Oh and the stepper is probably just fine. They never seem to die. They are much tougher than you might think. They should never need to be replaced.
@gr5 is replacing these belts after a while pretty typical? My UM3 is making a similar creaking noise. I just checked and between my 3 AA cores, looks like I have about 6550 hours on the printer.
There is a noticeable amount of black powder on top of the stepper motors, I am guessing this is from the belts rubbing on the inside of the pulleys?
6550 hours. Nice. How many kilometers of filament? Typically 6 kilometers with 6000 hours but it should say on the maintenance menu. How many spools is that?
Anyway, yes the black powder is from the belts. It's probably time to change them. They are not expensive but it may take you an hour to change them. They come with the black sliding blocks (which have springs inside. The whole thing is one purchase item (4 belts with integrated blocks). If you are in USA I'd contact fbrc8.com. Otherwise contact your reseller for a set. But it's not urgent.
@gr5 yep, we print a lot over here! But I am sure other people print way more.
Looks like ~6000 meters across all of my cores. (why doesnt the UM3 just keep track of all this data itself?)
Ill check out fbrc8.com, I believe I purchased some stuff from them before.
Any other things I should replace while I am in there?
Just for fun, I looked up my matterhackers PO's, since July 2018 I purchased 43 spools of filament. (mostly 1kg MH Pro Gray or Silver Tough PLA). That equals about 5420 meters (based on 126 meters per 1kg spool). Prior to 2018 I used a credit card, so I have no good way of figuring out how much I bought prior to that date. But the math seems pretty close!
I think you've gotten your money's worth out of that printer. 6000 hours (or meters) must be above average.
fbrc8-erin 311
I usually recommend belt replacement at 3000-4000 print hours hours. Black dust on the motors (or on the panels above the motor), really loud movement, and print quality issues are all good indications its time to replace them.
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18 hours ago, gr5 said:I think you've gotten your money's worth out of that printer. 6000 hours (or meters) must be above average.
Yep, for sure. About $0.50/hr of run time (not counting material). Now the question is, would these numbers justify a Form 3 resin printer? hmm...
1 hour ago, fbrc8-erin said:I usually recommend belt replacement at 3000-4000 print hours hours. Black dust on the motors (or on the panels above the motor), really loud movement, and print quality issues are all good indications its time to replace them.
Awesome, exactly what I was looking for. Ill see if I can't get these parts on order. I just need the 2 kits right? Short belts + long belts?
- 2 weeks later...
fbrc8-erin 311
@cpi_ultimaker where are you located? I sell them as kits; I don't think it makes sense to ever only buy 1 belt because they should generally be replaced as a set (so I do a set of the 4 sliding blocks and a set of the 2 short belts). If you're ordering from pretty much anywhere else, it will most likely be 4 individual sliding blocks and 2 individual short belts since Ultimaker doesn't sell them as a set at this time.
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gr5 2,294
Yeah that's familiar. I've heard this before. It has to do with the belts and also the pulleys I think. You can replace the belts at some point but I recommend you ignore this for now. Try printing 2 thousand more hours of printing (8 hours per day, 5 days per week, for a year) first.
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