I printed all the parts I needed for my 2.4 build on my Monoprice Maker Select Plus (a rebranded Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus), enclosed under a couple of cardboard boxes taped together. The parts were… functional, but not exactly pretty.

Motive for reprinting:

  • My z-homing isn’t that consistent and I need to fiddle with live z a bit for each print. My StealtBurner didn’t fit together that well, so I’m hoping that better fitting parts will result in more consistent homing
  • Moving to a Bondtech BMG Integrated Drive Gear Assembly in hopes of having fewer z-artifacts. If I’m going to rebuild my CW2, I might as well print it again too

While disassembling, I noticed that one of the bolts attaching the carriage to the linear rail was… very very lose (backed out 3+ turns). Maybe that was another contributor to my inconsistent homing.

More photos:

My first print with the rebuild is underway! I’m very excited to see if there’s any change to the random z-artifacts I was seeing before, but I’m sad to report that my first klicky attach probe failed.

  • nezbyte@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    Fantastic results! Looking forward to hearing if the integrated BMG drive gear assembly noticeably improves your prints. I have one in a box I’ve been putting off installing.

    • IMALlama@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      Early results: it’s an improvement, but z-artifacts are not gone. I’ll have to try a hollow cylinder to see if there’s a pattern there. I also have a machined POM gear in the mail, complete with helical drive gears. I’ll be sure to post results with that as well.

      Here’s a series of photos using a Pixar style desk light at a few angles. The light is fairly direct/harsh. New part on the left, old part on the right.

      90 degree to the cube’s face and fairly close. Pardon the spec of lint on the left cube :(

      Shallow angle:

      Getting steeper:

      Here’s the light nearly perpendicular to the face of the cubes:

  • morbidcactusEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    While disassembling, I noticed that one of the bolts attaching the carriage to the linear rail was… very very lose (backed out 3+ turns). Maybe that was another contributor to my inconsistent homing.

    Oh yeah, it’s worth re tightening fasteners after a some operation time (10s after initial assembly, check as regular maintenance), I found the rail on my tap probe was slightly loose when I did a rebuild, was definitely contributing to some error.

    Really nice results!

    • IMALlama@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      Another good one that I recently learned: clean your panels if you’re printing ASA/ABS. My printer was getting more and more stinky. Panel cleaning helped quite a bit. Other than a wire break, this is the first maintenance thing I’ve done. The printer has 618 hours on it so far. I am tempted to get obsessive in my quest for improving z-axis quality. I should also probably get around to doing input shaper tuning and check belt tension…

      • morbidcactusEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        That’d explain a lot, I do primarily abs on my 2.4 so definitely going to do that, I installed a nevermore Max which has helped a lot as well. My maintenance has been kinda self inflicted because I can’t leave things be, I had bimetal cht nozzles shear off while doing a nozzle change, twice. First time I grabbed a 1.5 Nm preset wrench as my wrench only went down to 2 ish as the prusa docs called for 2.5 Nm, sheared again on the other printer, only found out now they recommend something like 0.5-0.8 Nm so I’ve gone back to coated hardened steel on both. I’ve been playing with larger nozzle sizes lately, 0.6 works pretty well but 0.8 just flies, I should print some tolerance tests once I get the cooling tuned but the few benchies I printed as a quick test looked decent enough.