What is causing this banding around layers with detail?  

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Try doing a PID calibration on the extruder temperature controller.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Watching this thread. I found Hatchbox white PLA to be a bit temperamental and saw similar issues. Extruded step calibration helped a bit too.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Going to spit ball here.

If this happens with all your filaments (high quality and lower), then it ain't #1.
If you do Atomic pull, run load on suspect filament and you see straight flow at temperature you printed, it ain't 2.
If you can rotate your bed in yaw even by a micron or your bed doesn't slide smoothly on either side, then it is likely #3.

I'm having the same issue, mine is #3 so I'm off to Misumi for a new set.

That's all I can think of. Good luck.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Which bearings are you getting from Misumi?

I am going to make sure every screw, nut, etc are tight too. If that doesn't seem to be the issue I guess new bearings might be needed.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Misumi PSFJ8-330 rod pair about $6 each.
Misumi LMU8 linear bearing three about $12 each.
Only bed is problematic.

I went with sealed bearings because stock were sealed. But others feel open bearings are better as they move more smoothly. Oh, remember to clean out the anti-rust oil, fully dry then oil/grease with your own brand.
I went with softer bearing steel but heat treated with chrome plate as a balance of surface strength and price.

Here's hoping you don't need this info. 🙂

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Going to spit ball here.

If this happens with all your filaments (high quality and lower), then it ain't #1.
If you do Atomic pull, run load on suspect filament and you see straight flow at temperature you printed, it ain't 2.
If you can rotate your bed in yaw even by a micron or your bed doesn't slide smoothly on either side, then it is likely #3.

I'm having the same issue, mine is #3 so I'm off to Misumi for a new set.

That's all I can think of. Good luck.

Thanks for these suggestions. The filament is from Hatchbox, but that's not to say it couldn't be a bum roll. With that said, looking at my other prints I do see some of the same layer thickness differences any time there's an indentation of some kind, and it's worth noting that all of my other filaments are eSun PLA+. It seems to happen mostly on the faces along the X axis (ie. front and back faces), but I also see it on the Y sides. I replaced my Y axis bearings with FMC08s and my rods are as aligned as I can get them (I get a "perpendicular" message after calibration); the motion feels smooth, but is it possible the bearings could be contributing somehow? I did it mostly for sound reduction; how are the Misumis in that regard?

I'll do an atomic pull as well, just in case. The printer's only a month old, but you never know. I don't notice any bed rotation and as mentioned it feels and sounds like it's sliding fine, though I do wonder if static friction could be a contributing factor. I wouldn't be opposed to replacing the bearings if it came to that.

aaron.s5, I did run a PID calibration and my temperatures are rock solid, but thank you for the suggestion.

JonB, I was considering step calibration but I'm not sure if it's needed. A 75mm single layer square prints at exactly 75mm in the Y direction and about 75.34 in the X direction; is that enough to warrant calibration?

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

It seems to happen mostly on the faces along the X axis (ie. front and back faces), but I also see it on the Y sides. I replaced my Y axis bearings...the motion feels smooth, but is it possible the bearings could be contributing somehow? I did it mostly for sound reduction; how are the Misumis in that regard?

Sam, or is it mini-sam, samlet? Anyway, I steer away from polymer bearings. Oh boy, let me get started. I offered myself up as a guinea pig to IGUS to test their compatible bearings for this forum. IGUS USA kindly provided a full set of all three 8MM styles they sell compatible with MK2/MK2s and possibly all 8mm rod based linear systems, that is 30 bearings, I'd say roughly half what my printer costs. I found them all, I say again ALL inferior to stock bearings in terms of accuracy and dexterity (low stiction). I didn't bother to print because it was obvious and frankly too disappointing to continue, mostly at myself for believing the hype. Now, IGUS is considered one of the best of these kinds so I doubt PBC is going to be much better. Sound can be managed in other ways but as the PCB heat bed and steel y-carriage are acoustically sympathetic materials (carry sound well) unfortunately I would recommend dampers around ball bearings to keep performance while reducing resonant noise aka sound of imperfections in the rods using the heat-bed as a diaphragm amplifier.

I'll do an atomic pull as well, just in case. The printer's only a month old, but you never know. I don't notice any bed rotation and as mentioned it feels and sounds like it's sliding fine, though I do wonder if static friction could be a contributing factor. I wouldn't be opposed to replacing the bearings if it came to that.

