Would anyone happen to know why the Makerbot Mini’s (and maybe their other models too) idler pulley is reported to make a lot of noise? It rotates on bearings, not the shaft itself. I’ve never been a fan of idler pulleys that don’t have teeth. I can see how it saves a lot of money in the long run, but it destroys the teeth on the belt and the belt will get loose eventually because of it. Though I cannot understand why it would create noise? Cheap chrome bearings?
DeltaMaker uses smooth idler bearings – machines that have been running for 2 years don’t have any looser belts than when they were installed. Maybe theoretically that could happen, but in practice it doesn’t.
Likely the reason why they make more noise though is hundreds of impacts hitting the flat surface. Depending on how fast they have to move the belts and the surfaces they are making contact with.
Kind of like running off-road tires on a car, instead of street tires. The off-road tires make a lot of noise.
Are your idlers out of metal or plastic?
@Shai_Schechter acetal
@ThantiK Do your idler pulleys make a lot of noise on your machines? Is it noticeable?
Is the noise occurring in the bearing itself or on the contact surface between the belt and the pulley?..and is the idler pulley riding on the toothed side or on the smooth side of the belt?..if the noise is occurring in the bearing itself, I bet if you dropped some fairly heavy weight silicone oil in there it would probably quiet it down a good bit!
@Shai_Schechter , I haven’t paid much attention to it. I don’t think they really do. Back when we were testing out the silentstepstick from @Watterott_electronic , I could hear our delrin V wheels rolling on the makerslide more than anything. Damn silentstepsticks are amazing when paired with the right motors, etc.
Most of the noise a makerbot mini makes is attributable to a combination of excessive friction on the linear bearings induced by racking forces from the H-bot belts and what has to be a particularly naive decay curve (probably no curve at all) on their homebrew stepper drivers. The idler pulleys can’t possibly make a noticeable contribution.
@Whosa_whatsis …“nice” servo noise!:
@Fook_INGSOC All 3D printers used to be able to make noises like that. Now, it’s only Makerbots.
@Fook_INGSOC that guy has moved on a bit from that… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-X-p0C0Uas
@Ax_Smith-Laffin Just…wow. Someone always has to overdo it.
@Shai_Schechter My Kossel Mini runs on smooth metal idlers (two F625ZZ against each other) with the teeth touching the idlers. I’ve never been able to hear anything from them. I fought the noises of the A4988 drivers a lot with dampeners and by now it’s quiet enough to have it run in a big room office. Still never heard anything from the idlers…
So the only thing I could think of is the actual bearing itself, if you have really cheap ones, maybe then…
I think the “noise” that many of you are referring to is in regards to the driver wave form being used to pulse the stepper motor…whether it be a pulsed square, sawtooth or triangle wave…the wave that is being utilized is not conducive to low noise.