? 4 tool changer machine?
@@RobertCowanDIY but after spending an insane amount of their own time and some of their own money on spare parts, they'll still turn around and say "See how awesome the repairability of Prusas is?? And their machines are so reliable!!"
@@cthulpiss There aren't any other options right now. Bambu is releasing 'something' in Q1 next year, hopefully it will have multiple toolheads?
Very interesting. Sounds like they don't have the XL figured out yet like they have the Mk3 series. I've been chewing on getting one of those as my first IDEX setup to do some more complex stuff but this gives me pause. Not that I'm really worried about the chip/driver failure, just the general state of the XL series. Thanks for posting this.
First off this video was awesome!
The "Pursa Tech" might have been working from a tech support call sheet which could have been the first thing they came across for that problem. Owning printers of all kinds one knows to swap the cables and test drivers it the first thing you do regarding your problem. Maybe the tech person was not that experience in these matters which from the help you received seems to be the case. Not having the technical ability to replace a chip think of the time it would have taken for anyone else just to swap a board as soon as it arrived in the mail but they didn't even suggest that at anytime.
Thanks for an excellent example of common sense troubleshooting. Disappointed in Prusa. Not the first time hearing this about the XL.
Prusa better admit that this was a major customer service screw up. As one of the last remaining non-Chinesium brands, they would be my go-to for future printer purchases to add to my farm. If the machine was out of warranty by a mere 1 month, they should have at least offered a nice discount on the new board. This isn't a $300 low end machine, and with that higher printer price should come better support than this. Please keep us updated if there are any follow ups to this. Also consider doing a more in depth video of replacing a chip.
Yep. I run a company that sells hardware devices at around this price point. I know how we operate. I would have offered a free board in exchange for some data (how long has it been running, conditions of the space, etc, etc) OR a discounted rate on a replacement.
Great video. Thanks for sharing it.
Prusa support has 24 online chat. It may take them 20-30 to assist you at time but they will usually get to you. And will usually be able to rectify there and then if not it becomes an email volley..
We have an XL 5 head with enclosure at work and we have had issues with layer shifts. Filament ran out did not trigger correctly and it z homed about half an inch above the print. The cost of this printer that should just work, the time to troubleshoot and diagnosis of the layer shifting plus the failed prints it's alot of money. I personally would not recommend an XL because it's not up to Prusa standard. The enclosure feels rushed. Our mk3 and MK4 are great and I would highly recommend them.
Honestly I haven't noticed that both motors are driven by the same chip. I assumed there's some amount of mechanical bed leveling during probing. I haven't touched Z screws since getting the XL half a year ago, but the alignment seems to hold fine so far.
I just started watching this but holy crap if true.
This is something even cheap printers haven't been doing lately. Heck, the Mk4s doesn't do this.
I just feel like at this price, that's a hell of a way to cheap out. You'd think they'd at bare minimum have a mechanical linkage between the sides to keep them in alignment.
Thanks for the video. I kind of agree with your policy of the 1 month of leeway, especially with the premium they are charging because support is supposed to be their calling card
Would still like to see some ESD protection while working with PCB’S. Glad you got it figured out.
What soldering iron is that? It looks like it has a way to change tips without holding on to the hot part?
It's a Hakko FX-951. It's my go-to iron. I have a Metcal sitting right next to it that I rarely use. You can 'hot-swap' nozzles without touching anything hot, which is really slick.
Well stated and great trouble shooting. Hopefully lessons learned all around
What's a bit crazy is that Prusa's have a 2 year warrenty in the EU (by law). So if this happened to someone in the EU after 13 months of owning the printer it should still be covered. But it's not great if the Buddy XL board fails after so little amount of time.
