Doubling up the belt like that will significantly change the flex characteristic of the belt. I would be shocked if this improved your print quality.
At this point I would rather opt to cut and smooth the belt teeth in the affected area, in the hope that the belt tensioners will be able to compensate for the removed thickness.
Or to avoid the removed thickness, compensate by gluing a strip of the same thickness as the previously cut teeth
interesting but you would need to only glue in teeth seperatly as if you glued a whole belt portion onto another one, it will get thicker and your calculated printhead movement won’t represent what it will do irl —> dimentional errors between model and print
Just stop cleaning the carbon rods. They are self-lubricating. The “dirtier” they get, the better the printed image will be.
carbon rods are not the issue here, a toothed belt running on a smooth idler pulley is
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Not in my experience. Zero change from installing toothed idlers.
I’m a little confused with what you’re saying. Didn’t you drill into the x gantry and swap out the smooth idler pulleys for toothed ones and saw improvements to the VFAs? Or am I misunderstanding something?
Perhaps the best solution would be to spread a layer of elastic silicone on the surface between the teeth so as to remain flush and not increase the thickness.
Do I need to find a suitable, abrasion-resistant silicone, TPU?
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You must be thinking of someone else. Yes, I replaced the idlers with toothed ones, but my VFAs stayed exactly the same.
You’re right. My mistake. It was @Alkerion that saw improvements.
Very Fine Aroma? Most definitely.
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I’m not entirely sure whether you understood me correctly. The less resistance there is, the less strain is placed on the belt. This means that there are fewer VFAs.
Unless you have evidence that links increasing belt force with increasing VFAs, then you can’t make that claim.
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It’s unlikely there’s one definitive source of VFAs.
I have yet to see anyone conclusively prove that installing toothed idlers makes a positive difference. Or proof of anything related to VFAs for that matter.
There are so many variables that can contribute to VFAs, and unless you take some kind of measure to control those variables and document an actual improvement, it’s just confirmation bias to say you’ve “fixed” VFAs.
I agree that there are potentially multiple sources of VFAs. But it’s not confirmation bias if someone says they fixed them, assuming they did a valid before and after test and can clearly observe a big improvement. However, they will be guessing about which thing(s) they “did”, as it can be hard to change only one variable at a time.
You’re right, I’ve just seen a handful of people insisting that this solved VFAs for them, but a majority have had no prints to show for it. No one is obligated to share anything at all, and I’m not directing this at any one person here.
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Maybe some of you would find this interesting:
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I did, thanks. It’s interesting to see how many different versions of x1/p1 they produced without informing the end user about the versions, not to mention the 7-8 versions of the ams. Buying/selling used bbl devices will not be the easiest task probably if/when they eventually fix 2mm vfa on these as many will claim they have the fixed version while selling
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Belt force does not eliminate VFAs whether it is higher or lower. All it does is change the speed the effect is most pronounced at. I experimented intensively with ridiculously high and low belt tension and found that it did not improve it, only that it moved it around with respect to print velocity.
You are one of the biggest reasons I haven’t done the swap. I already have toothed idlers, washers and gates belts but when you said you didn’t get any improvements after the change some weeks before, I decided not to continue. Am I right to assume that you were unable to solve it afterwards as well and still looking for the problem?
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