"ticking" noise

[mrts 1]

Hi!

First of all, my Ultimaker is working really fine, but.. it makes "ticking" noises when the print head moves from front to back and reverse..

I think it started when I put some more tension on the belts, but the tension is not really that high. Lowering the tension does help though..

Does anybody recognize this? It's really difficult to find the root cause, the wooden frame works as a resonance box when trying to locate the sound..

Hope somebody can help.. Thanks!

[Daid 306]

Most likely it is one of the the axes moving against the end caps and back. Try to find out if the noise comes from the endcaps.

But just to be sure, after you adjust the tension of the long belts it is recommended to unscrew the pulley at the ends where there is no motor, and screw the tight again, so the top and bottom of the belt have about the same tension.

[rewolff 0]

In my case (yesterday) oiling the axes helped.

Apparently it's always the left axes that does this.

[mrts 1]

Thanks, Daid and Rewolf!

I tried loosening the pulleys, balancing the tension and re-tighten them. The tick was gone. But after printing 30mins, the tick returned..

Oiling didn't help, and I checked the endcaps - that wasn't the cause..

Any more ideas? Could it be the bearings?

[rewolff 0]

A bearing is a device that makes movement in a certain direction really easy.

So inserted into the plywood are bearings that allow the left axis to turn really easily. And that's the movement that it needs. It does not need to move sideways (front-to-back in fact). So the bearing doesn't help in that direction. And if it does move, the caps prevent it from sliding all the way out.

Now there is another bearing: the extrusion head is using a sleeve bearing to move over the left axis when there is Y-movement, and it allows the axis to turn when there is X-movement. It is this Y-movement that apparently has more friction on the sleeve bearing than in the inside holes of the bearings in the front and back panels.

Mine started making noises again, and I oiled it again. Either it requires quite constant oiling or it requires oiling a few times. I don't know yet. I just have the oil next to the machine and when the ticking annoys me I give it a few drops....

[alaris2 1]

your analysis is correct (or at least agrees with mine) - but consider also what happens if the 2 x axes are not perfectly parallel, movement of the head may exert a slight sideways motion on one axis causing it to slide back and forth

[c-ernst 1]

It also happens from the belts riding up the pulleys and "snapping" back down into place. This is caused by the belts not being perfectly aligned with the carriage.

Chuck

[udo 0]

Hi everybody,

i also have a ticking sound after printing a while. But in my case this comes from the "spiral tube" that holds the cables together. I mean the cables that goes from the extruder to the head.

There is some tension in that thing and after printing a while, it start doing this noise. As soon as i hold the cable-package tight (with hand and near the Extruder), it stops immedialtely. Maybe its the same thing?

Greetings

[beeeeeeeeeew 0]

It also happens from the belts riding up the pulleys and "snapping" back down into place. This is caused by the belts not being perfectly aligned with the carriage.

Chuck

I had the same problem, realign the belts and it will stop making that noise.

[futurejames 0]

I was plagued with the ticking for a while. Here's what I did:

- Checked that the axis were aligned using several tools to verify.

- Made sure the pulleys and belts were aligned with the axis above/below them.

- Machine oil on x/y.

- Take off all the end caps (or at least took one screw out and rotated it so I could see) and make sure they weren't hitting.

I have to say most of my problems were because of the first two. Going over them again and again (and again!) and now there's no more ticking. Also the machine oil helped a lot.

[fluxline 0]

just to add to the list of potentials, mine was coming from the feeder bolt being too tight. once I tuned that a bit by watching the filament in the tube and making sure there were still 'tracks' on the filamant, the ticking went away went away. It also sounded like the ticking was coming from the white cable holder.

one thing I noticed when assembling is that the nylock nuts on the clamp assembly with the delrin can be tightened too much and inhibit the delrin 'spring' from allowing less pressure to be put on the filament. it's easy to check, just open the clamp and make sure that you can push the delrin spring in and out.