I emailed Lulzbot asking them how to make the printer quieter, I have a Lulzbot TAZ Workhorse. They replied with some maintenance tips. Anyway, I put lubricant on the rods a while ago not knowing that I should not have. I’m wondering if just wiping them clean with some alcohol would be ok, or if its too late and I’ve ruined things! I mean the printer works just fine. I’m just in the middle of trying to clean it up a bit and make it quieter.
I think you just clean the rods as best you can and keep on printing. You may have to repeat the cleaning process a few times as the bearings have picked up the lubricant and will redistribute it onto the rods.
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I added lubricant to my Y to eliminate noise couple years ago. Clean with alcohol about once a month.
The Y rods are showing slight wear and I’m cleaning blackened oil off of the rods. My X and Z rods show no wear. Plan to change Y rods and bearings.
A new motherboard would make mine a whole lot quieter. All the noise in mine comes from the motor drivers in that noisy Rambo board. Compared to my Mini2, the thing is a party going on all night, with all the whines and space noises.
I squirted some PTFE on the MINI’s rods last year and like you, found out you weren’t supposed to do that. I wiped them off the best I could, ordered some new Igus bearings. I haven’t ever gotten around to changing the bearings. They have done just fine. Prints have been good,
Could you link me where you got these bearings? I also read somewhere about some dampers you can get for the motors but I never saved the info and havent found that information again yet. this printer is so freaking loud. I love it, but its so damn loud lol. I certainly need to look into some print quality issues that I think is hardware related as well.
motor dampers help a lot… 2 metal mounting plates with rubber in between, quite cheap, quite effective.
NEVER use wet lubricant (oil, grease etc) on slider rods etc… the wet surface (ok it might appear dry to the touch) attracts particles of dust and vapourised filament and acts like glue… in a bad case the units will seize and stop working.
CLEAN everything with iso-propyl alcohol, rods and bearing surfaces, then use a "dry film PTFE spray or graphite powder as a lubricant.
Thank you for all of that. I was unaware of how the plastic bearings worked. I will be taking it apart to clean everything thoroughly.
As for the motor dampers, where can I find them? I am not sure what I’m looking for.