Wonder if PRUSA warranty start date is from date of order or delivery. Received mine July 23'. It took 3 months before the first SUCCESSFUL print. I was not a happy camper staring at the giant anchor in my living room. Finally with many emails and hours of video with PRUSA, dismantle/reassembly instructions that sometimes made no sense, it worked. They did have me reprint a handful of newer parts mine did not have. (I had decided to keep my MX3S fortunately). Especially the caps on top of the Z axis threaded rods. For whatever reason they were causing most of the problems. Finally all's well and it's been doing great. You mentioned how tight everything is on the backside and possible lack of air flow. Since you now have the enclosure do you think that may have anything to do with chip failure? I don't have a enclosure yet. A lot to keep in mind though. Thanks for sharing.
Would be useful to know how warm it gets in the compartment with the buddy board. Do you have thermocouples? I’ve had mine about as long as you and have not found it to be “it just works” as my Mk3’s. I had to buy .4 nozzles for it during the warranty period because of oozing and I’m still having ooze issues even with very carefully dried filament. I’d still rather have this machine over a Bamb but the faith I have in Prusa to get the bugs worked out isn’t infinite.
Owner of a XL 5TH, MK4S, and Min+ and have really enjoyed all of them with very few issues, only needing to speak to support a few times which always went well, but you make some very valid points and this is a frustratingly bad miss on Prusa's support. I hope they see this (I'm sure they will) and learn and improve from it.
In terms of the failed IC, I'm curious for your thoughts, I'm sure this is an off the shelf part that has some expected failure rate and this seems like just bad luck. Do you think that's the case or is there something inherently bad in the design that Prusa could improve on? I'm aware of the MCU overheat issue which I think is on that same board, which is why I have the fan mod installed - maybe this is a related cooling issue? Just a measly ME here, not an EE lol
I think it's bad luck with a healthy dose of the implementation not helping it's luck. If it had died with a heatsink and active cooling AND discrete drivers for each motor, I'd be a bit more shocked. Without cooling (up top of where all the heat from the power supplies accumulates) and it running two motors? Yeah, it's less shocking. I'm beginning to think Prusa has a hard time learning. Look at what they released after the HUGE market shift in the last year.
@@RobertCowanDIY Agreed. I hope Prusa learns and pulls some rabbits out of the hat soon because I much rather support their community than the other…
Also "I think it's bad luck with a healthy dose of the implementation not helping it's luck" is a great way of putting it. If you aren't aware, this mod adds a fan to that board which l've done and it definitely helps. I hate that Prusa leaves fixes like this up to the community but dang do I love my XL: Search Printables for“Improved Prusa XL Buddy Cover” (I can’t post the link in UA-cam I guess).
@@RobertCowanDIY Agreed. I hope Prusa learns and pulls some rabbits out of the hat soon because I much rather support their community than the other...
Also "I think it's bad luck with a healthy dose of the implementation not helping it's luck" is a great way of putting it. If you aren't aware, this mod adds a fan to that board which l've done and it definitely helps. I hate that Prusa leaves fixes like this up to the community but dang do I love my XL: Search Printables for "Improved Prusa XL Buddy Cover" (I can't post the link in UA-cam I guess).
You could probably also try do resistance measurements on the outputs from the driver to GND/ rail, they would possibly show some kind of difference, due to open or shorted driver.
How is it meant to level the bed if it has only one driver? Does it assume that both lead screws never get out of sync?
Or maybe it can alternate from one lead screw to the other? (Just guessing here.)
From what i can see on mine, it pushes the Z up to the top on print start which mechanically levels it out assuming the difference was small to start with.
Thanks for this video. Reading the prusa subreddit or other places where people that really like prusa hang out make me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. You'll see people spend a dozen hours and $50 worth in parts to fix an issue their printer shipped with and go "Isn't Prusa awesome, I can buy these spare parts for reasonable prices and fix my own printer". The XL is really cool, but it's sold at a very premium price, while not being a polished product.
