Noisy motors! Please help!

  • The motor noise happens for two motors that I have. I'm just setting up my DuetWiFi, so the motors and paneldue, USB, SD card are the only things connected. The noise is kind of high pitched. Its noticeable after the motor stops turning until it "idles out." The noise changes slightly with each press of the movement button.

    The noise is independent of power supply voltage (tried 24V, 18V, 15V, 12V), microstepping (tried 1 to 32), and independent of interpolation active or deactive. The noise dims after the idle time, but the dimming is independent of the idle current. It dims to about 30% volume. It dims if I set the motor current to a lower value, but it is still definitely noticeable. I want to use them each at 70 to 80% the rated current, but the noise is pretty audible there. There is no mechanical load on the motor.

    Motor #1 is a 0.9 deg, 1.2A, 3.6V, 2.2mH, Nema17 motor (20mm in length).

    Motor #2 is not as loud as motor 1, but definitely is there. Nema 17 Bipolar 1.8deg 1.68A 2.8V.

    When I used the pololu drivers with similar motors a while ago, there was no noise. Then when I switched to the TMC2130's, there was a similar noise to what I have now, just higher pitched. Someone 5 years older than me couldn't hear it (because it was too high pitched), while younger people could hear it very well. It went mostly away after increasing from 12V to 24V.

    But with the Duet's drivers I'd love to get them working with no noise!

  • My power supply is a cheap bench top power supply. Could it have something to do with that? Maybe its output is too ripply or something. I don't have an oscilloscope to see.

  • Does nobody have any suggestions?

  • administrators

    There is a short thread here about motor noise. Maybe it's my age, but I have used several different types of motor with the Duet WiFi and Duet Ethernet, and all I can ever hear is a slight hiss.

  • It is an age thing. I could search for it, but I'll just guess from memory that around 17 Khz. is where the noise is at and why older people can't hear it. Mosquito noise maker comes to mind as well.

  • Here is a video that has the exact same noise(s) that I'm experiencing. I don't know what driver the person in the video is using. So screechy!

    Notice how the pitch/tone is different between each move:

    I really hope I can fix it.

  • That is the same noise I hear when lowering the hotend on my Delta. I can tell when it hits the build plate without even looking because of the noise. When it is running, it is pretty quiet except for really long non-print moves. Even then it is more like a whurrrrreeeee noise.

    What do you have your motor settings set to in your config.g?

  • M350 X16 Y16 Z16 E16 I1 ; Configure microstepping with interpolation [I've also tried I0, no µstepping, 1/256 microstepping, but the noise stays]

    M92 X87.489 Y87.489 Z4000 E420 ; Set steps per mm [did not edit these at all]

    M906 X600 Y600 Z600 E800 I30 ; Set motor currents (mA) and motor idle factor in per cent M84 S30 ; Set idle timeout [Will set to 1 second to minimize noise]

  • The noise is happening when the motor is not even moving… just when current is going through it. On a previous TMC driver (TMC2130), it was fixed by increasing the voltage to 24V from 12V. But I'm using 24V already (from the benchtop power supply).

  • administrators

    How technical are you? If you can understand the TMC2660 datasheet then it's possible to reprogram the chopper control registers of the drivers, and it should be possible to find a setting that reduces the noise.

    If I ever find a motor that makes a noise that I can hear and is more than a slight hiss, I'll do this myself.

  • Pretty technical. I can try. I'll take a look at the datasheet. Can the registers be changed via gcode? And what page should I reference in the datasheet?

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