I have several small issues with the vertex. So far though the print results are pretty much perfect as I can say.
Stepper Motors Heat: I haven’t measured the exact temperature but especially the X and Y Motors get pretty warm/hot. About 40-50 °C I would guess by feeling it by hand. The room temperature is about 23°C. Is that normal or could this mean that the mechanics are not perfectly aligned or had to “wear in” over time? Or maybe is that related to the next “Oil” Question?
Oil for the plain bearings in the print head mount:
I’m using a very thin Oil called “Ballistol”. I’m not 100% sure if its the best for that task. Maybe it is too thin, at room temperature it is almost like Water. I can see that over time when the print head moves the volatile ingredients of the oil get lost and it gets thicker and squeezed to the side. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistol
Power supply noise: It makes loud high frequency noises when the printer is working that I find very annoying.
I mean the noise is loud enough that I can clearly hear it over the working printer. Is there anything one can do about that apart from moving the printer elsewhere?
Repetier-Host & Windows 7 Standby?
Does the Repetier-Host software prevent Windows from going into standby when there is a printing going on?
ps. @mods: I wasn’t sure if picked the best sub forum for these questions so please move this topic if it doesn’t fit in here.
[quote]1. Stepper Motors Heat: I haven’t measured the exact temperature but especially the X and Y Motors get pretty warm/hot. About 40-50 °C I would guess by feeling it by hand. The room temperature is about 23°C. Is that normal or could this mean that the mechanics are not perfectly aligned or had to “wear in” over time? Or maybe is that related to the next “Oil” Question? [/quote]This is perfectly normal. Stepper motors get hot, as the coils require a fair amount of current to move or hold the rotor.
[quote]2. Oil for the plain bearings in the print head mount:
I’m using a very thin Oil called “Ballistol”. I’m not 100% sure if its the best for that task. Maybe it is too thin, at room temperature it is almost like Water. I can see that over time when the print head moves the volatile ingredients of the oil get lost and it gets thicker and squeezed to the side. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistol
[/quote]Fine oil is perfect, I use FACOM fine oil and it too is like water at room temperature. I regularly use it on the printer as soon as i see that any rods look dry. I use a small syringe which makes applying the oil easier. The dirt on the ends of the rods is also normal, it’s just dust that accumulates. You can just wipe it off.
[quote]3. Power supply noise: It makes loud high frequency noises when the printer is working that I find very annoying.
I mean the noise is loud enough that I can clearly hear it over the working printer. Is there anything one can do about that apart from moving the printer elsewhere?[/quote]Hmm, switch mode PSU’s are known to be a bit noisy sometimes but if you can here it when the printer is printing then something probably isn’t right. Is it possible to post a video with sound so we can here the problem??
[quote]4. Repetier-Host & Windows 7 Standby?
Does the Repetier-Host software prevent Windows from going into standby when there is a printing going on? [/quote]Repetier does not keep your computer awake while printing, you need to configure windows itself to not go into sleep, standby or shutdown. We do recommend to use the SD card option when printing big objects.
So everything is fine except the noise problem. I have recorded a video with my tablet and to my surprise one can clearly hear these noises on the video. At first I thought that the quality of the build in micro or the audio codec wouldn’t allow that.
The only show stopper left is where should I upload the video since I don’t have any youtube etc. accounts or cloud shenanigans. Can I upload a file in this forum? Any good suggestions where you don’t have to register for one file?
The video size is 90 MB(.mp4, the file the tablet created)
Since I don’t have any experience with transcoding videos to h264 I can only upload the original file.
Or should I only make an audio from it?
I will listen to your video with headphones this evening (I don’t have HP at my desk) Is the noise only present when one or more motors are being controlled (turn and hold also)? Then it is indeed probably high frequency noise from the microstepping (1/32). With some motors it is more prevalent. If it is indeed motor noise can you isolate it to one motor?
I wrote these infos on youtube:
"These pretty annoying high frequency noises are very good to hear when I drive the stepper motors manually in small stepps with Repetier-Host. The noises are not bound to a specific axis, but it’s seems to be loudest when running 0,1 stepps on X and Y.
