How many of you agree with me that recommendations for greasing lead screws and oiling linear rods/rails are way to often?
Also, a full cal aferward seems like unnecessary wear and tear if the machine was printing just fine.
I agree w/ the Z, unless you have visible issues, you can put a grain of rice’s worth of fresh grease on the nut [and no other actions] every couple months and it’ll be happy forever.
I don’t agree.
Ever notice how the inside of the door on your printer gets cloudy every few weeks? That’s plastic vapor. It lands on every surface inside the printer, screws and rails included.
The other aspect that Bambu needs to account for is the internal temperature that printers are running at - higher chamber temperatures means the lubricants generally provide a bit less protection and reduced overall lifespan.
A lot of H2 users have had leadscrew failures, it may be a totally unrelated failure or only happened on earlier machines, but lubrication is quick and easy and there’s no downside to doing it.
I even ponied up and started using a molybdenum disulfide grease to provide extra protection.
Calibration represents negligible wear and tear compared to the amount of travel a printer will do for even a single small print. I see it as zero cost, so I’m going to do it every time.
The Z screw lube recommendation seems to pop up about every 50 hrs for me, which might seem too frequent. I think the issue is that while there may be plenty of grease, it is mostly black, indicating that it is very dirty, and the dirt may be increasing screw wear. I’m not a fan of deferring maintenance until something actually fails.
I perform the other cleaning/lubing chores at the same time, and re-tension the belts before running a printer calibration. The full maintenance routine does not take long, and I believe it reduces print problems.
Ah, the vapor factor. I had no idea. Thanks!
I thought the BBL wiki advised to tension the belt only when they become noisy. One more thing I guess I need to do.
The printer’s vibration check just before a print is testing belt tension; I’d expect it to tell me if there’s a need to retension.
The maintenance guide for my X1C says only this:
When the X1 finds that the natural frequency has changed, it is time to tighten the belt.
I don’t find that helpful, since the printer has no way to tell me when the natural frequency has changed. My thinking is that by letting the tension springs make minor, frequent adjustments, the tension will be near optimal most of the time. True, after the first few hours of use, the belts stop stretching, so adjustment with every lube is probably not strictly necessary.
The vibration test before a print results in some automatic adjustment in motion based on the results, but it never tells you what the change was, nor does it tell you when the belt is excessively tight or loose.
I do not see any mention of waiting for a noisy belt to adjust tension. There is a suggestion to apply a drop of oil to the top and bottom of the idler pulleys if they squeak.
I’d like to point out something about the tensioning process that is often misunderstood. The “tensioning screws” should actually be named “pulley clamping screws”, because they do not apply belt tension; they just hold the pulley in a fixed position. They are loosened, the print head is moved around to relieve any stiction while the tensioning springs apply the correct belt tension and then the screws clamp the pulley to the frame again so that it cannot move. The user is not supposed to be applying or reducing belt tension.
That’s not correct.
If the printer runs a pre-print frequency sweep and gets an indication of a loose belt or belts, it throws a “belt tension low” error. That’s how you know.
I have gotten the following message a couple of times because I forgot to clean the rods 
. So the printer can tell which specific maintenance task needs to be done.
“The resonance frequency of the X axis [or Y axis] differs much from last calibration. Please clean the carbon rod and rerun the machine calibration later”
“They are loosened, the print head is moved around to relieve any stiction while the tensioning springs apply the correct belt tension…”
I ‘think’ you’re saying: Occasionally loosen the clamp, then move the head in all directions, then tighten the clamp. Is that right? That would take all the guess work (about tension) out of the process. Otherwise, then people would have ten different tensions.
Exactly. The springs take up any slack and set the tension. The screws fix the pulleys so that belt tension remains constant.
Maybe I’ve never seen that message because I’ve never let the tension drop low enough to trigger it.
So, maybe I’m “over-maintaining”. I don’t think it’s caused any harm, and if a print is less than perfect, I can be pretty certain that lack of maintenance or maladjustment isn’t the problem, which cuts down on troubleshooting steps.
The self tensioning certainly allows belts to be used a lot longer without needing adjustment, if you’ve been manually intervening it just means your printer hasn’t needed to rely on that self tensioning quite as much.
I’ve got 3466 hours on my X1C and have never touched the belt tension, and have zero print quality issues.
I was just contemplating this subject before I read this.
My two A series printers nudge (nag) me, my four P1S printers have never done so. I am plus 2k hours on those and zero issues.
I am lazy with cleaning and so, unless it nags, I do nothing, I have done nothing. Not on rails, rods or lead screws.
The cloudiness comment earlier is weird, I have never experienced that at any interval.
That sounds encouraging: If true, I won’t ever have to decide what’s too tight and what’s not. I would screw it up for sure.
Oh, wow! I’m only at 700 hrs each on my two P2S.
Malc: At first I didn’t know what he was talking about either. The cloudiness of the door appears when looking from inside the cabinet, in other words, as seen by the camera. I’ve seen it myself.
Put some isopropyl on a piece of paper towel and rub it all over the inside of the door and glass lid.
You’ll see what I mean…
Nope, I do not have this.
I didn’t.
This may fall into the camps of “I have never used glue nor needed it on a build plate and I have never needed to dry filaments despite owning two different expensive driers”.