Ender 5 with 8-bit Creality 1.1.4 board- Issue with speed of extruder motor spinning too slow

Question

The issue I'm having is that the extruder motor is not spinning fast enough so the filament doesn't come out as fast as I would like it to.

In terms of the specs, the printer is an Ender 5 that has the Creality V1.1.4 8-bit motherboard in it. The only issue I need to fix is the rpm of the motor (Nema 17 stepper motor) because it doesn't spin fast enough.

I have tried changing the feed-rate settings in the Marlin firmware code but that didn't fix the problem. I found this video yesterday where a guy said that you have to change the steps per unit value in the code which depends on the micro-stepping value that's set for the stepper driver in the motherboard.

However, I don't know how to check or change this driver value so I searched up and found that usually for the A4988 drivers which are in the 1.1.4 board they're set to 1/16th micro-stepping. Online it says for 1/16th micro-stepping you need to change the extruder steps per mm value to 409 (rough estimate) in the marlin code (it was 93 before so I am wondering if changing this value would increase motor speed).

I don't know if this is a software issue or if it's because the stepper motor just isn't getting enough current due to the 8-bit board so if I swapped out the 8-bit board with a 32-bit board can I change the motor speed by increasing the amount of current that is sent to the stepper motor? Or does the board not really matter?

Sorry if the details aren't clear or something I said doesn't make sense as I am new to this.

Answer 1

I think you might be asking how to adjust your steps per mm, but if the motor is moving the correct distance, but at a slow speed, then it might just be a speed problem with settings, or whatever it might be. I have an Ender 3 but I think I might be able to show you how to calculate the steps per mm. There is a simple equation for this.

New E-steps=(target distance/actual distance moved)*current E-steps

You can use this equation with a couple steps.

Step 1. Make your printer extrude 100 mm of filament, then measure with a digital caliper how much it actually extruded (or moved). Plug this measurement into your equation in the part "actual distance moved", and put 100 in the part "target distance". You can control the motors by going to: prepare then move axis.

step 2. Go to the steps per mm section.

Then use this value to fill in the "current E-steps"(but on your printer of course) In the end your equation should look like this: New E-steps=(100/your measurement)*your current E-steps.

After you solve the equation, put the answer into the printer. To save your changes, go back two pages from "Steps per mm" and click the "store settings" button. This will save your changes onto your sd card, so make sure that it is in the slot when you do this. Also make sure that your sd card is in the printer at start-up, because it needs to boot up with the settings. (at least on the Ender 3)