Anyone experiencing inexplicable cases of "air printing" despite a fresh clean nozzle might want to take a look at their feeder bearing (or what's left of it) ;)
This is after 11 months of mostly heavy printing.
Seems to be 7mm O.D x 3mm I.D. x 3mm width. Any Zortrax staff want to confirm?
Wow!
How many spools?
Oh, I've lost count of spools... probably six in just the past few weeks. These machines should have run-time hour meters on them!
I've had similar failures on the Afinia after a year of use also, and fortunately they both use the same size bearing, so I have some spares :)
Wow!
Good to know…
maybe you can look up the spool count in the order history. …
that's quite an impressive failure.
poor bearing.
It's under pretty substantial radial loading for such a little thing, I think it's normal wear. Should probably be a standard consumable/repair part like nozzles etc. Printer is working fine again now after replacement.
good to know.
The scary thing is how well it was managing to print even with a bad bearing - who knows how long it's been failing? Even today after it failed once, I reloaded and it extruded fine into air, then in printed a full raft (large part) and the first 6mm or so of the part before it stopped extruding. So I'd recommend an inspection of this bearing approx every 100hrs of printing.
Hi Julia, please enter the scheme printer indicating what is the bearing? Thanks
Hi Julia, please enter the scheme printer indicating what is the bearing? Thanks
Bearing can be purchased here: http://www.mcmaster.com/#7804k125/=v09n6y
It’s the first time when someone reported this issue, we didn’t have
problems with that bearings before. You can replace it using standard 730zz bearing (3x7x3mm).
Dear Julia,
did "damage" to the printer ?
it is difficult to replace ?
thanks
No damage to the printer, it just keeps pressure on the filament against the feed gear. Pretty easy to replace - you remove the two screws that hold the top electronics on the feeder, then the four bolts that hold the feed stepper motor on. Then from the rear side you see this bearing; I forget if it just pulls off or you need to remove its screw.