Clicking stepper motor.
After doing some calibrations for a bit. Printer has probably only been in motion for less than an hour going through the commissioning guide steps. It started up while I was doing my bed mesh and is very consistent. I’ll post it driving itself as well as me isolating it and driving it manually. Already emailed sales but maybe this can be fixed. Not sure…
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did u check that it is not the external bearing?
Your not the only person who has had this but I can't remember who it was from the early birds that did and it's not a bearing it was the stepper
Then I guess there is no reason to check 🙂
I isolated each of the pulleys. Sound only shows up on the stepper motor like in the first video of me manually moving it. 😔 Looks like I get to take that stack apart again. Hopefully ratrig can get me a new one out soon. I think I remember the video @Samus VC400 - Minion is talking about. Sounds exactly like it. Not sure if they found out it was the stepper or the carriage but that consistent clicking is the bearing skipping or something I think.
https://discord.com/channels/582187371529764864/1223286652949106748/1252329283213594634
Found the guy who had the same sound.
Ok, I was actually thinking of the bearing that the tip of the axle goes through. But you'll probably see once you disassemble the stack.
Yeah looks like he managed to fix his. I’ll check it out tonight. Hopefully it’s the same deal going on.
Glad that helped sorry I didn't have time to look for it was on my way into work
No problem. Thanks for the responses @Samus VC400 - Minion @mazas
Yup belts too tight.
Did so once you loosened them the clicking stopped?
Pretty much. Loosed them then moved the toolhead around for a bit. Took it a sec, I think it kinda faded down. Idk, I was doing a lot of crap with it lol. Now trying to get this bed mesh under 0.2mm… been a chore..
Check with a reliable straight edge. I spent some time trying to get below 0.1, before I realized it is the bed, not my frame :).
Yeah I’ve tried literally everything. I think it’s the bed at this point. Can’t get below 0.27 or so. Need to find a long enough straight edge somewhere. If I pull the back left down like it shows, the back right then needs to go down... I can go back and forth between the two and nothing changes. What value did you end up with?
It was 115um in the end
What does your map look like?
I had both of the back corners making a dip downwards. Luckily I had an almost usable straight edge, i.e. one that has a specified flatness of <50um
Or ”straightness”..?
And I remember seeing that the spec for the bed is <100um, so something close to 200 might be acceptable. 270 sounds a bit on the high side, but perhaps some could be caused just by the gantry? In which case you might be able to straighten that part out of the equation.
I will show you my last two when i get home. I picked up a machinist caliper from work thats about 600mm or so, i think it should be straight enought to test my bed.
My last two tests were me lowering back left then lowering back right on the next one. Tried pretty much everything I can think of but maybe your experience can help me out. Much appreciated.
Huh, well after sitting for a day I got the best one I've seen yet. 0.24mm not amazing comparatively to others but it's the best I've gotten yet on my machine.
I guess I didn't save my other ones.
I guess calipers aren’t exactly great for a straight edge. I’ll need to go pick one up.
That mesh has a little bit of a common curve side-to-side... you might want to put an eye on your gantry to see if it has a bow
Or might need to do the old loosen and sequentially tighten of the linear rail screws (middle-outward)
I redid my rails a few times actually... Also have them torqued to the recommended 0.98Nm. Guess I can try doing middle out method next. I will say that when I put my x gantry on, I had to pull one of y axis extrusion back a couple mm or so in order to screw the plates into the carriages. The 2020 was just a little too long and I had a feeling it would cause a hump like that in my mesh. Not sure how I’d go about fixing it. Maybe I need to modify the printed part a tiny bit to shave it down.
Not that I'm suggesting to get that deep into it, but if you had to you could just flip the 2020 over and see if the mesh inverted that bow
Also, you want to go either middle-outward or one end to the other for torquing... don't want to trap any tension in the middle if you want to keep it straight
Yep I did one side to the other each time. Mesh looked exactly the same afterwards each time lol. Do you think me having to pull the 3030 back to get the plate on is causing the bowing. Just realized I could just take it to work and shave off exactly the amount I need.
Either way I gotta undo it,
I can check the straightness of the extrusion then. Just don’t want to go through all those steps and undo it all lol.
