Hi Fellas,
just a quick question here.
I use my P1S around 18 Months now and ask myself when it is the right Time to replace the Timingbelts.
In my Daytime i am a Technican for Gamblingmachines and Moneychangingmachines, therefore i don’t fear the Work.
And is it reliable to replace all the Pulleys and Tensioner when disassemble the Printer?
Maybe some more expirienced Person may provide a Partslist for doing this.
Nothing is more bs as when you work on something and yer miss a screw…
My advice? Resist the temptation to perform preemptive belt maintenance. Too many cautionary tales here come from people with years of building their own Rat Rig with lots of experience, who believed they could do better - and ended up worse off.
From what I’ve seen on this forum, if the printer is performing well, field maintenance is unlikely to improve it. Bambu’s “secret sauce” is their firmware and sensor algorithms, which compensate for a wide range of variations in nozzle and bed movement. It’s far more likely you’ll push the system out of tolerance than make it better.
This adjustment is more art than science. It’s not like taking a multimeter and turning a pot until it reads within spec. Even the Bambu wiki is vague on this - which should tell you something.
My last printer ran 12 years without ever changing belts. All maintenance I had to do occasionally was cleaning and lubing. I think once or twice I readjusted squareness of the gantry. And it probably would go on strong a few more years.
If yours doesn’t run 24/7, It probably is still as good as new.
One of my A1’s is approaching 5000 hours, and needs an unrelated repair to the carriage. When I do that, I will do belts too. I haven’t felt the need or suspicion to do belts at all, I am just doing it because I will have hands on them. I’ll try to report back here with pics of the state of things.
I’d avoid doing a belt change unless you notice they are degrading excessively. Mostly just re-adjust them for tension as they age, but keep the gantry square during this process.
Toothed belts are often used for timing and positioning rather than just spinning. They do not require the amount of tension a smooth V-belt requires.
V-belts are about friction between the belt and the sheave.
Toothed belts are about calibrated motion. A toothed belt only needs enough tension to prevent the belt from coming off of the toothed pulley. Friction is not really in play.
Belt slip would be a disaster for a 3d printer.
Toothed belts prevent slip and are part of the math done by the slicer for positioning the bed and the toolhead