I have had an X1C at work for almost a year now, but realized the noise level is much easier to tolerate when you can walk away from it! Now with one added to my home office, I found the noise level to be excessive. I have had a printer working next to me for years, but at slower speeds and with Trinamic drivers, it’s much more tolerable.
So, what did I do? Dynamat.
Just doing the floor made the Z axis almost silent. But, since we know X and Y sing pretty loudly, I continued on. I applied it on the floor, the inside back dividers, and the inside of all 3 panels, and it made a substantial reduction in sound output.
You can go right over all the mounting points and then just poke out holes and cut small X’s over the bosses to push them through. Everything bolted back up without too much trouble. Clearance to the X gantry end blocks is pretty close, but no contact.
I used one of these kits (purchased “used” - like new for around $70, and have a fair amount left over): Amazon.com
Wow that looks extremely thin, I’m surprised you say it’s so effective. How thin is it?
My plan was to use self adhesive neoprene, 5 mm thick. Both for noise and for keeping champer temperature up when I want to. If I go that route I will likely need to cut away large chunks for clearance. Perhaps your idea is better!
It is only 0.067" thick, but super effective. Neoprene won’t come close to this stuff. The Dynamat brand has some proprietary tricks that not even the direct competitors have.
I did the interior of my 2002 Z06 Corvette with Dynamat. Floors, roof, door panels. Made quite a difference. Also added like 200LBs to the weight of the car (which only weighed 3100LBs to begin with)…
I did trigger a calibration cycle afterwards and boy does the whole printer rattle less during that!
I didn’t do an extensive before/after comparison, but did run a couple parts with the same gcode and can see an improvement. Not massive, but noticeable.
Right now I have the whole printer on Sorbothane feet, which decouples it from the table it is on. I’m going to get a 16" concrete paver, but the printer on that and put the Sorbothane feet under the paver. This should help dump energy into the concrete instead of leaving it all in the printer.
If you wouldn’t mind sharing your source. What shape Sorbothane did you use and where did you get it? I haven’t found any shape where I wasn’t forced to buy a sheet that had me wasting most of it in scrap. That stuff is too expensive in my book to be buying $40 worth of material only to send 70% into the landfill.
You don’t want to confuse sound-deadening with sound-isolation.
So to answer your question, any sound absorbing material will quiet the soundwaves traveling through it. Sound-deadening material will create and an-echoic property. So if you’re let’s say trying to quiet the road noise coming from outside your car, it doesn’t matter so much where the material is. However, if you want to create a sound proof room, you want the materials as far on the outside facing you. This will deaden the noise coming through the wall but also deaden any sound bouncing off the wall.
Sound has a really funny way of traveling through objects that one doesn’t really think about. When my company built a TV studio in-house, we actually used two walls of sheetrock with a papier-mâché-like material called Homasote between the walls. However, I’ve seen the same material used on the walls of recording studios. Both methods were very affective at soundproofing but only one was anechoic. Now in our studio, the acoustic engineers went the extra step of alternating the beams of the drywall to break up the tuning-fork-like harmonic resonance. Then they went another step and placed acoustic isolation under the wall studs to further dampen the sound.
The room turned out to be too quiet. During a fire alarm the folks inside couldn’t hear the alarm and did not leave the building. They had no idea that is was wailing. We remedied that by installing a klaxon inside the room.
Now having said all that. I have a P1P sitting at the end of my desk on a detached table. Sure it makes noise but I guess I tune it out. But then again, I grew up under elevated train tracks too.
Yes, I think the sound reduction would be equally effective to install the Dynamat on the outside. But boy would it be uglier!
I’m a function over form guy most of the time. But in this case, it was worth the extra work to remove the panels and keep it all inside the enclosure.