Not the first part the second...yes, that. Here is the thinking. Stepper motors are not encoded (why!?!). Meaning, they step blind. If stiction causes a slight pause or a poor snap to desired position, you can end up with a layer smidged completely or grading down as the motor snaps by pure vibration into the correct notch. Ball bearings have enough free play that the motor can easily overcome it's mass, but add static-kenetic friction force of a full contact polymer bearing, and you've got a perfect condition to mis-position the print head. But as the error is usually well within a stator jump, they usually correct in the next layer, unless it happens again but perhaps with a slightly different tipping point or jostle back to correct stator jump. This will look pretty random making debugging origin of suspect axis hard, and that is the point, it isn't the axis itself (read: belt or motor). Based on this line of thinking, because print direction is based on slicer and can be somewhat random, note that off for deeper analysis later when bored. If inconsistent banding occurs randomly left or right AND randomly up and down the whole face on the front/back of your prints but you're not getting full stepping errors? It is likely y-axis bearing stiction. Your problem. If it is banding randomly back or fore AND up and down the whole face of the sides, but again no full stepping errors? It is likely x-axis bearing stiction. If you got both, that is a subject for another thread.

Good to go? Sorry for the bad news. I hope I've been conclusive enough. I'd switch to your stock bearings for now, and don't forget to flush the anti-rust oil that stock bearings ship with. Once clean and dry of cleanser, lube with low viscosity oil, I think grease (thick) is overkill and only attracts debris. I use 3-in-1 to penetrate seals and prevent rust. I will post Misumi bearing/rod purchase performance results with video/sound if you want to be sure but as Misumi cuts the rods to order, I won't see them until mid November.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Thanks for the explanation Stephan. I suspected some static friction but wasn't sure why it would correct itself over time; the part about the motor falling into the correct notch explained that for me. I'll look to put my stock bearings back in this afternoon. A few questions:

1) For the sake of asking, would stiction and falling "between" the notches be an issue that corrected itself over the course of a layer or would it possibly persist through the "section" of the print with details (such as what's seen in the photo)? That is, the areas where it appears the Y axis didn't return fully are pretty uniformly out of whack, and then after that section ends, everything falls back into place. Is that still explained by stiction?
2) I've got PTFE oil and 3-in-1 synthetic oil. Is one preferable over the other?
3) What do you recommend for dampening the bearings? Ultimately I'm just trying to keep the noise level down enough to be able to run my printer overnight without my neighbor downstairs being able to hear. I've done a lot in terms of dampening the table that it sits on (antivibration pads, paving stone, antivibration mat) and it's worked well, I'm just worried that the stock bearings will undo some of that work.
4) Going off topic a bit here, what else can I do to reduce noise? I've considered stepper motor dampeners, but I'm not clear on how that would affect things as a whole since it would be physically moving steppers a few mm out from where they are supposed to be.
5) I noted what you said about testing all the Igus bearings and remembered your post from the bearing replacement thread; would you still recommend the RJZM-01-08s as the only worthwhile replacement? Or would I still have the same issue?

Many thanks again. It's unfortunate that the bearings appear to be the root cause, but as this seems to just be a general problem with full contact bearings, I'll take it as a lesson learned.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Well, I say notches to differentiate between stair stepped surface errors vs ...lets call them bar coding. I'm sure there is a term for this phenomenon. As for stiction and what you are experiencing, let's think this through. There are probably two very likely areas where the stepper and head location can disagree. These are simplified examples for clarity One is long "travel" then sudden stop and print such as a corner. The other is a series of details that change direction quickly while continuing to print, usually infill. Infill I guess can be ignored. So what would happen is y-travel would go past the target point just due to momentum of head assembly (not as much a problem in Delta and Bowden) which is totally normal, but the sudden change would catch the head off target on the outer swing but print direction is perpendicular to travel/jerk/stiction direction so a line is printed with y off target with x blithely printing away a micron off line, due to random vibration the stiction would loosen and the head would get back on y-target but the error is now permanent in your print in the form of bar-code line gradients up your prints. This would be much worse on perfectly perpendicular (to printer axis) flat wall prints like you are attempting. I'm guessing the barcode will be far less if you place your object diagonally forcing the axis to constantly be moving while printing flat wall. I don't know, if you haven't swapped to stock yet, but you could try printing a 2cm cube diagonally the straight and see if the barcode is mitigated. Then we know this is the problem for sure.

