I’ve been recently having issues with the Y-axis Linear Modules. I posted a new topic on the forum on the 13th September ( Y-axis excessive Wobble / See-saw ).
During printing the heated bed was see-sawing/wobbling causing issues with the prints and also a screeching noise was coming from the modules. https://youtu.be/nyUkSZG3chQ
I thought the noise was due to the sealing strips and the excessive movement was due to the Slider/Carriage U-Groove (SG10) bearings being slack as others had suggested.
As recommended from another post I thought the Carriage needed tightening. I carefully removed the carriage and checked it for tightness then checked the bearings and have found 3 out of the 4 in the right module and 2 out of 4 in the left module are faulty with excessive play.
A total of 5 out of 8 bearings from both Y-axis linear modules have failed. There is excessive play in these bearings and its causing the wobble on the print bed and I believe they are also causing the screeching noise I associated with the sealing strips. I’ve attached a link to the YouTube video of the bearing wobble on the right module carriage . https://youtu.be/a8W845ltEMs
Obviously this is unfortunate that the bearings have failed so soon (maybe 300hrs printing).
Has anyone else noticed that these bearings have failed??
Can you try to screw/unscrew the bolt to understand if the play is caused by a missing grip from a screw not reaching the end of the thread or a seized bearing?
I’ve removed the retaining screws from the bearings, the movement is between the outer and inner bearing race. There was no slack between the screw and the bearing and all the screws were tight.
---- Enne via Snapmaker where creation happens wrote ----
Can you try to screw/unscrew the bolt to understand if the play is caused by a missing grip from a screw not reaching the end of the thread or a seized bearing?
So it’s much worse than I thought, your bearings basically crashed. I had about 100 hours of print on my A350 before I went out-of-the-game with an overheating linear module. I will take advantage of this break to take a look at my bearings too.
I’ve had to leave the printer in pieces for a few days whilst if figure out what im going to do and allow support to get in touch. Im now thinking that there may be an issue with the X-axis and have also noticed the X-Axis linear module getting very hot to touch. Now im thinking that bearing issues might be causing heating issues in the other modules or possibly the other way round. I was actually thinking about adding passive heatsinks to the stepper motor end of the X and Y-axis modules to see if that would help with heat dissapation and longevity.
On a serious note though I think the bearings are crap quality. The SG10 bearings that have been used look like the same ones available everywhere and are very cheap £3 - 4 each in small quanties and i suspect these could be sub £1 ordered in large quantities. I found a company in the UK that had high quality versions of the same style but they no longer stock them. These would have been in the +£20 each bracket but I believe they would have been worth it.
Could you clarify is it getting hot while stationary or getting hot while moving? Stepper motors predominantly generate heat as copper loss inside the motor, I feel like for the bearings to be generating that much heat that you can feel it outside it would require a tremendous amount of power being dissipated in the bearings, something I’m not sure these linear modules are capable of.
Regardless the idea of putting a heat sink on it is a good idea
I was thining about getting thermocoupels to stick on the stepper casings. Incase a limit is reached the printer is killed. My steppers are getting warm aswell but im printing wavey stuff so im expecting them to get warm.
Thermocoupels, good idea or less so because its outside the case which leads to a to big time delay?
Hi Edwin, Thanks for the reply. I emailed support@snapmaker.com on the 19th October with much the same content as the thread starter but still no reply.
What im thinking at the moment is that the excessive play on the bearings is causing friction on the carriage causing the stepper motors to work harder and causing the extra heat build up. Maybe im wrong but sounds plausible.
I’ve not taken the X-axis apart yet but have noticed that sometimes when calibrating the final Z-axis position with the calibration card the printer head jumps when removing the card with the desired amount of pressure on it. So this leads me to believe these bearings are possibly faulty too.
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