I see, they kept that terrible blind pocket design to the joiners... I had forgotten how the VC4 looked in that area. Honestly, even if the gantry extrusion was 2-3mm short, it'd be perfectly fine so long as the attaching bolts were left lose until after the joiner plates were in place
I also slotted my plates where they attach to the carriage on one of the sides, but don't take my advice there since my build is so much different than stock
I'm not sure how much/little it'd take to get only a 0.24mm variation... I'd honestly check the flatness visually with a straight edge before going to rebuild anything
And honestly, I doubt you'd see much of an affect in your prints with that variation over that distance, unless you were making super precise prints
Not sure if it matters but the x axis gantry was too long not too short. So when I was screwing the plates on, I pulled the right side y axis 3030 to the right to get the screws on the plate to line up. Which created compression against the y axis carriages. I took a couple photos with the caliper. Not sure if they help or not. Left/right and back/front looked almost perfect with no light. I took some videos of doing that but not sure if they’re worth anything.
Also my plate tilts back quite a bit I just noticed. That’s after doing the Z tilt calibration.
Ahhh, I gotcha on the pulling it apart part... yeah, I feel like that could cause some issues. I was mentioning that the extrusion could be (even roughly) cut shorter than needed and it'd still be just fine - you don't have to worry about dusting it until it's perfect.
Come to think about it, it might be worth loosening up the bolts that hold the extrusion to see if that could relieve some tension before re-tightening
Not sure what is up with the unlevel bed, though... your mesh does not suggest that it should be that far out...
Yeah I definitely wouldn’t mind if it was shorter lol. You talking about the long bolts that go through the whole stack holding the gantry?
The ones that attach the actual extrusion... if there is any room left in there for the extrusion to move, it'd relieve the tension you created by pulling the Y axis open to fit the gantry in there
Ahhh gotcha… ok I see. I’ll give that a shot, that sounds promising. Thank you so much for checking my stuff out and helping out. Will start tomorrow off by doing that.
Good luck! Hope you find the root cause
True level doesn't matter. What you need is for it to be trammed
Does a corexy do this for you with homing, z tilt or beacon calibration? I understand it on a bed slinger because it can’t adjust itself but I was under the impression tramming or what not was taken care of through calibration.
If I manage to get under 0.2mm I’d be pretty happy but I don’t wanna chase the dragon either.
Tramming is mostly assuring that the axes of movement are all perpendicular to each other properly...
I assume that your level check of the bed was in relation to a frame that is level... if the frame isn't level, then the bed not being level wouldn't really have any relevance
Lmao, my house is 110 years old next year. My floors are a bit wonky and slope towards the center of the room near the walls.
Level shows it going opposite of that but idk anymore.
Judging from the height map, it would seem like the apparent dips are the back corners of the plate. The front looks pretty good, which would mean that the issue is not mostly caused by a static bow in the gantry. The compression could have something to do with it, and overall it would seem like it might be wise to make sure you can comfortably assemble the gantry without stress build-up. I know it is a lot of work, but I might want to check that there is nothing in the blind pocket that stops the 2020 from going deep enough 😬. It might not be the culprit here, but still..
And a check with a straight edge and feeler gauge might save you from trying to attain the unattainable 🙂
Yeah, when I put the caps on the 2020 extrusions. It was verrry tight. Like, I had to basically hammer it into place. Then pulled it back off as it shaved some of the printed part off. Put it back on. I’m guessing I didn’t actually get it all the way in. I don’t mind redoing some stuff, it’s been quite a learning process.
I had a bit of a similar experience, and I ”chamfered”/filed the 2020 end just so that it would not bite into the plastic and generate more plastic shavings. I thought it was just my batch of prints and sharp edges on the 2020 🙂
So I can’t sleep thought I’d share this. Here is what I’m talking about, guess it’s only like a mm or so but still. These are pics of just one carriage without screws. I took pics of it flush with the front as well as the back to compare. I think this is my issue.
Back one is further off. Not sure how I’d go about fixing that. I guess I try to push the left and right y axis inward.