As for lube, I don't really think bathing it in grease is necessary. But if you want to think like a car mechanic and grease the stink out of your bearing for that extra peace of mind. Sure did while I ran/run IGUS. BTW, PTFE is not a chemical, it is a material. When PTFE is put in grease, it is introducing micro beads aka grit into the oil. This is great for high pressure, large things like gears and metal on metal slides, but on ball bearings? Think beebee pellets on the ground and you tried rolling baseballs over them. Both roll great on their own but together? I'm guessing probably not. Also, just a thought experiment to dampen enthusiasm for PTFE everything. What do you think would travel the farthest if pushed off an incline, a granite marble or a PTFE cube?

On dampening, the printer's main frames are made of a very strong heat treated steel I believe. They are essentially tuning forks. Any metal contact vibration will resonate and amplify sound of stepper pulse frequency. AKA, the song of our people. Then there is the grinding metal on metal of ball bearings on low quality steel rods, and that damn part cooling fan. Honestly, because of the dirt cheap design of the MK2 and MK2s, you can only trade accuracy for dampening for the printer itself. Alternative route is an isolation chamber of some kind, some on the forum have made heat enclosures but haven't yet seen an acoustic isolation enclosure. Maybe you will? Honestly I've come to like the noise. Sounds like productivity!
BTW, I have Astrodyn stepper motor dampers. They seem to reduce quality, similar to stiction artifacts you're getting but not as bad, but stepper noise (sing-song) sound is cut in half. Though I'm still running IGUS bearings so I can't isolate the problem until the Misumi's get to me.

On IGUS bearings. Nope. Don't do it. I'm using the best of the three and it has like I said about 1 degree of yaw slop in the bed. I have prints almost as poor as yours. Just avoid polymer bearings. Quality of print loss is not worth noise reduction in my mind. Put your money in an enclosure that can isolate the noise and keep printer as stable and fluid as possible I say. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to turn down the robot arguments going on 4 meters from my head, but at the end of the day, I bought this printer for accuracy and reliability, not to sleep with it.

On ideas to reduce noise, complete isolation of printer from floor is a good idea. Paving stone will cut 20-30% lower frequency noise sure but then what, you can't dampen it more because it is too damn heavy. An idea I had was buying a bunch of cheap RC dampers ad building a REAL suspended printer base. For enclosure, corrugated plastic poster board with Acoustimat lining that can be pealed away as required. And replace those hateful stock fans with a pair Noctua NF-A4x20. I'm currently working on what I call Cerberus 30 because it costs 30 bucks. It will combine brake cooling adapter and part cooling duct in to one. Those fans are completely out of stock until mid November so nothing to post until I get them.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

I can't thank you enough for the detailed responses Stephan. Your examples make sense and are in line with my suspicions prior to posting, so for that I'm glad, even if it means it's ultimately a trade-off of sound versus print quality. I haven't yet put my stock bearings back in; busy day today, but I'm cleaning them with 99% isopropyl right now in preparation. I'll heed your advice on the oil and ditch the PTFE lubricant in favor of the 3-in-1.

That's an interesting thought regarding printing at an angle. It's not something I'm looking at as a solution, but perhaps a good test to do before I disassemble everything yet again to re-swap the bearings. Your cube idea reminded me that I'd printed a 20mm calibration cube recently with the FMC08s. It does exhibit a slight "bar code" as you mentioned, visible on each face (probably because both the X and Y faces involve some Y movement). I'll be sure to print another one after swapping back and recalibrating to see if there's a noticeable difference.

[Edit] I feel it's also worth mentioning that I did a couple simple prints the other night, printing two clips for an NES raspberry pi case for my roommate, and they're perfectly smooth, maybe some ever so slight banding around corners as I suspect the printer may be taking them too fast. I'm not sure if this supports or throws a wrench in the Y axis theory; I'll still be swapping the bearings regardless.

In regards to the noise, I've actually got the printer sitting on antivibration pads that are themselves sitting on top of a paving stone and an antivibration mat (the mat doesn't seem to contribute much). The table itself also sits on 4 antivibration pads. In all it's actually rather quiet, and in hindsight that's almost certainly due more to the paving stone and antivibration pads than the bearings, so I hopefully won't be losing out on much. The other night I was scratching my head for a few hours over the printer suddenly being much louder than I remembered, until I discovered that the power cable was touching the posterboard wall of my enclosure and transmitting all the vibration through that (and it was LOUD!). Assuming I avoid dumb mistakes like that, I think it will be quiet enough.

