I don’t know if anyone else has run into this, but when I installed rubber anti‑vibration feet on my X1C, my print quality got noticeably worse.
It caused a slight uneven tilt, almost like the printer was wobbling, which made the nozzle height inconsistent across the bed. I tried everything — filament calibration, changing the extruder, full bed tramming — nothing fixed it.
As soon as I removed the rubber feet and put the original feet back on, the problem disappeared and my first layers were perfect again.
The extruder and bed are both mounted within the same printer body, changing the feet on the body doesn’t cause the extruder to suddenly not be square to the bed.
It’s normal for the extruder to have somewhat inconsistent height to the bed. Auto bed leveling at the start of prints creates a height map of the bed and compensates for it. Only extreme out of square conditions require tramming.
This thread is talking about print quality over the height of parts, particularly vertical wall ringing, which is a function of vibration, resonance, coupling, etc. - we’re not talking about first layers at all.
The first layer of prints is always slower, to the point where vibration isn’t a factor at all.
When changing to different feet, it’s critical to perform resonance compensation setup again so the printer re-measures it’s own response again.
Both filament calibration and changing the extruder would have had no impact on first layer quality as you described it anyhow.
In all likelihood, something was done wrong during the installation of the feet, and that root cause issue was never addressed at any point until the original feet were re-installed.
Changing the feet changes the printers vibration characteristics.
If the printer calibration was not redone (it is missing from your list), its (active vibration) control system will assume an incorrect control matrix for pretty much every movement.
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