I’m sure u used the printed guides to install the rails? I was actually a bit surprised that the build guide does not instruct you to tram the rails, but I believe mine were rather ok without it. With tramming you basically loosen the rail screws, move the gantry to one end, fix the rail and then move to the other end and fix that to make sure the distance is the same. But if you want to avoid the stress as @8Complex mentioned, you might not want to fix it very tightly until at the very end of tightening the screws. Not my area of expertise 🙂
@8Complex , what was the reason for slotting your fixing holes? Just to account for tolerances or smthng else?
yes, i did. i found this the other day and now i know that im not the only one with this issues. https://www.printables.com/model/972763-vcore-4-xy-spacer-corrected/files
Printables.com
VCore 4 XY Spacer corrected by Daniel Wiehlpütz | Download free STL...
Corrected XY Spacers if you x beam is to long. | Download free 3D printable STL models
I have the gantry completely off. I will be printing these and swapping them out.
Is what it is 😔
That would help with the mean length, but might not help with the difference in distance?
For sure, but its a start.
Start here then move forward again
Yes👍
I think if I’m really trying to perfect, which mind as well at this point, I am going to just barely modify the y bumpers. Like literally move the opening 1/4mm then print them mirrored for each side.
You mean the blue ones in the pic of the printables part?
Oh wait, you mean to open up the mouth in the part you are printing?
I might be careful with that, so that you do not end up with a fitting that is too loose and lets the gantry turn along its long axis
But otoh, there are the screws to fix the 2020 to the block, so perhaps that is not an issue after all
Yea the bumper. It's blue in their pic. If I really need/want to, I could just move the opening ever so slightly. Went ahead and modified the xy spacer myself though. I don't like how they flattened the one side.
The rails have enough play that it could get pushed over well enough.
That or just tilt the back end of the y inward. Since I borrowed that huge caliper from work I can get the rails parallel with it no problem.
Usinh the gantry would have the advantage of making sure they are not only parallel, but also of the proper distance. But it seems you know what you are doing 🙂
One method I used for tightening down the y rails while trying to improve my mesh was I started from the front pulled the gantry to right in front of the first screws then tightened them down. Did a serpentine pattern moving the gantry screw to screw from front to back. But since my gantry was so compressed, it didn’t do much.
Did u have all the screws loose when you started? If so, the with a compressed gantry it would seem like that process would easily get to a situation where the rails are at their max distance, and tramming is no longer possible. But now that you have the non-compressisng gantry it might produce better results. However, I might still opt to go either the original no-tramming-needed guide, or tramming by first fixing the ends of the rails. But surely someone with actual knowledge of the process could chip in, I am just more or less thinking out loud
Yeah they were all loose. I’ll see what happens today. Printing those parts and then gotta reassemble everything.
I hand-made a carbon gantry tube, but realized before I assembled it that allowing the mounting to float there slightly was actually more ideal anyway (it avoids a set X distance required for the linear rails). I also did some abnormal sandwiching in the attachment of my gantry tube which locks the entire thing plate-to-plate, and opening those holes to slight slots just made sense for that. Truly, my own reasoning behind it, I like to experiment with this printer (VC3) quite a bit
Yup, that is what I had assumed... personally, I think the easiest fix would be to print one/both of the joiner prints without a "bottom" of the pocket for the gantry tube and just allow it to float until the gantry is in place
Or even just deepening the pockets, actually
Yeah I thought maybe everything would “settle” into place when I was putting it on. But, obviously not. This is how much I modified the part. I think it will be enough. I cut the profile down 0.5mm. I also cut the circled area down 0.5mm as well but not sure if I should have as idk if it’s recommended to have the nut pressed up against the printed part. Maybe I’m just splitting hairs though.
Hmm, just released what you were saying here. I’d still like there to be a “bottom” aesthetically. So from the pics I’ve shown, there’s quite a bit of room to cut it down.
Maybe I’ll make another with 1 or 2mm just in case.
Looks like it will help, and you're likely right about the nuts bottoming out, too
Gonna test it out in a minute. I’ll see how well the nut lines up. Only thing that sucks is this is the one printed part that takes forever. I have to slow my machine down to Ender 3 pace otherwise it fumbles up the overhangs on the outside holes 😐
Hopefully I got it first try. Honestly tho, the extrusion is so tight in there. Doubt it makes a difference.
