Troubleshooting ripples on vertical surface

[teal venture]

I am nearly out of ideas. Looking for assistance.

I finished my Fabreeko ZeroG build about a month ago, and have been troubleshooting since. The motion system and print head is all white ASA. the newer frame braces are white matte PLA. The box was a test piece as I was feeling good about finally getting the stringing a bit under control, with my bench looking ok. I have printer about 50 bench hulls to try and troubleshoot the ripples. They grow and shrink with speed/accel/jerk, but are always present.

What I noticed during the box print is the print head (if you hold it) you can feel a stepping sensation. like the teeth of the belt or motors stepping. I'm not totally sure what is going on here. And VERY open to suggestions. I'm at wits end :/

I have tried stelthchop on and off, seems the same.

Tuned pressure advanced, it prints flats perfectly.

Setup input shaper with the nozzle style from Fabreeko. I made a clamp style adapter as the volcano nozzle couldn't pinch the PCB and bottom out on the heatbreak. I can upload a pick if anyone is interested. Ripples do not seemed changed by input shaper being on or off.

I'm not new to printing or builds, but this is my first CoreXY and first Klipper printer.

Hotend is a bond-tech LGX Lite with a genuine E3D volcano, using the thermistor and heater cartridge in the kit. this should have a max flow rate around 20mm^3/s from what I read, software says I'm averaging 8mm^3/s on these straights.

To add the different layer line cracks on the box is every time I adjusted something. Tightened the belt, loosened, held pressure on the bed to minimize vibration, ECT...

[teal venture]

Default settings on max flow rate, 5 to 20 mm^3/s with 0.5 steps. Not artifacts like the ripples.

The ripples kinda look like under extrusion, from videos I've seen. But I still had the ripples when my max flow rate was set to the default 10 or 12 that orca uses.

[teal venture]

Ran the test again, this time 20-30 with .5 steps. it started pulling the filament in on the turns around the second mark, so 21ish seems to be where the hotend starts under extruding, or at least where the layers stop bonding.

[hollow marten]

What is the box printed out of?

[teal venture]

That is PLA+. I do not remember the brand at the moment. I've been getting the best result at 235c, but I got the inconsistent surface all the way up to 265 where the cooling couldn't keep up.

[hollow marten]

Have you tried printing at a cooler temp?

[teal venture]

I had read somewhere that the volcano nozzle needs to print at about 10c lower than a standard v6, due to the longer melt zone.

So for the first couple weeks I was just using 200-210 until I did a temp tower.

That was a new noise as of tonight. I tried the print at 45 to see if the ripples show up when only one motor is driving the print. The vibration and noise is coming from the X linear rail. Same as the crunchy feeling when moving the head around.

Just got done, regreased with super lube... Same noise. same artifacts.

The rail went off the printer, I can feel the ball bearings rolling. Is that normal? I am new to linear rails.

When moving slowly, It almost feels like the ball bearings are catching, then roll again. Enough that I can not smoothly move the rail slowly by hand.

Not sure if this is helpful, but it seems to fight me moving, this video is after I cleaned and rebuilt the rail, before putting the belts back on.

[hollow marten]

If you have higher preload then the rails will be harder to move by hand but will be fine on the printer.

You have stealthchop turned off? That’s what that noise sounds like.

[teal venture]

I had stealth chop disabled last week, and put it back to 99999 yesterday.

So it's on during the noise.

I hear a lot of people talk about preload. But I don't really see a way to adjust that, the two screws on the end seem to just hold the cap on.

I think 3 days ago, assuming it was the rails, also not knowing how the rails work completely... Loosened all of the end cap screws by a half turn. Everything still felt clunky, and I still had artifacts so I put it back.

I learned that about the igus drylin bearings on my Anger AM8 bear. It feels super draggy and not smooth, but when driven by the steppers it is smooth and works wonderfully.

So I'm not the same page.

Most of the noise is coming from the bl touch vibrating and echoing. But whatever is causing that vibration is for sure in tune with my surface artifacts. When there is no noise the surface is smooth. As soon as it picks up speed and starts vibrating/humming I get that wavy artifact on the surface.

[kind fiber]

Keep spreadCycle on for X and Y. StealthChop for Z.

[kind fiber]

Preload is the type of grease that is applied to the carriage for the linear rail. It varies in velocisity, light to high and will affect the maximum speed/acceleration of the toolhead.

[teal venture]

ahhh, that makes sense why on one video he said "the preload seems high" then proceeded to clean the rails.

Is there any suggestion other than super lube?

[kind fiber]

"Some of the most commonly recommended lubricants by Voron community members are Mobilux EP1 or EP2, Superlube 21030, or white lithium grease." -LDO

https://docs.ldomotors.com/en/guides/rail_grease_guide

[teal venture]

That is just a speed test, 200mm/s with 3k accel. On spreadcycle x and y.

