Upgrade your bed springs –> improve your print quality
Posted by richrap
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Upgrade your bed springs –> improve your print quality September 13, 2011 11:43AM |
For the last week I have been using a better spring on my print bed, it's made quite a difference to my print quality especially at higher speed printing.
I was getting more and more issues going faster on my Prusa, most of these manifested themselves as less fine outer surfaces and less alignment on the vertical walls. So after fixing all my vertical Z issues (de-couple the Z motor mounts, make sure the rods are really straight, and adding Z rod bearing stabilisers) the only thing remaining was a little wobble on my build-bed. This wobble gets more and more the faster you print / accelerate / stop etc, so I changed my bed springs from the 'official' little ones from biro pens to ones usually used on the Extruder Idler.
On the left is a ground spring normally used on the extruder. On the right the 'official' bed spring is usually sourced from a disposable biro pen.
Change to a firm spring, under good compression.
Old Pen spring fitted, bit floppy
The change was really good and well worth doing. I'll try to post the before and after printed objects, but I would recommend giving it a go especially if you are upping the print speeds on your machine past 80+mm/sec or having a fast machine travel speeds around ~200+mm/sec
For me it's made objects printed at 100mm/sec look like they were printed at 30mm/sec
Let me know if you change them and if it also improved your print quality.
Rich.
[richrap.blogspot.com]
I was getting more and more issues going faster on my Prusa, most of these manifested themselves as less fine outer surfaces and less alignment on the vertical walls. So after fixing all my vertical Z issues (de-couple the Z motor mounts, make sure the rods are really straight, and adding Z rod bearing stabilisers) the only thing remaining was a little wobble on my build-bed. This wobble gets more and more the faster you print / accelerate / stop etc, so I changed my bed springs from the 'official' little ones from biro pens to ones usually used on the Extruder Idler.
On the left is a ground spring normally used on the extruder. On the right the 'official' bed spring is usually sourced from a disposable biro pen.
Change to a firm spring, under good compression.
Old Pen spring fitted, bit floppy
The change was really good and well worth doing. I'll try to post the before and after printed objects, but I would recommend giving it a go especially if you are upping the print speeds on your machine past 80+mm/sec or having a fast machine travel speeds around ~200+mm/sec
For me it's made objects printed at 100mm/sec look like they were printed at 30mm/sec
Let me know if you change them and if it also improved your print quality.
Rich.
[richrap.blogspot.com]
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Re: Upgrade your bed springs –> improve your print quality September 14, 2011 12:32AM |
I have done the same thing. In fact, I have switched my prusa to have only a single type of spring throughout, I bought the 9657K155 springs from mcmaster to remove the z backlash by pretensioning the nuts. It came as a pack of 12 so I figured id use the extra.
Also, for some reason I felt guilty gutting perfectly good pens. I'm just weird like that sometimes though.
In any case, I think using the z-tension springs throughout is a good idea in general and should be supported semi-officially as it reduces the variety of vitamins needed.
The only trick was that I had to use a m3 washer holding a m8 washer in the extruder since the m3 washer isn't big enough to hold the spring alone.
John
Also, for some reason I felt guilty gutting perfectly good pens. I'm just weird like that sometimes though.
In any case, I think using the z-tension springs throughout is a good idea in general and should be supported semi-officially as it reduces the variety of vitamins needed.
The only trick was that I had to use a m3 washer holding a m8 washer in the extruder since the m3 washer isn't big enough to hold the spring alone.
John
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