I wrestled with this for a few days. I did a number of maintenance items and a couple of upgrades and ended up with a new printing problem and a symptom I had not seen prior: High and low first layer spots that were not consistent with nozzle location. These high and low spots have caused a lot of print failures in the last few days.
Makers will recognize that these hexagons were not all printed at once. And, this image shows how the 1st layer depth printing problem is not related to the hot end's location.
I found that if I moved the X carriage back and forth along the gantry, I could feel a very slight wobble. But, the hot end was not loose. I was not a wobble, but more like a waving. It seemed that one or more of the new wheels that I installed were out of round. But, which one(s)? And how could I determine this?
I found that if I moved the X carriage back and forth along the gantry, I could feel a very slight wobble. But, the hot end was not loose. I was not a wobble, but more like a waving. It seemed that one or more of the new wheels that I installed were out of round. But, which one(s)? And how could I determine this?
I needed some way to test this and to determine when the problem was occurring and when it was resolved. So, I rigged this up:
This gave me a very simple way to determine X carriage waving. I set the clamps so that the ruler just barely rubbed against the tape. Then, I marked where it rubbed. I even got it so that it rubbed some of the Sharpie line off. The long vertical lines where the ruler rubbed as I moved the X gantry back and forth. I then kept one wheel from rotating while I moved the X carriage the distance of ½ of the wheels circumference to the right. I then release the wheel and moved the X carriage back and forth again, noting the new rubbing locations with a smaller Sharpie mark. I'm not super smart, but I think this clearly verified the problem with, at least, that one wheel is out of round.
I replace the new wheel with one of my old ones and the symptom greatly diminished. I am now waiting on my third set of highly rated wheels from Amazon (from a third source), as the two first sets from two different sources had many bad wheels. Do you have a source for high quality wheels? Please let me know in the comments, as I may not yet have found one. But, I will post an update when I do.
I replace the new wheel with one of my old ones and the symptom greatly diminished. I am now waiting on my third set of highly rated wheels from Amazon (from a third source), as the two first sets from two different sources had many bad wheels. Do you have a source for high quality wheels? Please let me know in the comments, as I may not yet have found one. But, I will post an update when I do.
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