[Edit 2] Forgot to mention one of the first things I did was print the Noctua 40mm fan enclosure mod and swap out the stock 30mm fan for that. Aside from the paving stone that made the biggest difference in noise.

Thanks again, I'll be sure to update my post when I've swapped out the bearings and releveled/calibrated everything, probably tomorrow.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

One other thing: where are you getting the Misumi bearings? I tried to order them through Misumi's site but they seem to want to ship to a company. [Edit] Never mind, I was able to order some.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

So after a couple days of messing around and replacing and aligning things ad nauseum, I switched away from the FMC08s back to stock and then today to the Misumi LMU8s that came in the mail. After sorting out some unrelated bed leveling issues (the Z frame seemed to have drooped a bit on one side), I finally got things level and calibrated enough to print an XYZ cube. Verdict: pretty much identical quality to the one printed with FMC08s, with one exception (more below). Here are the pictures, with the new cube on the right side:

A bit less scarring on the top surface, but overall pretty much identical, with some of the same imperfections in the same places and generally not great side quality.

That brings me to the one thing that did seem to suffer in quality, which is the Y-axis surface. Below is the original print with FMC08s followed by the new print with LMU8s:

The bed moves fairly smoothly but I'm almost certain the rods are still out of alignment somehow. Especially on the front side of the machine, the bearings make an obvious rattling. My question is, is that contributing to the bad finish on the Y surface? It seems like the bed might be physically rattling enough to move the layers up and down slightly, resulting in this "bubbly" finish that is distinguishable to the touch from the smoother finish of the old print.

If this is an issue of the rods being out of alignment and there being some slight binding of the bearings, can anyone offer tips for squaring up the rods properly? The distance between the rods from front to back is within 0.20-0.25mm (just about 152.00 in the front, 151.75-.80 in the back), I'm wondering exactly what the tolerance is for these rods. The rods themselves look fine, no obvious scratches or bowing, but it's the only thing I can think of right now that would be causing these imperfections. For the record this is eSun PLA+ being printed at 215C (first layer) and 210C (the rest), identical settings on both prints. The PLA+ has been sitting in a sealed container with some dessicant packets in there, and I've heard in general PLA doesn't suffer the same moisture problems as ABS, but I'm not ruling anything out.

[Edit] I messed around a little further and refined the rod alignment, and while the bed feels a little smoother I notice two things still: there's a very slight bit of play or slop in the bed around the Z axis, and all signs point to the bearings themselves not being snug on the rod (maybe that's expected with the stock Prusa rods and Misumis?), and I still feel the bed catch every now and again. The best way I can describe it is it sounds and feels like there's a grain of sand on the rod, but obvious there's none. I feel like the slop in the bearings is related to this somehow; did I not tighten them enough?

Any advice is appreciated. Many thanks in advance!

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Man, they all look kinda bad. Not as bad as the white material print, but something else is wrong with your printer. Considering the extreme inconsistent banding on that one, it must be something interfering with keeping to gcode instruction. Stiction was a good candidate since I know polymer bearings bite on cirection change more than ball bearings. They catch more compared to stock. I'm thinking if you're still getting differences, it is something more mundane. Please check...

Also, I see absolutely no slop in stock bearings. IGUS was 1 or 2 degrees. You may have gotten smaller stock rods. Mine are 8.02 all of them and are tight with no mallet required for assembly. Bearing makes typical bearing metallic swish noise that can be annoying to some. And I've heard stock rods are made of a soft metal, grooving and pitting easily. e.g., my rods leave dark goo at the end of travel path, running a finger nail, can easily find the groove left by digging ball bearings and I used to use the grease when the groove happened. Did you not purchase rods as well? I got lower tolerance one as that is recommended by Misumi itself. Will test delta myself when my y-axis Misumi kit arrives Saturday.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Thanks again for the reply Stephan. I just measured my Y rods and they're 8.02mm and 8.01mm. To your other points:

