3D printers, need guidance

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Paul1977

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#3400612 7-Aug-2025 11:43

mdf:

😄

Another victim of the inevitable 3D printing hobby black hole gravity well. I'm sorry to tell you, you've crossed the event horizon and there is no escape from here.

I'd add to your preparations list:

More time than you think
A checklist of curse words (make sure you save some for the front idler rollers - worse bit IMHO)
Optional but recommended for said front idler rollers: a double jointed elbow and/or wrist
A small amount of stress and double think (is it really okay tipping it over on its side?)
Air compressor/air duster/canned air (some prefer electrical contact cleaner)
Head torch/work light
Good luck!

Time. Check.
Profanity. Check.
Double jointed. Could be a problem. My big hands and sausage fingers probably won't help either.
Stress and double think. Check. Bambu recommend slightly different Super Lube that's not available here. Does it matter? Who knows?
Compressed air. Check. Have a Ryobi inflator with a needle attachment for inflating basket balls, should be suitable for blowing out fans etc (while preventing the blades from spinning of course).
Head torch. Check.

None of what I've looked at even mentions front idle rollers. Only mentions lubing the easily accessible ones at the rear. And even then, Bambu says to only do these if they are squeaking?

mdf

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#3400616 7-Aug-2025 12:05

Lubrication recommendation. But the instructions for cleaning are more useful (I haven't pulled apart the rear idlers). P1 guidance links to X1 pages.

Paul1977

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#3400755 7-Aug-2025 15:45

mdf:

Lubrication recommendation. But the instructions for cleaning are more useful (I haven't pulled apart the rear idlers). P1 guidance links to X1 pages.

I hadn't seen that specific idler pulley cleaning page. This procedure is not mentioned or shown in their regular maintenance page, or in any of the YouTube videos I've looked at either. Doesn't say how often you should do this?

mdf

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#3401055 8-Aug-2025 15:04

Paul1977:

I hadn't seen that specific idler pulley cleaning page. This procedure is not mentioned or shown in their regular maintenance page, or in any of the YouTube videos I've looked at either. Doesn't say how often you should do this?

I haven't done the cleaning at all yet (just the lubrication) but suspect it will make it's way on to the to do list at some stage to deal with a slightly annoying noise. From what I gather, it is more important if you're printing with abrasive filaments like carbon or glass fibre reinforced stuff. Probably just have a look and see if they look clean or dirty?

Paul1977

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#3401697 11-Aug-2025 15:11

mdf:

I haven't done the cleaning at all yet (just the lubrication) but suspect it will make it's way on to the to do list at some stage to deal with a slightly annoying noise. From what I gather, it is more important if you're printing with abrasive filaments like carbon or glass fibre reinforced stuff. Probably just have a look and see if they look clean or dirty?

I had a look at the idle pulleys, and they all looked clean so didn't bother cleaning them. I did take the back off the printer and adjust the rear idle pulleys though as the belt was running high on one side and low on the other. I don't think this was making any noise but can cause premature belt wear so I figured worth doing.

The Rod Sloths were pretty good for cleaning the lead screws, but the cloth I cut up shed heaps of fibres from where I cut it so will need to find a better type of cloth for next time.
The adapter I printed for applying grease to the lead screws wasn't great, it still put way too much on and once the bed had gone up and down a few times had a lot of excess at the top and bottom to mop up.
Replacing extruder and nozzle assemblies with the hardened steel ones was fairly straight forward, but I did manage to damage the main grey plastic housing when bending back the cutter arm enough to slot the extruder assembly back in place. Nothing major though, and no functional implications.
Installing the 4-way PTFE adapter was a pain since they didn't include mounting screws. All the spares I had were either too short or too long.

It does sound better now, but sill a couple of noises that I just can't figure out what's causing them.

Paul1977

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#3405286 18-Aug-2025 10:47

Finally sorted the last remaining noises that had been getting worse.

Terrible squeaking when doing the bed levelling before a print and when the bed passed certain heights. Applying more lube to the screws and rods at those points made no difference. And trying to figure out where the squeaking is coming from by ear is pretty much impossible.

Turned out what was needed was a drop of oil on each side of the belt on the Z-Axis pulley between the belt and the pulley flange. This is located on the underside of the printer, so had to tip the printer onto its side to access it.

Dyson

Shop now for Dyson appliances (affiliate link).

geoffwnz

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#3410508 2-Sep-2025 20:06

So, in a distinct case of "be careful what you wish for", I did some research into current 3D printer options that aren't anything BambuLab or closed ecosystem, are tinkerable/upgradable and not stupidly expensive.

Ordered a Sovol SV08.

The now 6 year old Ender 3 makes it look silly by continuing to happily print near perfect (after much recent calibration) prints, some of which are parts for the SV08.

So, yes, "tinkering". So much tinkering. After a week, still have not got it to print anything other than inconsistent calibration prints. Seems like I got hit with the faulty print bed issue, harder than most. Very much a taco shaped bed.

Would probably be acceptable if it was consistent but the longer it's hot, the more it changes shape. So you could somehow get a perfect first layer but sometime later it will have warped enough to put a gap between layers. General consensus is that it's a design flaw.

