I did another upgrade on my printer today. My printer is so much quieter now. You can find these vibration dampeners on Ebay by searching for “Nema 17 vibration” or “Nema 17 shock” for under $3 each from china or more locally. On my Anet A8, I had to notch the bed mount because it was hitting the motor. The new mount pushes the motor back. Also, you might want to chase the threads out with a 3mm tap because there was paint in the holes which made it difficult to drive the screws in.
Oh yeah, that’s a regular fine tooth wood blade that I used to cut the aluminum.
Neat!
With what material are they made?
@Valerio_Baldereschi They are steel plates with a very hard rubber sandwiched in between. Mine came with extra allen-head screws for the install, so I didnt have to use anything extra.
@Michael_Boquist Oh ok thanks! I will wait for the long term use. I experienced a bad stability with chinese manufacture rubbers because they break fast. Do you know some other vendors?
@Valerio_Baldereschi I only know of what I find on Ebay. Sorry.
I am a copy machine technician and I see alot of these for the steppers in the document feeders and other places! If you can find a place that works on copy machines, they might have a “boneyard” where you can go and hunt some!!!
There are also designs on thingiverse and other sites for 3D printed and CNC milled stepper motor dampeners.
Astrosyn are the “genuine” ones: https://www.filastruder.com/products/astrosyn-damper-my17rmdamp
I wonder if you can get the same benefit from printing a negative/mold in plastic and using silicone caulk to fill that mold and then slicing the top level.
Honestly, you should not use any dampers on the motor, they will impact your prints.
@Michael_Boquist I did use such dampers, for a very short time and noticed a lot of backlash was introduced because of them. A lot quieter but the trade-offs in the quality is not worth it…
Genuine Astrosyn dampers don’t introduce backlash unless your bearings have a ton of drag. The rubber elastomer properties are optimized to pass through normal motor torque but sap energy out of vibrations. The rubber durometer and hysteresis have to be tuned for the application… that’s why cheap knock-off dampers and DIY solutions don’t work as well.
Can quality dampers improve print quality or is it just intended for sound?
They will always reduce the quality. For noise reasons please use 128 microstepping stepper driver or Tmc 2100 driver.
@Pascal_Paetzold @John-Paul_Hopman I see a very slight improvement in print quality with my printers with dampers. Ringing dies out a little faster.
Every super-precision CNC machine that uses steppers (like dental milling machines) uses dampers of some sort to prevent resonance and reduce drivetrain vibration. Resonance isn’t typically an issue with microstepped belt drives, but start running a screw at high speeds where your controller quad-steps the driver into 1/4 or 1/2 stepping, and you can have resonance problems.
@Ryan_Carlyle Thanks, that helps.
If you are living in Europe, we just got some dampers for sale. After the upgrade there is no problem in leaving the machine printing at night… wonderful! 
http://store.thingibox.com/en/search?orderby=position&orderway=desc&search_query=damper&submit_search