The recording was made with a tablet that layed under the printer and was not moved. The small ventilator on the bottom of the vertex was off and plugged out for this test, so the only noise to hear was the small movment stepps of the motors and the squeaking of the printer electronics.
The source must be either the controller board or/and the powersupply."
I want to add to that youtube infos and make clear that there are two types of noises.
The deep singe bang/hit that comes when one single motor is moved 1 step.
The annoying squeaky ones witch changes in frequency and loudness when the motors moved from one step to another and hold their position. Sometimes it’s so loud that I thought the fan bearings from the bottom fan failed.
After some time probably when the controller board stops controlling the motors the noise is gone.
There was absolutely no background noise in the room at that time!
@ichbinsnur
Of course I checked the youtube video and it sounds pretty much the same as the original mp4 file.
Though the highest frequencies I can hear sitting next to the printer haven’t been recorded by the tablet.
@VEL327
Yes only when the motors are controlled(hold position) the noise is there.
The noise is the loudest when the X and Y motors are moved and less from the Z motor. It sounds like from the dentist’s the ultrasonic tooth cleaner, that’s disgusting.
So the noise might come from one or several of these 4 small controller boards that sit on the main controller board?
Sounds like these capacitors noise from some power supplies which one can fight by putting some hot-glue on them?
edit: From what I can hear and feel when touching the motors by hand the source of that noise comes directly from the motors.
edit2:
Yap, definitely the noise comes from the motors, I can feel the loud noises when I touch the belt between the motor and the 8mm rods. And the noise changes when I press on the belt or release it.
The noises come directly from the motors, and it is a byproduct from the microstepping (a feature to add smoother and finer movement).
There isn’t really anything you can do about it but I can tell you that there is a big chance this annoying noise will fade when you start using the printer more (it did with one of our first prototypes, we didn’t experience the issue on any other printer we build…)
[quote=“VEL327”]The noises come directly from the motors, and it is a byproduct from the microstepping (a feature to add smoother and finer movement).
There isn’t really anything you can do about it but I can tell you that there is a big chance this annoying noise will fade when you start using the printer more (it did with one of our first prototypes, we didn’t experience the issue on any other printer we build…)[/quote]
Might be caused by manufacturing tolerances of the motors.
I took a look at another stepper motor I had laying around. I opened it and wondered if I could dampen these resonating coils if I put some material inbetween the coils. Maybe some hot glue or silicone or epoxy resin?
Is that motor coil resonance only the fault of the motors or might it also be a problem of the driver boards not exactly generating these “pulsed current” micro steps?
[quote=“Zefix”]I took a look at another stepper motor I had laying around. I opened it and wondered if I could dampen these resonating coils if I put some material inbetween the coils. Maybe some hot glue or silicone or epoxy resin?
[/quote]
I wouldn’t mess around with the motors.
[quote=“Zefix”]
Is that motor coil resonance only the fault of the motors or might it also be a problem of the driver boards not exactly generating these “pulsed current” micro steps?[/quote]
It’s probably a combination of both.
The magnetic field inducted in the motor coils can make the windings resonate if they are not extremely tight wound.
As someone wrote earlier this nois is likely to fade over time.
You can try to reduce microstepping fom 1/32 to 1/16 ans see if that helps.
You have to change the steps/mm setings in the Firmware/EEprom and the stepper drivers for that.
I don’t know if modifying the stepper drivers is possible on the K8400 as i don’t know if they are separate modules as on the
K8200 board. (“pololu” modules)
You cannot change the microstepping factor on the mainboard of the Vertex. It is hardwired on the board and it required the cutting of traces if you want to change this factor. It is the motor that is making the noise. I should use the printer for a week and if the problem still persists we can arrange swapping the motors with new ones.
Here you can find the schematic of the board. The mainboard will be released as a module (only the mainboard without drivers) in the near future (in a couple of weeks) for people who want to build their own printer.