1. How can I measure slop in the steppers? If it helps, the cubes are almost exactly the right size in every dimension; it's a 20mm cube and the sides end up being between 20.02 and 20.04mm.
2. I did notice the Y axis belt had come loose in some of my adjusting, so I retightened the belt, but haven't printed anything since then. I've yet to see a good rule of thumb on belt tightness; I did it up fairly tight this time, but not overly so, enough for an audible twang but there's still some give if I pinch the belt.
3. I readjusted the frame-to-threaded-rod chassis tightening earlier today, so I'm confident it's not that. The frame was either out of alignment initially or had drooped somewhere along the line, but it's straightened back out and actually my bed leveling is better than ever.
4. I'll check the PSU and report back.
5. I looked in the belts for debris but didn't see any; however, that's exactly what it also sounds and feels like when moving the Y carriage by hand.
6. The belt seems fine, no obvious wear or defects, but as of recently it seems to be favoring one side of the idler pulley (all the way across really, it favors the same side on the other end).
7. I'll check for catching cables, but as this has seemingly been a problem all along, I'm not hedging my bets on that.
8. No obvious grooves on the rods, I've removed and cleaned and lightly oiled them a few times now.

I did not order the Misumi rods, I'd seen people say they worked with the stock rods. At this point, if the Misumi bearings aren't making any visible difference nor improving the overall quality of the print, I'm tempted to go back to the dry bushings.

[Edit] One other thing I'm going to do is reprint this at half the speed. I printed these at 60mm/s and I think for such a small thing it might just be too fast. I've been printing at 30-40mm/s lately and forgot to change the speed on this print. It could be as simple as that.

I really appreciate your advice, I'll give the outstanding items a look tomorrow and report back. I need to take my mind off it for tonight. 🙂

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Pushing back is a good idea. I know I was gutted when I had to abandon IGUS bearings.

The MK2 definately has a speed sealing, 120mm/s causes frame to sway and the whole printer to rock back and forth on their mounts, can't be good for prints. Pretty sure you're not going crazy with speed. 80 should be OK for a good PLA.

On slop, IGUS bearings have a lot of slop, and they are designed that way. Why people rave about them is beyond me. I can rotate my bed 1° or so in the yaw direction. Imagine hat happened in a slightly warped ABS print that had been OK for 18 hrs in. That shift is close to a whole mm.

1. those rods are near as perfect. Really surprised you don't have slop.
2. I believe Tom3D recommends Base E for belt tension, I assume it is the tighter drive line at full stretch. Belts though having fiberglass inner can stretch slightly so belt lash will result in jerk and possibly ringing.
4. PSU acts as a vertical brace for frame, if loose, frame thus x-carriage will pendulum creating uneven layer heights and detachments late in print at worst.
5/6. Belt grinding on elge of could also sound like that because uneven fiberglass belt scraping randomly on aluminum gear or idler is tinny scraping in sound I've found. I ignored measurements given by manual and adjusted each end to match y-bed belt retainer. No more hashing noise, though even with dampers bed still has deep rumble on long travel.
7. Sometimes the 3mm filament support pops out, happens too often for my liking, looking long and hard at cable chain mod MK2S hotrodders seem to do.
8. Most may not suffer from this, I run the printer since assembling 24/7. Many clients want prototypes as part of gigs and then there is family that all style themselves closet inventors/next big thing wanting help. Is fun.

Will try stock rods then Misumi and report as well. They were spendy so like I said, I would rather they "speak" for themselves.
Sorry for your troubles.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Well, I spent my Friday spent almost completely disassembling and reassembling the printer. I removed the XY frame from the assembly, leveled it, and corrected the skew. I put the FMC08 dry bushings back on and put the whole thing back together, taking care to check the XY frame once it was back in the Z frame grooves, as well as the movement of the bed, which is as smooth as I've ever had it. After leveling the bed (which admittedly I had to turn to gcode for as it's just outside the correction limits of the LCD bed leveling), it's nearly perfect.

I went to print another XYZ cube. The interesting thing is it is identical to the other cubes, even as far as where certain artifacts on the faces are. (Edit: I will say the weird Y face texture issue is gone.) My inclination is to think this points to something that isn't XY-related. There's one more thing that I haven't addressed: my X belt has the somewhat common twisting issue, where the belt isn't in alignment with the pulley and twists up on the pulley as it gets close to the right side. Would this affect the layer heights in some way? I don't feel like it's significant enough movement to be problematic, but then again this machine has shown me that even the little things matter.