You can hear the ball bearings rolling around when moving on X.

I didn't lose any, it had the same one ball gap as when I took it apart.

[kind fiber]

I would recommend also reviewing your motor currents.

[teal venture]

from what I found the honey badger motor is rated at 2.5 max so I was running it at 1.4 like the calculator suggested. they were getting a bit too warm for my liking so I went down to 1

I have not had any skipping.

[kind fiber]

Did you have the noise issue when they were at 1.4?

[teal venture]

I do not believe, but I am checking now.

I have been loosing my mind on this printer for about a month now. doing the bad thing of changing more than one thing per test in a desperate attempt to find out what is going wrong.

speed test with 1.4 A at 400mm/s got it to hum like in the printing video. 200mm/s seems to be where I can hear the ball bearings, 400 seems to be where vibrations get to be large enough it hums.

But if I am understanding what you are saying, the vibration could just be the lube being too thick?

I guess it makes more sense to test the speeds I have set in my slicer.

travel moves are 500mm/s with 1500 accel
at 1.4amps
I get a high pitch whirling when going diagonal.

at 1 amp
I get a high pitch whirling when going diagonal.
I get the hum from my bl touch during the half bed diagonal moves

so yeah, at 1.4 I do not seem to have the same humming I was getting.

just to see, 1.4 with stealthchop enabled, doing the same 500mm/s speed test, the BL touch humms on all movements. Thank you for that help. I might try another test print now with it disabled and at 1.4 to see what I get.

[timid nymph]

I had a similar problem and what solved the problem for me was changing all the F695-2RS, when I disassembled everything I noticed that many were leaking oil. But the most decisive thing for me was to de-rack until you no longer feel resistance by moving the X axis by hand with the belts mounted.
This video helped me a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOn6u9kXvy0

[hollow marten]

Preload is mainly the tolerance and tightness of the fit of carriage to rails. Lubricant can’t do minor preload adjustment but you need to make sure the balls are spinning and going around the carriage and just sliding. You can check this with the rail off the printer and by moving the carriage and watching the balls.

[teal venture]

When I had it in my hands, the balls were cycling though the carriage and around. I did that clean with no lube, and with.

While in hand, I could distinctly feel like one bearing was not round or and as if something was catching.

Noise stopped, but artifact is still present.

So for sure the noise was the amps and stealth chop settings.

[teal venture]

Watched about racking. Using a square edge and eyeballing, the gantry did seem a bit crooked. Took it all apart and tightened everything down.

The two bolts that hold the gantry are now what I would call "stupid tight" to try and counter them being able to rack.

With the belts off, it does feel smoother.

Even with those 4 bolts tight AF, with belts on, I can push one side by about 1mm before the otherside moves.

I am going to call it a night on this... it's 0300 here in Germany. Gotta get some sleep for family tomorr.... today.

Thank you everyone for the input!

[teal venture]

https://www.machinedesign.com/mechanical-motion-systems/article/21836017/linear-bearings-understanding-the-21-ratio-and-how-to-overcome-the-stickslip-phenomenon

"The most common external forces are caused by misaligned linear rails, dimensional change in the rails, or an imperfection in the rail, which can also be caused by damage."

next time I get time I am going to back to step 4 https://docs.zerog.one/manual/build/mercury_eva/empty_frame
check for squareness.

[spare whale]

Not sure if we've been fighting the same fight on 2 different printers, but your print challenges seem similar... I've been battling this:

but the wavy pattern nearly only happened on the Y sides of an object...

Oddly enough, I've started to focus on my Z axis - have you printed an object, say a 25mm cube and measured for dimensional accuracy?

My 25mm cube came out accurate on X/Y but was 24mm on Z!

I've made some adjustments to the Z lead screw alignment, and replaced my flexible motor/screw coupler - and this has seemed to help, but not eliminate the problem.

The other thing I tired was print at a .3mm layer height - definitely masked the problem and prints looked better

I've got a Beacon probe and can measure Z backlash - mine is pretty bad compared to my Hyrda based system - so I'm going to continue down this line of investigation....

To reduce the effect of backlash I've disabled Z-hop as well...

Hopefully this line of reasoning isn't a huge time waster for you - I know how frustrating this can be! I'm going to move to a belted Z system this weekend to see if it eliminates theproblem...

[vagrant helm]

I had similar artifacts as that, and it was my x joints. Loosening the screws helped, but ultimately, I rebuilt them and realized they weren't correct. I had the wrong spacers. Now I can tighten them fully down and everything is great.

I think the are pictures of mine in an older troubleshooting thread.

[teal venture]

I just ordered a bunch of metal parts as I noticed two cracks in my printed parts, but reading this, I measured my last square print that had artifacts on x, y and on xy diag. it was 60mm in cad, measured 59.5.

