Tuesday 13 September 2011

Upgrade your bed springs –> improve your print quality

Just a quick note and upgrade for you to consider - If you have a Prusa or any other machine with little springs on your build bed / heated bed especially if they are springs from biro pens think about upgrading them.

I was getting more and more issues going faster on my Prusa, most of these manifested themselves as less fine outer surfaces and less alignment on the vertical walls. So after fixing all my vertical Z issues (de-couple the Z motor mounts, make sure the rods are really straight, and adding Z rod bearing stabilisers) the only thing remaining was a little wobble on my build-bed. This wobble gets more and more the faster you print / accelerate / stop etc, so I changed my bed springs from the 'official' little ones from biro pens to ones usually used on the Extruder Idler.

On the left is a ground spring normally used on the extruder. On the right the 'official' bed spring is usually sourced from a disposable biro pen.

Change to a firm spring, under good compression.


Old Pen spring fitted, bit floppy

You need a firm spring, and make sure they are well compressed, mind you don't distort the build bed but keep them reasonably tight to stop wobble.

The change was really good and well worth doing.  I'll try to post the before and after printed objects, but I would recommend giving it a go especially if you are upping the print speeds on your machine past 80+mm/sec or having a fast machine travel speeds around ~200+mm/sec

Let me know if you change them and if it also improved your print quality.

Rich.

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