Well that sux.
I would be fine having to pair new rails together, but having to swap them all out and then not be able to keep the old rails as spares is not good.
Guess the decision then is whether to order the new ones and sell the old on ebay.
Or will there be a flood of old on ebay and pick up spares that way.
Noise doesn’t bother me if that’s really the only major change.
Have we seen pricing on any of the new announcements?
-S
Yes, check the link in my post above. It has the pricing. If you check under Accessories, you will see the pricing for the other parts as well.
I should have specified, I was wondering about pricing for new laser and/or dual extruder.
-S
Ah. No, I haven’t seen that info anywhere. I’m not aware of it being posted.
Yeah, that’s what I figured you’d have to do, but if you can’t mix at all, that’s a problem. Seems like something you could handle in software.
Haven’t seen anything on what the new modules will be, but a new print module is $150, so probably something close to that for the new dual extruder? Obviously, more parts, but I can’t see it being as expensive as the rotary module.
Yea, it could be fixed in software. Not a lot of incentive for the developers to add it though, maybe the community could. Having to add different protocols per axis.
Maybe they are mostly worried about someone only replacing 1 module in a dual module axis like Y. Maybe as long as you replace both y modules it’ll work. Who knows at this time.
I see it more as if a new one goes bad, temporarily switch all back to the old ones til replacement comes in, then switch all the new ones back in.
That sounds like a load of fun. 
And people complain about all the screws while changing beds.
-S
Aside from being quieter (I don’t know by how much) the other difference is the lead value. Basically the old ones are 8mm and the new ones are 20mm. The lead values are the linear travel distance you’ll get for one full rotation of the screw. As you can see the new ones will be able to travel over twice the distance as the old in one full screw rotation, this means you’ll get over double the speed.
This won’t mean much for the CNC function since the spindle is a bit underpowered to run at high feed rates or depth of cuts, but it might have some benefit in 3D printing (though probably not by too much given the nature of 3D printing). However for laser marking/engraving I can see this being a big benefit, especially if you’re doing images and portraits as the laser head can be moved around very quickly without straining the motors. The new linear modules coupled with the new 10w laser should reduce work times anwhere from 1/2 to 1/5 of the time versus the old linear modules and 1.6w laser depending on the workload.
Something to note is that there is no free lunch. Higher travel speeds gained through using higher lead values comes at the cost of lower resolution. Basically the resolution will be reduced by more than half meaning you’ll have worse accuracy and repeatability. Now I doubt the Snapmaker team is ok with this (I mean who wants worse quality prints or cuts?) so I can assume that they are implementing microstepping to counteract this.
Microstepping is great as it can increase resolution but it comes with the caveat that your holding torque is also reduced. This shouldn’t be a problem for laser or 3D printing projects as the tool head isn’t being pressed against anything, but this isn’t favorable for CNC router applications and could cause missed steps. Though circling back to the beginning this isn’t a big deal in our case since you can’t run the machine fast in the CNC mode anyway due to the low powered spindle.
16db is the figure given for the power supply. No stats given for the noise difference for the rails.
-S
Thanks my mistake👍I’ll edit my previous post.
The machine now can run comfortably at 150mm/s, which is way faster than useful speeds for printing, laser, or CNC. Even as a travel speed between work locations maximum speed is rarely reached as short distances are acceleration limited.
I and not understanding the motivation for increasing speed further.
I could entertain an argument where slower lead rotation reducing some noise at the expense of reduced precision.
But additional travel speed is not required given the limited work volume and limited acceleration.
The only mode that would benefit from extra speed is the laser function for marking portraits/photos onto wood. Making portraits with the standard linear modules and 1.6w laser module can be painfully slow. I’ve operated laser machines that are much faster at making portraits (700mm/s +) than my Snapmaker 2.0 so I truly believe the newer linear modules will have a noticeable impact. In 3D printing and CNC routing it’ll have very little to no impact. Now of course for doing through cuts with the laser I don’t anticipate any performance improvement from just the new linear modules, you’ll need the high powered 10w laser module to do the heavy lifting.
They only advertise it in the F series page, but the claim seems to be that the new upgrades will be able to print 50% faster.
I’m with @brent113 on this though, imo the limiting factor is actually the accuracy, not the speed, I was playing with increasing speeds, and the machine can easily go much faster than I normally print, the problem becomes that the quality starts to suffer, I’m not sure how going faster would fix it.
Perhaps they’re just worried about vorons coming to eat their lunch and they’re hoping they can be capable of 1000mm/s
Oh I hadn’t seen that post. They are clearly (to me at least) phrasing this as faster because of the changes to the cooling improvements. Not due to linear module changes.
That makes sense.
By that logic we should all be printing 50% faster with your fan mod then 
Totally agree, the faster speeds offered by the new linear modules won’t make a real difference in 3D printing or CNC applications, but I do stand by statement that for making portraits/pictures with the laser you should see a noticeable improvement. How much of an improvement is hard to say, but definitely not trivial since laser engravers can operate really fast without impacting accuracy.
I’ve seen laser engravers work 5 to 10 times faster at making portraits than what the Snapmaker is currently abIe to do. I’ve worked with all sorts of CNC, laser and plasma machines (many of which were pro-sumer and industrial grade) for the past 9 years so my intuition and experience tells me that extra real world performance can be squeezed out of the Snapmaker using the new linear modules in regards to certain laser based projects. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, I’ll definitely give them a try and report back.
I was thinking about that just now and after the fan mod I reduced the minimum layer time from 8s to 3s on small parts so my fan mod actually speeds up more than 250% 
Snapmaker I’m available for consulting services.
