Z axis goes down when told to go up or down

[techevil]

Hi everyone, I have a weird problem with the z axis. when you tell the z axis to go up, it moves, but moves down. when you tell it to move down, it moves down. nothing I can find seems to change this. I have tried inverting z in Arduino, it made no difference either way. I've loaded the most current firmware available here. if I manually raise the z to the top and try auto home, it slowly travels down and stops when it triggers the end stop. it does not pull back slightly like x and y do when they hit the end stops. It has to be a firmware issue, the likelihood of both z motors failing in the same way is really small, unless there is some board setting I am unaware of. please help! once this is solved, ill fnally (hopefully) be able to print!

[Newopint95]

Have you tried moving one of the stepper controllers from the Y or X axis to the z axis port? It is possible that the controller chip is bad.

[techevil]

i haven't as of yet, but will give it a go. from what I have seen on different forums, its pretty likely that is the case. I've ordered a set of new ones today. as I've heard they do tend to overheat easily, it cant hurt to have a few extra handy. Thanks for the reply, ill let you know the results.