How quiet should the Mk3 be?  

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

I have fallen asleep on a couch next to my Prusa i3 Mk3 in normal (non-stealth) mode. Large Z-axis moves can be noisy due to power supply noise, but that has actually improved over the last 2 months. I'm sitting across the room from it now, and other than fast moves, I can't hear a thing. The movements sound like someone writing quickly.

Of course, sound is subjective. I'm in a quiet setting, with the loudest ambient noise being birds in the yard through an open door. You could try installing a sound meter app on your phone to see just how loud it is for comparison to others.

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

I received my kit last week, assembled it with no problems (first time with a 3d printer) and all the calibrations worked fine. However, it seems loud to me. All the videos I've seen where they put a microphone next to it to show how quiet it is makes it seem like it's almost silent. When my printer runs, it sounds like a somewhat loud inkjet printer. At first I thought it was the bearings on the Y-axis (and those were scratchy and loud), so I replaced them with some buttery smooth bearings, but it's still loud. The belt sounds like it's rubbing against something whenever it moves and I can get the sound to occur just moving the plate by hand, but I don't see anything that it could be hitting. It happens to a lesser degree for the X-axis, though recently, it's developed a rattling sound in what sounds like the extruder area. At low speeds, it's decently quiet, but when it does fast movements, it's noticeably loud.

I'm guessing this isn't normal? Any ideas on fixing these issues?

Have you tried tightening the bolts? They do tend to loosen up over time, probably from vibration. That might be the source of your rattling.

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

Have you tried tightening the bolts? They do tend to loosen up over time, probably from vibration. That might be the source of your rattling.

I'll retighten some of the bolts, but I think that's a minor concern since that only started recently, probably due to me flipping the printer on the side to diagnose the issue. The bigger problem is the belt sound. Once I get home, I'll do a recording since it's easier to hear the issue.

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

When I put my kit together, the Y movement was rough. As I pushed it back and forth I could feel spots of resistance. What it turned out to be was the GT2-16 pulley on the Y-motor was flush against the motor. I moved it out about a mm or so and made sure the set screw was tight to a flat spot on the shaft. After that things were smooth.

Chapter 2: Y-axis assembly, Step 31

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

Alright, made a small recording of the issue. I'm currently trying to pinpoint the rattling sound that's popped up. It's somewhere on the bed, so I'll probably tighten the bolts on it to make sure nothing is loose. The pulleys are not flush against the motor and tightened against the flat part on the axis correctly. The only thing I can tell is moving the bed by hand has resistance to it, but I don't know where that's coming from.

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

Although in general, my mk3 is pretty quiet, I do think the part colling fan is pretty loud and not much quieter than other cheap printers. Not an issue for me, but I certainly would be unable to sleep next to it (luckly it's in another room).

Steven

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

I find my greatest noise comes from when the extruder is racing across the print diagonally laying down infill. It’s like strumming on a guitar, but doesn’t sound that good.

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

Alright, made a small recording of the issue. I'm currently trying to pinpoint the rattling sound that's popped up. It's somewhere on the bed, so I'll probably tighten the bolts on it to make sure nothing is loose. The pulleys are not flush against the motor and tightened against the flat part on the axis correctly. The only thing I can tell is moving the bed by hand has resistance to it, but I don't know where that's coming from.

Part of that sound is the nozzle dragging on the infill. I had this problem when trying to print with the aggressive Prusa pre-sets, especially the 170-200mm/s for infill (which I think is where it's dragging). While the printer may support faster speeds, not all materials will perform the same way at speed. Try simply dialing back the speed using the front dial as it prints. I knock mine way back to 50% initially. If it quiets down, you may simply be printing too fast for the material you're printing. You could try slowing down, or different infill patterns that don't pile up as much.

I also hear other sounds, but those may be amplified by your mic. It sounds like filament is dragging as the head moves to the right initially. Check your filament path. Looking at your setup, the printer is on a table. At certain frequencies, you'll get resonance off a large, flat, relatively thin surface, much like a drum head. Try printing on something more robust, or even the floor for a quick test. You want a very rigid surface with very little wobble. If it sounds like a drum when you knock on it with your knuckle, it'll sound like a percussion section when the printer hits speed.

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

Out of interest, do you guys also get a high pitched noise from the extruder? When running in stealth mode that's actually the loudest sound for me.

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

Mine sounds like someone is wiggling a creaking door, seems to be the filament inside the extruder. At first I wanted to correct that, but now I like it. I can hear the feed rate and retraction. Also, sometimes the bondtech system backfires, as if it can't push the filament through, and a couple of prints canceled on their own probably due to that, and I had to snip off a bit of balled up filament from the end of the run to get things going again. Not knowing what else to do, I used slic3r to make new for my Materio3d PLA to 220 and that seems to have fixed things.

Re: How quiet should the Mk3 be?

So as an update, I read through what everyone said, tightened some bolts, and put it on a more solid surface. It turns out the rattling sound was the bed shaking from the small vibrations during the x-axis movement. Tightening the bolts didn't help that, so instead, I put some felt on the bearings touching the bed base so it would dampen vibrations. That made a huge difference and now it sounds more like what everyone else is describing. Decreasing the speed also made it much quieter. Thanks for the suggestions everyone!