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Bad X axis shaking in enclosure  

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Lyude
(@lyude)
Active Member
Bad X axis shaking in enclosure

Hi! I recently bought myself a Prusa original enclosure for my MK3 and have been dealing with quite a number of issues. I've been slowly figuring out my way around most of them, but there's one recurring problem I've made almost no progress on figuring out. At the moment, I'm dealing with some pretty nasty X axis shaking whenever my printer is in the enclosure - and I haven't been able to figure out what the problem is. I think the shaking appears to be more noticeable with the extruder around the top of the printer frame, and it seems to be mostly limited to X axis movements. When doing sudden start/stop motions with the X axis, I can see the printer's frame visibly shake left and right when the extruder stops moving. The weird thing is that this really seems to be limited to inside the enclosure - I've tried taking it out of the enclosure and I basically can't see the problem happening at all once it's on a stable surface. I would normally try to ignore something like this, but there's definitely far more noticeable wavy VLAs on my prints since moving into the enclosure - and I can't think of anything else that would cause a problem like that. Plus, the shaking is just -really- visible.

So far I've already tried a number of things:

  • Checked for warp in the printer frame. If it's warped, I sure can't see it - I've tried putting the printer onto a glass surface and following the instructions on Prusa's website, I tried pressing down on various parts of the frame to see if the printer would lift up. As far as I can tell, it's absolutely perfect in this regard and doesn't lift at all.
  • I've messed around with the rubber feet a number of times now. I'm still somewhat suspicious of them - only because I've noticed that when the printer is out of the enclosure, I can't easily slide the rubber feet around with my hands when it's sitting on the ground. When it's in the enclosure, I can't do that for the rear feet - but some of the front feet I can still move around a bit with my hands - which makes me worried that somehow the printer is getting lifted up slightly in the front or just not having the rubber feet fully make contact with the bottom of the enclosure. I guess to clarify if anyone's wondering - I did make sure the feet are locked by rotating them. Regardless though - I'm not sure what else I could do to test this short of buying new rubber feet - which seems a bit silly to me.
  • I don't think it's a problem with a cable lifting up the printer. I was originally a bit suspicious maybe the LCD cable was causing this on the left side, even if I totally unscrew the LCD screen and hold it in my hand so the cable isn't touching the bottom of the frame - it doesn't appear to make any noticeable difference.
  • I've tried putting my enclosure on the floor, and made sure it doesn't seem to tilt when I press down on any of the corners to confirm the surface it's on is stable.
  • As far as I can tell, it's locked against the anti-vibration things on the bottom of the case just fine. I've tried moving it back and forth to try different positions I've seen in some of the photos in the assembly guide, but it doesn't make any kind of difference

I should note: I've already poked Prusa's support about this and they're going to try to get back to me soon, but in the mean time I figured it couldn't hurt asking here as well - especially since there seems to be very little information on this that I can find on the internet, so I'm sure someone in the future might appreciate whatever the solution to this problem is being documented here. Perhaps it's normal and my VLAs are coming from elsewhere, but even the customer rep I talked to seem to think there was more shaking then normal.

This topic was modified 1 year ago by Lyude
Posted : 28/09/2023 6:57 pm
Lyude
(@lyude)
Active Member
Topic starter answered:
RE: Bad X axis shaking in enclosure

(after some further investigation - I'm not entirely sure I'm seeing VLAs? But still, this printer does seem to be shaking a lot

Posted : 29/09/2023 3:40 am
Lyude
(@lyude)
Active Member
Topic starter answered:
RE: Bad X axis shaking in enclosure

Good news everyone! I am not totally certain yet, but I believe I may actually have figured out the problem? The other day I noticed that my Y belt felt a little wonky, so I decided to pull the printer out and re-adjust the belt tension. Since doing that, I still see it shake a bit when moving the X axis - but it's significantly improved compared to before, to the point I'd say I'm comfortable just ignoring it or stabilizing the enclosure otherwise. So I guess if you've got a new enclosure and fighting with this issue: besides the obvious (rubber feet, stabilizers) definitely double check your belts. I think at least one person briefly mentioned this somewhere on this forum before.

Posted : 12/10/2023 10:08 pm
Mike Beux
(@mike-beux)
Member
RE:

After a year of wearing out my tools on adjusting my Creality CR10 Smart Pro and still getting bad prints, I took the good advice of many and bought a Prusa MK4 with enclosure (kit versions). I assembled everything and ran some tests first out of enclosure. All fantastic! After assembling the enclosure and putting the printer inside I had the printer really badly shaking and wobbling when printing infills on speed mode. The problem is that the base metal sheet is thin and allows the inertia of the rapidly moving printhead to wobble the printer when making fast moves. So I had some 10mm plywood in my garage and also some 4mm underfloor padding for wooden flooring (polystyrene). So I cut out a piece of plywood to fit unde the printer enclosure and attached it by drilling 9 x 3mm holes through the plywood and printer enclosure floor and attaching with M3 x 18 screws and nuts (polystyrene against the metal floor and plywood under). This has added enough rigidity to the floor metal plate that the printer now hardly moves and also eliminated a lot of noise that was generated by the flexing metal floor. Cheap fix and well worth doing!

This post was modified 9 months ago by Mike Beux
Posted : 01/04/2024 3:35 pm
Alex Huysegoms
(@alex-huysegoms)
Active Member
RE:

I found exactly the same problem: when my MK4 is inside the enclosure, the whole printer is badly vibrating left/right (along the X-axis). It's not consant, but only when the extruder is doing high speed left/right infill movements. Definitely a resonance problem.

I agree with Mike Beux: the reason must be the lack of rigidity of the enclosure base plate. You can even see the wobbling effect by just tapping on the side of the printer frame.

Mike's plywood under the base looks like a good solution. I think I will give it a try...  

This post was modified 3 months ago by Alex Huysegoms
Posted : 20/09/2024 1:23 pm
Alex Huysegoms
(@alex-huysegoms)
Active Member
RE: Bad X axis shaking in enclosure

After all, I found a much simpler solution: insert a 5,4mm spacer under the left and right extremities of the central frame.

The printer then gets supported on 6 points: 2 rubber pads in front, 2 rubber pads in the back, 1 support on the left side and 1 support on the right side.

My printer is now stable, just as on a normal rigid surface.

The only thing that keeps on wobbling are the transparent sides of the enclosure itself, but that doesn't bother me so much ...😊 

  

Posted : 20/09/2024 5:14 pm
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