Sos3DPrinting

Stepper motors allow mechanical parts of your 3D printer to move. They’re characterized by their extremely high precision, differently from classic DC motors. But steppers have some problems with overheating if not handled correctly, especially with high speeds, weights, and current.

So let’s see four ways to rapidly cool down the stepper motors of your printer, but first…

How does a stepper motor works?

As the name says, a stepper motor works by steps. It is characterized by its extremely high precision and especially by its capacity of maintaining the position when stopped.

Respect to DC motor they’ve got some cons. Particularly, they can’t reach high speeds and they tend to overheat even after only a few minutes of working.

Printing speed

In the introduction of this article, we rapidly listed the causes of a stepper motor to overheat. One of these causes is high speed.

So, the first thing we must do when a stepper motor of our 3D printed get hot is to slow down the print acting on the slicing settings. However, rarely the speed decreasing itself can solve the problem. But, if used together with the method we’ll see, it could be helpful.

Torque

Stepper motors, like any other motor, need a bigger current if the torque increase. We can see the torque as the force the motor must apply to move the carriage of the printer. But how do we lower the torque needed? The first thing to do is to lubricate all the parts of the printer (you can use a sewing machine oil, like this). Also doing regular maintenance can be great.

Absorbed current

Stepper motors are controlled by a specific circuit named Driver. There’re many types of drivers but all of them have a common characteristic: they’ve got a screw that allows regulating the current sent to the motor. So, using a screwdriver you can regulate this screw (vref).

Active and Passive cooling

The last chance we’ve got to cool down our stepper motors is to force them to cool down. We can do it passively or actively.

We start with a passive cooling system. As the name says, it is passive, so it limits to stay there and cool down the motor without any moving part. Passive cooling systems are called heatsinks, they can be of different materials and sizes. Usually, passive cooling is avoided in closed printers. In open printers passive cooling can be enough if the heatsink is fixed with good quality thermal paste.

What we suggest is active cooling. An active cooling system combines the heatsink of the passive system with a fan who force the air to pass through the heatsink. The best way is to use an all-in-one system bringing it from the CPU coolers like this or this.