<p>Load does not change the distance a stepper travels unless it misses steps. That's why it's called a stepper and not a normal open-loop motor - it moves in discrete steps that are completed in their entirety or not at all.</p>
<p>If the motor can't move (actually: accelerate) the load you've given it, no amount of software-level stuff will change that. Giving it more current might. But generally, unless you've built an extremely rigid machine for extremely high usable acceleration/speed, these motors have more power than they can use without going way beyond the point where your print quality becomes unacceptable. For example the X motor on a stock Ender 3 can accelerate the stock carriage at nearly 100000 mm/s² if you really want it to (with input shaping; without it, the resonances will give you drastically increased reaction forces that make it skip steps much sooner, maybe at 6000-10000 mm/s²).</p>
<p>A more massive toolhead will be harder to accelerate, but the way you solve this is by using lower acceleration, or putting on a more powerful X motor. However, unless you're also doing serious vibration-reduction modifications to go with the increased mass, you won't even want to have more acceleration. The ringing will be bad.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-09-02T07:17:20.150Z
Thank you very, very much for taking the time to educate on this topic. It is very much appreciated. It will surely help many more in the future.
DumbQuestionButAnswerAnywayPle
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-09-02T01:32:30.660Z
2023-09-02T01:32:30.660Z
R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE
<p>Speaking about any printer, in a general sense.<br />
If I load up the X carriage with two hotends and two stepper motors in a direct-drive-way... Then surely the force applied by the x stepper motor will not translate to the intended distance of the carriage.</p>
<p>What I am getting to is: How do you ensure changing carriage weight does not change travel distance?</p>
<p>Where would you change something? Do you start at software-level, like there being a variable and an algorithm which you feed the weight to, or do you change the stepper motor, and so on?</p>

<x-axis>
How much weight can the x motor support?
DumbQuestionButAnswerAnywayPle
# How much weight can the x motor support?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2023-09-01)

Speaking about any printer, in a general sense.  
If I load up the X carriage with two hotends and two stepper motors in a direct-drive-way... Then surely the force applied by the x stepper motor will not translate to the intended distance of the carriage.

What I am getting to is: How do you ensure changing carriage weight does not change travel distance?

Where would you change something? Do you start at software-level, like there being a variable and an algorithm which you feed the weight to, or do you change the stepper motor, and so on?

**Tags:** x-axis


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2023-09-02. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

Load does not change the distance a stepper travels unless it misses steps. That's why it's called a stepper and not a normal open-loop motor - it moves in discrete steps that are completed in their entirety or not at all.

If the motor can't move (actually: accelerate) the load you've given it, no amount of software-level stuff will change that. Giving it more current might. But generally, unless you've built an extremely rigid machine for extremely high usable acceleration/speed, these motors have more power than they can use without going way beyond the point where your print quality becomes unacceptable. For example the X motor on a stock Ender 3 can accelerate the stock carriage at nearly 100000 mm/s² if you really want it to (with input shaping; without it, the resonances will give you drastically increased reaction forces that make it skip steps much sooner, maybe at 6000-10000 mm/s²).

A more massive toolhead will be harder to accelerate, but the way you solve this is by using lower acceleration, or putting on a more powerful X motor. However, unless you're also doing serious vibration-reduction modifications to go with the increased mass, you won't even want to have more acceleration. The ringing will be bad.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thank you very, very much for taking the time to educate on this topic. It is very much appreciated. It will surely help many more in the future.  

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