That said, I'm stumped. I printed cubes at 205C (down from my normal 210C) and 220C, but they also look identical. The effect is less when they're not under harsh, top-down light, but still, I feel like I can get a smoother print out of this machine, I'm just not sure where to look next.

Any further advice is appreciated. Stephan, thank you so much for all the advice you've offered so far.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Some good news this time. On a whim I decided to try the one thing I hadn't switched up in all of this, which was my slicer. I've been using Slic3r PE as it's been working for me well thus far, but I have Simplify3D installed as well so I found the Prusa profile (from last year, I've yet to try the updated version from later in the thread), threw it into S3D and printed another XYZ cube.

The good news: surface quality is, in my opinion, vastly improved.
The bad(ish) news: some new artifacts have popped up, but I'm confident they can be traced to slicer settings.

Notably there's a thick line where I assume the bottom solid layers become perimeters with infill. This same line is visible on the other prints as well, but not as much and not as pronounced. Any ideas where that might be coming from?

Other than that it looks like it might be taking some turns too sharply; I'll try printing at a slower speed (default in the profile is 60mm/s), or slowing just the perimeter speeds.

In general I feel pretty good about these prints. If I can get rid of that one random line near the bottom I'd be satisfied.

New print with Simplify3D is on the left, old print with Slic3r is on the right:

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

Just a followup on the Misumis, the rods are definitely harder material than stock. Whether it is the chrome layer I ordered or the induction hardening or better bearing steel used than provided by Prusa I'm not sure. It is 8mm dead on with no visible errors in surface finish like Prusa. I devised a new stiction test 500g weight on bearing, slide left and right, that is it. With my y-carriage apart I tested my vast bearing collection, again all IGUS compatible with MK2s and now Misumi along with stock never used LMU8. As I figured, polymer bushings all completely fail with friction not able to be overcome. As expected, when kicked off with a push, they slide like buttuh then change in direction and nope. The ball bearings fair better with stock bearings being far more prone to catch on rod imperfections evidence being stock rods snarling while Misumi rods grinding a little. Misumi bearings performed similarly on stock rod or Misumi rod. The stock bearings also perform much better on Misumi rods as they are perfect Ø and so glide as designed...so, you can go Misumi with rod OR bearing to gain smoothness improvement. All polymer bearings increase slop with Misumi rod.

Conclusion. Polymers are absolutely no go with new rods. Slop is worst obviously. The Misumi set sound sweeter, a bit more quiet than stock and more like a tight mechanical noise than stocks robot chewing on ball bearings. But as I am sensitive to higher pitch, it is a greater irritant for myself. Win some lose some. Is it worth the cash? Shoot, no. If I had stayed stock the whole time and invested in a silencer enclosure I'd have never dealt with this mess. Now if Misumi could make an 8.04mm rod for me, I might switch to IGUS 02 bearings as they are butter smooth, I can forgive the stiction as you've found, it may not matter. They are so dead silent and so smooth it feels like the future, in fact for the a brief time when I was testing, I'd freak out because I couldn't hear the printer as we have frequent brownouts in my ancient neighborhood that literally hasn't improved infrastructural since 1930.

Oh, and never lube your polymers. I got lithium grease as recommended by Tom3D specifically for plastic lube use. The quality lithium grease thickened over time possibly due to exposure to Acetone or Alcohol fumes to the consistency of honey worsening stiction and glide resistance ironically.

My printer is loud now but got rid of bed wobble so not a complete waste.

Have you tried Cura? It is all I run since working with an Ultimaker farm back in the day. (This may be why I'm not impressed with my MK2s)

P.S.
Misumi let me know their bearings don't require cleaning, they come cleaned and sealed with working oil so are a drop in solution. Cleaning is only recommended for stock if you have a kit.

Re: What is causing this banding around layers with detail?

I am enjoying this discussion. The problem solving is very interesting. You guys are doing great!

As I mentioned before, I have not received my new MK3 yet so I cannot speak from experience with this machine.
With that said, have you considered "Center-less Ground Linear Motion Shafts"? They are available from McMaster-Carr with various diameters and lengths. The diametrical tolerance is held very close (-.009 to 0.0mm), they are very straight (0.03 mm per 300 mm) and can be chrome plated for hardness (Rockwell C59 very hard) and corrosion resistance. The bad news.... they are not free 🙁 but I might be able to justify it if it would smooth out the table motion.