I have to put it on and take it off a few times to shave some of the plastic off for it to get all the way in.
You chamfered the 2020?
Btw, have you checked from CAD / BOM what the 2020 length should be vs what you have? I'm just wondering how come the 2020 is so long. It would seem lika non-critical length, which should be easy to spec for a max length/tolerance. But OTOH, what do I know about mechanical engineeering 🙂
This print doesn't look like it is too terribly bad... I would certainly just chop out those stupid middle extrusion portions, and just deepen the center pocket
Someone likely had good intentions with that design, but neglected to think about the reality of manufactured parts not matching CAD
@D_Jespersen (DJ_Designs) So I pulled the toolhead off (it's sitting on one of those plastic rails dont worry). The 2020 is 725 as it is supposed to be. I put the ends on as far as they go. Then laid it flush with the front y bumpers. Something else going on then? Towards the back is more pronounced. Maybe my whole printer is twisted up...
i know the carriage screws need washers, i just put them in real quick to test it
Oh that's an interesting idea and maybe that's what mine needs
Only issue is it doesn’t fix how the distance in the back is further than the front, but I think I’m just gonna rotate the rails slightly and call it a day. Don’t really care just need the front one to sit nicely first. As long as the y rails are parallel to each other and the x rail isn’t compressed like I had it before, I think I’ll be good with that. If I was getting ~0.27mm before. Fixing those issues I think will at least get me to a tolerance I can tolerate.
I think what’s happening is as the printer moves towards the back. It shifts almost suddenly at some point. Since it’s compressed it’s either gonna push left up and right down or vice versa. Can’t push both up or down at the same time. Just curious how it got that way.
Now I'm super confused, my rails are already pretty much perfectly parallel.
Im printing a set of each. 0.5mm, 1mm and 1.5mm cut out. Probably gonna go with the 1.5
How did you verify they are parallel?
That sounds bad, and would be understandable if the back was different distance than front. But if they are parallel, then this feels odd.
Sonehow it feels like that might solve some of the symptoms, but still it would be nice to know why the apparent difference in distance, and what is the root cause.
Hmm.. one thing (a bit far-fetched) is a ”lateral” twist in the y-rail that would force the gantry to be out of square at some point, and thus cause the gantry to reach the other y-rail at a different distance. Not very likely, but I’m trying to understand how the apparent distance can change with parallel rails.
LOL, I guess if you're going to babysit a print, might as well make it worth it!
I have a metric tape measure. Pulled it from the right side of the right rail then took the measurement to the right side of the left rail. Repeated for front and back. Also did it from left to left.
So, I did a little bit tonight. I completely swapped out the x and y linear rails to a different set with less preload. My toolhead is off, I need to change out the carriage but I stumbled upon the printed parts for IDEX which look like we need to disassemble the toolhead anyway for the new parts so I'm printing those tonight and installing tomorrow. When I swapped my x axis, i flipped the extrusion 90 degrees. I noticed it has a very slight wobble to it. When i rest it with the brackets on the y carriages, I can rock forward/backward maybe a half a mm or so. It was also wobbling on my glass table but hardly at all. Not enough to make such a large difference. I am not sure if it's worth ordering a some new ones, i can cut them myself.
Yea, I was gonna try and rotate the right side clockwise to pull the x over. Or the left side counter clockwise. I need to do some more observations on how both are impacting the other. Need to screw it to the left then monitor the right and vice versa. Rear and front.
Just come across this but I have the same issue. First the right motor started clicking. Then it stopped and the left motor started. Its the motors and not the bearings. Did you find a solution for your clicking?
Check out the earlier discussion in here. My belts were too tight, loosened them and it went away.
Yeah found your comment right after posting mine. I'll look in to the belts. I can't thank you enough for the solution its been stressing me right out.
With vc3, I used to sand down the gantry joiners so that the faces that attach to the plates that attach to the carriers are coplanar, but it seems with vc4 there is no such obvious plane to sand. Rocking might cause gantry torsion, which might lead to changes in heat map, but I have no idea how large the effect could be.
