Had an issue with my 2.0 A-350 a little over a week ago. One of my linear modules stopped working, followed the support websites instructions to check the silicone pad. Sadly everything was burnt and melted inside 
very scary, I was at work when it happened. I’m just relieved it didn’t start a big fire in my garage. Anyways I messaged their support team a week ago and still no response, any idea on how long they normally take to get back to you. Machines been down over a week now and it’s probably gonna be a little bit to get my new linear module sent in. I’d appreciate it if I could get some sort of response or update. I got 2 work orders I have to delay and discount because I’m gonna be a late on them. I’d hate for them to go to someone else.
There’s a national holiday in China until 8 October.
Oof. Well if anyone else had an issue and needed a replacement module, do you have an estimated time on how long it took from them approving that you needed a replacement to when you received it? Just trying to get a timeline pushed on to some customers
I’ve also contacted the support today since it looks like I have a faulty linear module too. According to what I’ve read by now I strongly believe they will fix our problems, we just need to have some patience.
Hi Shane -
Welcome to the community!
I’ve got no info on the linear module, but wanted to respond to something else you mentioned - delaying work orders due to the machine being offline.
This is just my opinion. Honestly, I don’t think the SM is production-ready. Meaning, I would not bet my business on it. It’s more of a high end hobbyist machine, with sketchy and spotty support from the company. (How many national holidays does China have, anyway? It seems like there’s a big one in the beginning of the year, another one now…and the entire country, like, shuts down? Really?)
Personally, I would do my manufacturing beforehand, and THEN list the items for sale. I assume in your case, each item is built to spec, so you can’t do that, but I wanted to plant the seed for you to at a minimum get a little more comfortable with the machine before relying on it for income.
Again, my opinion, YMMV, my $0.02, etc. Wishing you the best of luck!
I was thinking the same thing regarding production readiness - maybe someone coming in to this with much more experience than me could get this up and running quickly, but I’ve been at it for 3 weeks and feel like I’m just scratching the surface of tuning and calibrating. There are more production ready machines on the market, but they cost at minimum twice as much.
[A350] I’ve got the same issue here with a linear motor failure. I’ve also followed the guide to inspect the silicon pad and raised a ticket including the photo’s. I was unaware it was a public holiday so I feel a little more confident I’m not being ignored now.
Sadly I’ve only had the printer for just 2 weeks and done a few prints (plus one attempt at laser engraving) but was just getting into the swing of things when this occurred.
Excited to get back into it once the issue has been resolved/part replaced.
Is it not responding at all? Mine isn´t. I first thought it was the left one making noises. After I detached the plate / the dish itself having only the linear modules move around freely, I can definately see: one of my y-axis linear modules is not moving at all. Even switched some cables from the controller.
A started a support ticket on the 2nd of october but until today, nothing happend at all.
I had so many Ideas by now, but sadly, nothing is working.
My situation is exactly the same.
During a print noticed a weird line through the entire thing (like multiple layers had been squished together) following my investigation i found one of the motors is completely dead (no movement at all and incredibly hard to move manually).
I’ve tried swapping the cables into the converter with no luck as well.
I think we’re all more or less in the same boat.
Yeah I have complete faith we will be taken care of with our linear modules, they are a big brand now, with alot of attention in the media, a very extensive forum, and obviously designers and makers with a lot of passion. I’m still in awe at how the machine came packaged and the whole build process was amazing. Even on their site it says they will need to replace the module if checking on the silicone pad, or switching cables doesn’t work. I never even tried switching cables, the circuit board was completely melted in my module
@Shane000 Would you mind to share a picture of the melted circuit?
In my case the right linear module I’m using for the bed becomes way hotter than the other and sometimes it just stops in the middle of a print. I’ve checked the silicone pad and it looks like it’s present but I realized that by moving the handle by hand it is very hard to move and it makes a weird clicking noise when traveling to one direction, while toward the other direction it sounds okay.
In my opinion SM was without any doubt a successful campaign for its backers: a genius idea for version 2, then a very well built machine. Now I believe that by keeping up supporting its customers SM will have everything to reach many other achievements in the future.
Still in my opinion but from a purely technical standpoint I understand that SM had the hype and wanted to create a machine from scratches by making the standards (I.E. connectors) instead of using widely available ones. That usually means to make something unique and identical as the original idea, and I approve it 100%, but it has the disadvantage of having issues related to the natural lack of real-world usage from the users.
You open a linear rail and you realize it’s a unique piece of engineering, but it still have issues because that same linear rail went to places with 30 °C ambient temperature or 80% humidity or maybe its user started a 17 hours print in a 20x20 area so the steppers will move continuously without any breath, or maybe the power supply nominal output current is valid for 230 volt AC but that user has an induction cooker and it has only 215 volt at home, and that means less current from the power supply, and I can stay here all the day to write examples about this. It only marginally matter how many tests you do at QC, because you will always have more or less issues after a worldwide delivery. That is the reason why I believe we should keep it up and have a bit of patience until the things will be solved for everybody.
I work in an industry that has to design for environments like that and on one hand I understand what you’re saying, but on the other hand there are dozens and dozens of environmental and electrical design standards that cover worldwide design. I’m not giving them a pass on any of the examples you listed.
- Non standard connectors - at least sell or include spares
- Temperature and humidity and voltage deviation - In my industry at least there’s IEC60529, IP65, IP50, IP20, IEC60255, IEC60068, IEC-C37, IEC61000…I could go on. Not many of these are relevant to consumer design, but surely there are some standards to reference for appropriate test fixtures for these environments.
Wow, thanks for posting those. Incredible and sobering.
Even though I haven’t been having any heating issues that I’m aware of I’m going to open all the modules and make sure the thermal pads are present. Not worth the risk.
Thank you for sharing, it looks like there’s no thermal overload or current overload protection on the stepper driver, or if there is, it failed.
@brent113 Unfortunately agreed with you. As I said they made most of the standards so a clash with reality, however small it may be, was inevitable.
I’m looking at those images and I’m struggling to imagine how a missing thermal pad would cause that.
The burnt material in the centre of the actuator suggests that there’s more to it than just an overheated circuit board.
I’ve been planning to inspect my axis internally before ever powering anything up and given the amount of issues being described in the forum I’m wondering if there’s a design or a construction issue at play that underlies this.
@Enne Appreciate the discussion. It looks like the overheating originated on the microcontroller and not the driver?
The driver is an A4988 which is completely self protected internal to the chip. I doubt overloading the driver or even running without a heatsink would cause the driver to fail. I have actually ran A4988 drivers without heatsinks before when testing motors out, and have never melted one.
@brent113 I’m sorry I was referring to the driver assembly, not the chip itself. My guess was that the extreme high temperature originated from an high current condition and probably that was allowed by the lack of an overcurrent/thermal protection on the assembly itself. The A4988 is current-adjustable on the stepper side but I’m not sure about it’s input side, anyway it has a thermal shutdown protection. However, according to the picture it looks like the combustion originated from between the two boards. 
It would be interesting to have the assembly split up to check it more closely.
@Enne Ok I follow. Yes, it looks like a dielectric failure started somewhere, and then built heat until the DC supply faulted.
At this point I’m curious what support will have to say. @Shane000 make sure to discuss the main controller with support, in addition to the linear module. That type of fault can be extremely damaging if the DC bus on the main controller was not designed to handle through faults.
you are completely right!