Now, I'm not 12 years old and I don't feel loyalty to any brand, and dismissing people as fanboys is dumb. But I think Prusa currently lives off their past reputation and a core audience that will buy just about anything they put out while loudly shouting in online forums about how reliable their machines are.
have to say i had the board on my 2nd toolhead die, thankfully i was still under warranty but i haven’t had the time to replace the board in 2 months, hope the board swap works
i have a 5 head xl, no issues yet, pretty happy with it, but reading your issue i am relieved to have the two years warranty here in europe and i have been disappointed with prusa customer relations recently and start to loose the passion for the brand
I have owned couple Prusas and lack of cooling on stepper drivers have always baffled me. it may not seems to be needed but even 20 cent passive heatsink helps...
TMC chips tend to crap out if ran too hot too long, above 85-95 C. While at it you could have added some passive cooling at the least :)
Good work going through the steps to find the issue. Then having the tools and skill to fix it. The Z may benefit from the phase stepping being recalibrated.
I had to do a hard reset and re-calibrated everything, which sucked.
@ ouch. That means all the tool docks and nozzle offsets then.
Phase stepping is only for the XY motors.
Prusa needs to get this fixed fast, this is a $3500 machine, not an ender. Seems like the XL was rushed to market because Bambu Lab is destroying their market share. I love my Bambu machine, but I want Prusa to do well because they contribute so much to open source and set the standard for customer support and reliability. Their premium price should ensure a premium product
I'm going back and forth with my choice for the next printer. I want a reasonably large bed, decent quality and at least two toolheads, so my candidates are the Prusa XL and the fully kitted out Ratrig V-Core 4. I'm still gravitating towards the XL because from what I've heard the Ratrigs, similar to Vorons, take dozens of hours to assemble and honestly I want the printer to be a tool rather than becoming its own project.
A case like this is quite unfortunate, though it could be an outlier. I also hear people praising Bambulab right now like they did with Prusa years ago, yet I am not very impressed with my A1 Mini's firmware quality and default profiles. For example the firmware already crashed a couple times within weeks, does not have a way to stop a filament (un)loading process, and the way its input handling works can lead to situations where what the printer is doing is completely out of sync with the user interface. But I can't complain, it's cheap and still quite impressive for the price.
Great video. Perhaps they need to work on a standard checklist. I agree with you on having just the one drive chip. Not sure it's a good idea. As you mentioned there are no heatsinks on those driver chips. I had a similar problem with a different machine. To little cooling on the driver chip. Needless to say they did upgrade subsequent iterations. Let us know how it goes in a later video.
What are you planning to do about the air flow? Design a new back case with vents? Add a heatsink. Would be interesting to see the temps when in use.
the MK4 and MK4S also have one motor driver for the two Z motors. Do you think this will also cause problems for these printers? Just placed my MK4S in an original Prusa enclosure. 😢
I think this is most likely an isolated issue. I still wonder why the driver died, especially since there were 3 of the same chip on the board...
@RobertCowanDIY I think these broke due to overheating. These drivers normally have heat sinks for passive cooling. If two motors are connected to one driver, the power that the chip must deliver also doubles. At least that's my theory.
Maybe I will also place heat sinks on the drivers with possibly a fan for active cooling.
@@RobertCowanDIY The weight of the XL bed is much higher than the gantry on the MK4, so I would guess it's much higher stress, even if it's not so much used compared to x-y axis, imagine when printing multiple kg prints on this bed.
Another great video.
I’d be interested in the results of a thermocouple on the motor driver when printing a tall thin model.
I would switch out that solid metal board cover - no airflow. There are a few ventilated covers available on Printables. I got some board overheat errors early on that I traced to this. Haven't had a problem since I installed the ventilated cover. Maybe the driver on your board overheated without triggering an overheat warning. Also, never have reflowed a package like that - how do you know if the leads are all connected? Super awesome that you did your own troubleshooting and fix. Hey, where's your HT90?
is there really no heatsink on the drivers?
there are mounting posts next to the drivers!!!!!!!!!!
Nope! But as you said, they have mounting posts that are unused. Maybe that was the idea behind them?
did you try any othr printers like the bambu labs one?
I have two bambu X1C printers, they are my primary printers right now