Setting the printer on the concrete paver without any flexible isolation between is trying to make the mass of the paver part of the mass of the printer. This helps reduce the amount of printer shaking. […] Because the stock printer feet are fairly hard,the coupling is reasonably solid. […] Do not put isolation pads/feet between the printer and the pavers.
I realized that I might see better results by swapping the stock anti-vibration feet with rigid rubber feet – my P2S sits on a paver already (had one from my previous printer setup), so, as-is, the anti-vibration feet are decoupling the printer from the paver’s inertial mass.
Has anyone else swapped out the anti-vibration feet for something more rigid? What did you use? I know the obvious suggestion would be to print new feet with TPU, but are there other options?
Sidenote: I suspect that a lot of the P2S’s sound is due to resonance of the enclosure’s side panels. Even just pressing lightly on both side of the enclosure with my hands seems to reduce the volume of the print head’s movements. Has anyone found a way to mitigate this?
I use thrutheframes Hula feet under my X1 to great effect as a decoupler. The only change I made was to print the lower feet portion much thinner (2 layers only) by lowering them below the build plate in the slizer. Otherwise, the can be less effective (at least from vibration theory).
I also made a true vibration absorber in the past, but that is more for playing around with vibration physics theory rather than an everyday solution.
Edit: Of course, the objective here was to reduce the vibrations transmitted from the printer rather than the vibration of the printer itself.
I’ve noticed better prints with faster speed when I remove the feet and set it down on my 1/2” steel table i bolted to the ground & staircase next to it (although shimming is needed since the Z axis linear bearing rod screw protrudes past the bottom of the printer). Needless to say I’m with you on this one, I think it prints better when its solid to its surface and the printer doesn’t move at all.
Surely the engineers designed this with super sloppy feet for a reason right? but what’s the reason? is it because some people set these printers up on a folding table VS the people that have been around and understand what harmonics can do to surface finish?
The soft squishy feet seem counterintuitive. They produce an effect called “torsional windup”, the energy that deflects them is eventually fed back in to the system when the energy abates. A rebound effect. It’d be a bigger issue for a servo controlled positioning system. Not sure it matters to a stepper driven system as long as the frequency is low enough.
But they do decouple the printer from the surface it’s sitting on, and from any resonances that might be excited in that surface. That probably helps print quality some, and also reduces how noisy the machine might be in operation.
I use 3M bumpers in place of anti vibration feet. These bumper are the ones applied for washing machines. They cost around 10 euros for 4 pieces and i think they are a good choice
(i.e. how can I better couple the P2S to the surface it sits upon)