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kevinakasam / BeltDrivenEnder3

All parts including Voron files for the Belt Driven Ender 3 V3
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Add recommendation for PC wheels #78

Open aamott opened 5 days ago

aamott commented 5 days ago

Didn't know where to put this, so sorry for that, but it made such a difference with my belted z setup that I had to share.

After something like two years of using this mod, I decided to try PC wheels on the z axis. I'm on the old a4988 drivers, but it looks better than any printer I've ever used before. It's an insane difference switching between PC and Delrin wheels. $3 for the whole upgrade (used the old bearings) but it looks like the work of linear rails. I'd like to recommend a note on PC wheels in the readme because of this.

Jonathan-Ott commented 5 days ago

Adam, do you have a link to the ones you used?

aamott commented 4 days ago

Yep! I bought these: Polycarbonate Xtreme v Mini wheel for Openbuilds

Amazon has some too, though these have bearings preinstalled, no idea of the quality: Clear Polycarbonate Wheel

I had no chance of getting the bearings back out of the polycarbonate wheels without cutting them. Getting them out of the delrin was no problem though once I realized I couldn't push from one side to get them both out. That little plastic lip in the center is obvious in the clear wheels.

Also, in my research, only one person did real tests on the X/Y axes with PC wheels vs delrin and found their first few hours made noticeable dust, just like delrin, but after they wore in it was barely noticeable (again, like delrin). I'll test X and Y later too, since now the rest of the printer is quality enough to see any difference, but may be a little.

Jonathan-Ott commented 4 days ago

I ended up ordering these from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PBK93C4?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1. They arrive today (Monday, 30 SEP 2024); I was also curious about the dust, and the "squealing" that others mention, but I attribute a lot of that to over zealous tightening of their e-nuts.

I'm looking forward to putting the new PC wheels on, in addition to my new z-axis extrusions (500mm). I went tall, as I have a 3D printed direct drive that causes the extruder lever to bump the top bar where the screws hold the z-stepper bracket. Going 500mm and leaving the actual printing height numbers alone will keep the extruder from bumping the screws (currently I have a ~75mm 3D printed 2040 extrusion extension on top of the stock z-axis extrusions...going solid at 500mm will take any possibility of a "weak link" slop out of the system (I print slow, so any long-lever-arm rocking in the x-axis should be kept to a minimum too)). I've gotten some z-banding on tall prints.

Hopefully the PC wheels, the solid verticals and a good squaring up of everything should yield much better results.

And if @kevinakasam is reading this, I have recommended this belt driven dual z to several 3D printing friends. Hopefully they will make the conversion too. :)