Clicking during Y-Axis moves on S5

[PaulK 14]

My new S5 has developed a clicking sound (it didn't have it originally) during moves in the Y-axis. I has less then 100 hours of printing on it. It is fairly loud, looks to always occur in the same spot, and only in the Y but in either direction. It's hard to verify if it happens in more the one spot on the Y (is there a way to command moves for this printer?) Staring down belts and rods they all look to be moving smoothly and cleanly. There is no evidence of print quality loss that I can spot. But.... it can't be good.

 

Ideas?

[PaulK 14]

To help clarify what is going on, a video (this is my video):

 

[gr5 2,172]

You can push the head around when it's not busy doing stuff.  when the printer is just idle the servos almost always power down.  For example before you start a print or after the print is done.  You can tell when the servos were powered off because it always does a home first thing when it applies power back to the servos.

 

The clicking is a common issue on UM2, UM3, S5 printers.  it is not serious but you can try to fix it.  I haven't fixed all my clicks.  That's probably related to one of the 2 long Y axis belts and one of the 4 Y axis pulleys on those long belts.  Or maybe a short belt.  Try to figure out which corner of the printer it's coming from when you push the head forward and back by hand.  Watch the belts carefully over the pulleys.  See if the belts are lined up with the rods just above and below them.  They should be.  You can loosen the set screw on a pulley and adjust it so the pulleys on the same rod are as far apart as possible and then retighten but tighten the hell out of those set screws because you could end up with a worse problem: missed steps - caused when the pulley spins on the shaft occasionally.

 

[PaulK 14]

Well, manually pushing the axis doesn't power up the board like it does on my other printer 🙂 

Pushing and listening very carefully it seems to click once per revolution of the Y axis pulleys. It is really hard to tell exactly which one. There is hysteresis when you reverse direction. The belts looks lined up well but visibility isn't the greatest there; I'll look some more and make sure all the set screws are actually tight, etc.

[JohnInOttawa 104]

So to be clear, the clicking happens mid travel, and not during a direction change of any kind?

 

If it is mid travel, and once per rev, that suggests interference somewhere, two hard surfaces are contacting somehow.  Barring something sticking out and hitting something, i'd wonder if there is a rod-end bearing behind that clicking.

 

j

[PaulK 14]

Solved. Re-aligned of the pulleys and it went away. Very quiet again 🙂 Common theory is that the belt can catch a little on the sides if it is misaligned; it is really hard to observe this, though, so hard to tell.

 

I'd also like to say that Ultimaker White PLA isn't very white.

Edited December 30, 2018 by PaulK