I can imagion if my steps per mm are off, I would be getting weird input shapper.

That's the x carriage mount. And the other are both motor mounts.

[teal venture]

When you say the X joints. I had assumed that the gantry was supposed to be rigid with the Y linear rail carriages. I could not understand why they designed it with one bolt to pivot on.

after reading about stiction, and your comment, should I loosen those back up? to let the gantry rotate a little bit on the Y carriages?

[teal venture]

I have been looking at sourcing parts to build a gantry similar to the plus, with 4 rods and 2 lead screws.

my lead screw wobbles, I had ruled this out as I completely swapped out my bed assembly from my other "stock" ender 5. it showed the exact same artifacts, so I ruled it out.

I kinda feel ashamed to admit, I got so frustrated with this... and I am taking the nuclear approach. it has literally been a month of troubleshooting. yesterday I ordered the following.

• 4x 330 Linear rails
• 2020 Corner brackets like the ratrigs use
• Ceramic bearings to replace in the linear rails
• 2x Mellow motors 1.8* still
• Aluminum ZeroG motion system
• Aluminum Lightweight gantry

My plan is to take a break for a bit. Then completely tear the printer to the frame, if it is not square, I will make it square. rebuild everything slowly, making sure every bolt is tight. Then, all jokes aside I will bolt this thing to the wall.

I just finished printing a better nozzle clamp for my accelerometer.

Watched a ton on what the graphs should look like, so, doing a little research today using that. Then this will probably turn into one of those projects on marketplace if I can't find time in the future.

Should I mark this as closed?

[teal venture]

I will say, there is a ton I have learned about what not to do.

For example, as I am running this resonance test, I am sitting at the desk. which this is for sure is not stable enough. I noticed as my mouse is giggling on screen to the tone of the test -_-

I really appreciate everyone's time help. I will make a build-log for it when I get the parts in.

nifty trick, once you make the png files, you can mv them to ~/printer_data/gcodes/ with the ending .gcode.... then just download them from the mainsail interface and rename it back to png.

[teal venture]

and that is with the printer sitting on the floor. some of the noise on X moved around, but not by much.

[spare whale]

Hydra - the 3 motor z axis motion system - works reallyl well for me on my Merc FWIW... Though glad to hear you've ruled out Z as the culprit!

With my new build, I've been reminded how frustrating it can be to fix these types of elusive problems. If you're like me, you can't sleep well until things are 'right'... Hang in there, and take it easy on yourslef!

[teal venture]

Let's just say my other half is for sure not interested in the time investment. I have learned a ton in the last month, which I am happy for.

If the Hydra kit was in stock, I am fairly sure I would already have it 🙂 wink wink Fabreeko.

[hollow marten]

White isn’t the best colour for parts with tension as they need to chuck a lot in to get the white. I just changed the ball bearings in my X linear carriage to ones in spec with what they should be, it feels a lot more solid even with the tool head hanging off since it’s a front mounted one. Way better than when I had stealthburner on it. Hope it works out! You will need to give a good look at the metal parts, no one has showed them off due to some controversy with the seller. I’m guessing you got them off aliexpress?

[teal venture]

Yeah that's where I sourced them, I know there is some controversy. I am guessing it's from having people profit from the zerog teams designs.

But I see it not that I'm buying a stolen design but more buying the time from someone who milled them using a CNC machine.

That makes way more sense now why people say, "don't use white". Of course the defiant people are going to use white with no clue to why it says that.

So the pigment/dye ends up having an effect on layer adhesive. I can totally imagine. Same how CF and GF filament tend to have the same issue

[hollow marten]

Cf is fine, just pulled my asa-cf parts off and no bad signs on them. I haven’t used GF but imagine it’s fine. Fibre filament tend to need more heat when printing to get good layer adhesion. The one I have needs 30c more than the normal asa.

[teal venture]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfztVplTBQc

This is one of the videos I had watched about it.
My understanding is CF makes the part stiffer, but has a negative effect on layer adhesion, much the same way the pigment/dye does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMSp1WDqtpI

Leave it to CNC Kitchen to go way into dept. showing there is an affect but it is not directly correlated.

to be honest, my stuff probably cracked from too tight of belt as I was troubleshooting.

[teal venture]

It is always nice when you can finally figure something out, even better when you update your post with the fix.

....The nozzle.

That is a photo of the old nozzle. With the large flat face. Switched to a copper with more of a point.

Nearly all of my ripple issues are solved. That's a 30 min benchy with all the same settings as my old posts.

[supple apex]

Hey @teal venture I know this is over a year later but I wanted to thank you because I have what looks like the same nozzle as you (phaetus rapido line perhaps?) and was having the same exact issue and was not able to chase it down until I saw this post. Replaced it with a brand new point nose nozzle and I'm already seeing rapid improvements. Thank you.