MK3 X Axis squeaking
Hi
I've recently finished building my MK3 kit
It seems everything went fine and the printer printed with surprising quality "out of the box" (or "out of the 15 hours assembly process" :P)
Setting aside the well documented "harmless" issues I'm having (lcd and psu vibration, clicking, etc), I'm also experiencing the x-axis squeaking pulley one.
On that I've not been able to find conclusive informations.
My symptoms are as follows:
- faint or loud squeaking coming from belt-pulley on the right (PSU) side, depending on carriage position on x axis movement
- black debris (look like belt debris) on the bottom of the pulley casing
- belt slightly twisting during motion as if trying to run over the pulley
- effect visible when moving carriage by hand
I did NOT:
- overtighten the pulley screw, the casing cheeks are not deformed from what I can see
I did:
- try to slide the belt backward on the carriage, no change
- move the belt on the pulley, it gets back to its original position against the pulley toward the front of the printer right away
As I said I found a couple of threads in the forum regarding this issue, but I've not found conclusive info:
- is it harmless? should I just keep printing as if nothing happened? the belt twisting thing doesn't look very healthy
- am I running on old pieces? my kit was from mid january, I had to postpone assembly for months, has this been fixed on later iterations of the x-axis? (I cannot find any form of "patch notes", I've just read a blog post about the x-axis being possibly redesigned at some point)
- what else should I do?
Thanks in advance
Re: MK3 X Axis squeaking
The noise coming from the right x holder, in my case, was coming from the metallic pulley having friction with the plastic of the x holder. I did not have belt dust but that is coming from the belt not properly aligned with the pulleys. I think that both are because of the same reason. Belt is not fully parallel.
I’d do 2 things: first make sure that belt is sitting on the x cartridge at the same distance from the deeper part of where the belt sits. This took care of my noise from the right x holder. A minimal mm difference is enough to make this noise and not be parallel or creating a minimal twist on the belt. Once you have it fully parallel then realign the left x pulley to make sure that the belt sits in the middle all the time when the Extruder is on the full left or full right.
Re: MK3 X Axis squeaking
make sure that belt is sitting on the x cartridge at the same distance from the deeper part of where the belt sits
I'm sorry, can you rephrase this?
if you mean to push the belt toward the back of the printer I already did that both on the 2 ends on the carriage and by moving the motor pulley closer to the motor, to no relevant difference.
maybe it's very slightly less noisy, but the belt still pushes toward the front of the printer on the right pulley
Re: MK3 X Axis squeaking
I had it pushed all the way in and when I increased the tension using the screw on the x handler on the left, it seems that due to a problem with the design/print on the parts the belt gets slightly twisted which made the right pulley to have friction with the x holder.
I tried to say that in order to make the belt parallel, I had to make sure that the belt was placed at an equal distance in the X cartridge. In my case, I had to pull it back (from all the way in) about 1.5mm. When I had one about 1.5mm back and on the other side about 1.2mm back, the right pulley was still making some noise (less but still there). I had to make sure that the belt was at an equal distance on the X cartridge (since it was no longer all the way in I had to manually tune it) and then the noise was gone (99.98%).
Remember to readjust the left motor pulley as you move the belt in the cartridge. As a test, I was moving the extruder from one side to the other and checking that the belt was always placed at the same place on the left pulley. That was a way to confirm full parallel and then no more noise from the right X holder and of course no more belt dust since belt is no longer having friction with any part of the pulley.