One of the x-axis IGUS bearings on my mini popped out of place. Its not tight at all in the bearing holder sides to far in and too far out obviously. I don’t see any way to squeeze it so I can only assume it needs some glue to hold it in place but I thought I would check here first.
It’s caused the curved parts of my prints to come out horribly and there is some weird bulging at the top.
I’m not sure if the buldgeing at the top is a symptom of the loose bearing or not. Its happened on my last 3 prints and never before.
I’ve been running my mini pretty hard. Put about 9 kG of ABS through it since I got it 2 months ago.
I also saw someone mention upgrading the bearings to LM10U. Would those fit a mini and make any improvements to printing?
If the bearing itself is still usable, you can wrap some tape around the outside to make it fit a little tighter in the bearing holder. I use 1 inch wide PET but I am sure clear packing tape would work just a well.
A word of caution on replacing the IGUS bearings with metal linear bearings… You will need to replace the smooth rods with hardened rods. The metal bearings will tear up the existing smooth rods. Changing to metal bearings and hardened rods will remove the sloppiness you have between the IGUS bearings and rods, however, they impart their own set of artifacts in the printed part. I went through this with my Taz 2 and am currently back running IGUS hardware because it provides a smoother sliding surface without the jitter I saw running metal bearings. The single downfall of the IGUS stuff is the looseness on the rods that causes rippling in the print.
I am printing parts now to replace the bearings and rods with piercet’s openbuilds mods. I hope that finally takes care of my ripple problem!
Also, I think the Mini is running LM8UU size bearings and rods.