Have ordered upgraded sensors etc, will switch it to Mainline Klipper which will allow using eddy current sensors which are supposed to be the ducks nuts.

Also ordered a graphite bed plate which doesn't warp as compared to the metal ones that very much do.

On the plus side, in those rare times when it decides to play nice, oh boy is it fast (compared to the Ender3 at least). And the CoreXY setup is pretty cool as opposed to throwing the whole print bed around.

The extra build volume (350mm X,Y & Z) takes up barely more space for the entire unit than the enclosure I built for the Ender 3.

But yeah, just as well I like tinkering and not just plug and print.

MotorDrive Rallying

Paul1977

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#3411268 4-Sep-2025 16:07

geoffwnz:

So, in a distinct case of "be careful what you wish for", I did some research into current 3D printer options that aren't anything BambuLab or closed ecosystem, are tinkerable/upgradable and not stupidly expensive.

Ordered a Sovol SV08.

The now 6 year old Ender 3 makes it look silly by continuing to happily print near perfect (after much recent calibration) prints, some of which are parts for the SV08.

So, yes, "tinkering". So much tinkering. After a week, still have not got it to print anything other than inconsistent calibration prints. Seems like I got hit with the faulty print bed issue, harder than most. Very much a taco shaped bed.

Would probably be acceptable if it was consistent but the longer it's hot, the more it changes shape. So you could somehow get a perfect first layer but sometime later it will have warped enough to put a gap between layers. General consensus is that it's a design flaw.

Have ordered upgraded sensors etc, will switch it to Mainline Klipper which will allow using eddy current sensors which are supposed to be the ducks nuts.

Also ordered a graphite bed plate which doesn't warp as compared to the metal ones that very much do.

On the plus side, in those rare times when it decides to play nice, oh boy is it fast (compared to the Ender3 at least). And the CoreXY setup is pretty cool as opposed to throwing the whole print bed around.

The extra build volume (350mm X,Y & Z) takes up barely more space for the entire unit than the enclosure I built for the Ender 3.

But yeah, just as well I like tinkering and not just plug and print.

I hate having to tinker to get things working. The only tinkering I've really done is jumping through the few hoops to get my Bambu working outside of their ecosystem, so I still maintain the closed ecosystem shouldn't deter people from buying a Bambu since you can bypass it if that's important to you (at least you can on the P1S). But you couldn't get a Bambu with 350mm build volume for anything close to the SV08 price.

geoffwnz

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#3411271 4-Sep-2025 16:19

Paul1977:

I hate having to tinker to get things working. The only tinkering I've really done is jumping through the few hoops to get my Bambu working outside of their ecosystem, so I still maintain the closed ecosystem shouldn't deter people from buying a Bambu since you can bypass it if that's important to you (at least you can on the P1S). But you couldn't get a Bambu with 350mm build volume for anything close to the SV08 price.

I love tinkering, so it's a very different use case. And I like being able to know that if Sovol shuts up shop one day that it won't affect my ability to print as it's not even slightly tied to any cloud. Gonna be a lot of unhappy Bambu plug and play level users if/when Bambu closes.

Less building and parts gathering required than the Voron that it's based on but generally seems to be expected that it'll need upgrading out of the box to get a decent printer out of it.

I have finally got it printing at least consistent first layers now by printing a bed spacer washer kit on the Ender 3 and after a few iterations got the bed within enough tolerance to stay flatish.

Back to filament calibration now. Even slowing PETG down considerably, it's printing in 2 hours what would take the Ender3 a solid 5 hours.

Like any tinkering hobby, it can be frustrating when it's going wrong but then you dive deeper and figure out why and gain more understanding of what it's doing in the process.

MotorDrive Rallying

Silvrav

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#3412160 7-Sep-2025 11:51

Ugh, sad day but selling my stuff. Just not getting time.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1JGr4VCnvn/

geoffwnz

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#3419260 27-Sep-2025 17:12

Finally making progress.

The Graphite bed turned up and got installed. Needed a small amount of tweaking but now it's basically flat to within 0.4mm across the whole 350x350 bed which is far better than the 1.4mm the original bed was.

It's now running Mainline Klipper instead of the Sovol branch, so I can keep it more up to date and also do more fun upgrades like the Eddy sensor when I print a mount for it.

Destroyed two hot ends by running PETG through them. Also a known issue where the factory hot ends cannot handle the pressure of PETG and turn themselves into a large blob of PETG requiring some careful removal to not destroy wires etc (thermistor and heater) while pulling it off. MicroSwiss replacement hot end arrived in the country this morning after its 12 day tour of the southern states for reasons only known to DHL "Direct". So I'll hopefully get that fitted this week and recalibrate everything.

I did have some success with ASA finally though. The enclosure can keep things toasty enough to keep large ASA prints happy so that's been handy at least.

So, yep, progress mostly, though the odd step backwards like this mornings PLA print that seems to have over extruded to the point where it layer shifted by around 25mm, so that was unexpected. Will recalibrate next week as noted already anyway.

Lucky I like tinkering. :-)

MotorDrive Rallying

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