Yeah, I don’t think the amount of rocking I see can really affect a whole lot. Not sure though, I think I’ll just shim the gantry stacks a tiny bit.
Actually, I see what you’re saying. Sanding is a much better idea.
Perhaps. At least the end result should "automatically" be pretty level/even with a flat surface.
Yeah I mean the motion is on the rail not the extrusion. Even if the extrusion might be slightly wonky, might not affect much. But, taking the load off the y carriages due to that twist would maybe be good too.
For anyone who is still curious, I'll keep this thread updated until after I do my mesh. So, technically my y rails are duck footed now. Maybe my alignment brackets were bad. Maybe my frame is just slightly off, idk anymore. But, I like how these line up now.
MUCH better... what do you mean by your Y rails are duck-footed? They toe outward towards the front/aren't parallel?
I mean I’m sure they aren’t actually duck footed as evidenced by the holes now lining up correctly. But what I did was screw the entire right rail down then attached the x gantry to it.
Next, I aligned the left carriage screw holes and tightened the first few rail screws while the gantry sat upfront against the bumpers. Moved the gantry and carriages to the back. Used those alignment brackets to hold the right side in place then I loosed all but the first screw on the left rail. Turned it outwards.
This almost got me there but it needed a tiny bit more so I tightened the left side down and did the right side in the same sort of way.
Very interested to see the difference in my mesh. I gotta do a lot to get back on track though as I need to basically disassemble the entire tool head to swap the carriage out. So while I’m at it, gonna make my belts equal length this time among a few other things.
I just finished writing an article that explains why exact same length is not an absolute requirement 🙂
https://discord.com/channels/582187371529764864/859890291591217162/1280034815537840209
Nice looking forward to reading it today. My big issue with the equal belt thing is telling people to completely rebuy and redo their belts. I have quite a bit of extra belt so I’ll still be doing the print test comparison before I install IDEX.
Wanted to start with equal since the ones I cut wouldn’t be long enough for proper testing.
Ok, will be intersting. Hope you can try out the squaring method in the article, would be interesting to see how it works in environments other than mine
well everyone, Im calling it a day. There's a tiny bit of improvement but I think I am just gonna accept this mesh at this point. Maybe putting the magnet and pei sheet will help it out a little bit. I've seen people do the tape thing so maybe I just need a bit in those back corners. thanks for the help and tuning in.
I think it's pretty good, just something is up with those back corners. Maybe I need to stand on my plate on a flat surface to take the bow out lol.
Agreed, I think that looks good at this point... no peak that carries across the whole bed, and you're right about getting that magnet & plate on there before you see the real end numbers
Lol i had to do this one thing with a build plate that arrived with a dent in haha.
And.... I caught my unicorn everybody :chefkiss:
Waaat.. you get better results with the plate on? Anyway, below .2, well done :chefkiss:
And I do have the same issue with the back corners dipping, perhaps only to a lesser degree. Lemme know how it goes if you decide to give them a bang 🙂
Yes, having the build plate and magnet on there helped quite a bit. Although as soon as I heated my bed to 80C my variance went back up to .256 🤷 is what it is. I think the corners are just gonna be like that. Considering the weight of the plate, the dips are right where there is no support.
Might be worth checking how the bed behaves when supported at the corners. The midpoint could still be just a single pole. But somehow I would not expect to see so much just because of gravity
Yeah plus you would expect the opposite actually I think. Those corners would need to come up if they were sagging, not go down. Might be possible to use something to pull each corner towards each other. It would go under the bed and maybe clamp to the sides. Idk, probably not worth messing with it that much. I’m not gonna really try and fix anything too much till all the panels are on and it’s in a finished state.
Thats not bad... did you leave it heated for a while before checking? Usually heat soaking a bit longer gets a more true reading as the heat is still spreading to the edges for a while
Ahh good call. No, I was doing my PID tuning so I ran that a few times before realizing I should redo my height map. Hopefully gonna get an actual print this weekend. My belts were extremely loose so the z offset print was pretty bad lol. Z offset was really good though, didn’t have to adjust it at all. For now at least.
