Maintenance and spare parts !?

[Elysio]

Hi.

Now my Max V2 ist runnig, it made the first print pretty well, there is indeed potential to get better, but for the first step is satisfiying.
There are further important question to keep the machine running and hold it in a good condition.

Lets start with maintenance.
What and where are making the maintenance for the machine?

- Lubrication on the joint axis and joints to the arms ?
- Cleaning the nozzle ?
- Calibrating the Z hight ?
- Cleaning the glas plate ?
- removing dust in the PSU ?
- tighten the belts ?
- Cleaning the ballbearings when the rubber of the belts remains dirt ?
- tighten the screws of the chassis ?
- damping some parts to reduce vibrations ?

Which spare parts should you have always in your spare part box for your Max ?

- New belts ?
- New noozles ?
- 1 stepper Nema 19 Motor ?
- 1 Rambo board ?
- Some ball bearings
- New joints and joint axis for the arms
- Arms ?
- New fans ?

Maybe I`ve forgotten something ?

I hope you can write your experiences to my questions, because I think they are important to keep the businees running.

Thank you in advance, Christoph.

[mhackney]

I've run my V1 Max in a production mode for over 6 months and well over a year of total service. I've printed something on the order of 50kilos of filament. Here's what I've done by way of maintenance in over a year:

clean lint off the cheapskate bearing acetal covers with a clean cloth and isopropyl alcohol. I do this about once a month
adjusted the belt tension ONE TIME (a month ago) - one of my belt tensioners had loosened up, likely due to the hellaciously fast printing I do

That's it. Of course the glass plate has been cleaned but now that I'm printing on PEI that chore has also gone away. A quick wipe with alcohol and it is good to go. Z height gets calibrated as-needed when I switch beds or nozzles or hot ends. No lubrication to any joint.

For spare parts, save your money. You don't need spare belts, stepper or RAMBo if you are not mucking around all the time with the electronics like I do. These really should not wear out. Likewise, you don't need spare bearings, arm joints, arms or even fans. All of these things can be ordered and delivered and in a couple of days. Rather than stock a RAMBo, wait. There are all sorts of new controllers coming to market that will be much better (smoothie board) and less expensive (smoothie board) and will offer other advantages. By the time you might need to replace the RAMBo, it might be obsolete. Same with the stepper. You might decide to go with .9° steppers in the future. Their prices are dropping and I believe will become mainstream soon.

Having a spare nozzle or two is a good idea. You can clean one while using the other.

That's just my recommendation. I've run CNC mills, lathes and 3D printers now for over 10 years and I've never had a stepper motor go bad, a controller card go bad (I HAVE blown a few doing stupid things) or timing belts go bad (I use timing belts on the X and Y axes of my larger CNC mill). These machines are all used in a light manufacturing business so they see action at least 4 days a week year round.

cheers,
Michael

[Elysio]

Thank you for your experience !

[Tinyhead]

I had a gigantic write up completed that basically embodied what mhackney wrote up in a few short sentences, but when I hit submit it requested me to log in again and I lost the whole thing.

The only thing I would comment on is the arms/u-joints. When they work, they're excellent, but when I pulled mine off to do the magnetic arm upgrade, I was shocked to find 3 of my u-joints were nearly seized, and yes, they were lubricated. I would check the joints fairly regularly or replace them with the tricklaser arms (http://www.tricklaser.com/Carbon-Fiber- ... M-CFTX.htm) or do the magnetic arms. Moving away from the stock arms gave me piece of mind.

[gajtguy]

Great info... Thanks

[Max]

I've burned out 2 thermistors on mine, so I have a spare now.

I also got a second hotend because I hate taking out the tips. So one has the 0.50 mm tip, and the other has a fine 0.35 mm tip. I put connectors on the wires from the hotend so I can swap easily.

But I don't any any other spare parts. And if this Rostock V2 runs like what I hear from most people, I expect that what ever needs to be replaced will have and upgraded part in the future.

And.. If I needed extra steppers, boards, and all that other stuff, I would just get a second machine.

Like what Michael said. A little PM goes a long way.

-Max

[Bmoray]

Great
Thanks for sharing such a nice experience