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OK I solved the Z-axis binding issue. The printer comes standard with an anti-backlash fitting which was not correctly installed. The spring was so tight it was causing binding. Rather than shorten the spring I just took the thing off leaving just the lead screw, and presto, the elephants foot disappeared and the print quality improved to as close to perfect as you can get with a layer deposition printer.

This issue has taken me two weeks of blood sweat and tears, loads of frustration, plentiful bad language, and alcohol abuse to resolve but having got there I can recommend this printer despite all the hard work in getting it dialed in. It provides me with pretty much the same printing functionality as my CR-10 at half the price, the extra 60cm in print height I never use anyway on my CR-10.

Alwyn

AlwynTurner wrote:OK I solved the Z-axis binding issue. The printer comes standard with an anti-backlash fitting which was not correctly installed. The spring was so tight it was causing binding. Rather than shorten the spring I just took the thing off leaving just the lead screw, and presto, the elephants foot disappeared and the print quality improved to as close to perfect as you can get with a layer deposition printer.

This issue has taken me two weeks of blood sweat and tears, loads of frustration, plentiful bad language, and alcohol abuse to resolve but having got there I can recommend this printer despite all the hard work in getting it dialed in. It provides me with pretty much the same printing functionality as my CR-10 at half the price, the extra 60cm in print height I never use anyway on my CR-10.

Alwyn

do you have a picture of that? (a picture says more than 1000 words )

Thanks, I did some google magic and found it (sometimes I am a bit lazy )

Hi well this is what was fitted as standard to the ender 3 max when it was delivered compared to a standard screw nut as purchased from amazon


Having inspected both the anti-backlash nut leaves a lot to be desired in terms of quality compared to the new nut.

In order for it to be effective as an anti-backlash device then the spring has to be completely compressed like this


And considering there would be an extra 2mm of mounting bracket added into the equation it is obvious that this would cause binding. One solution would be to shorten the spring so the mounting bracket wasn'ttightly clamped to both nuts, but given the nut qua;lity anyway it would still have caused x-axis inaccuracy, so over to the standard nut and lets see how that works.

My Cr-10 has functioned perfectly for 3 years without an anti-backlash device and the print quality is excellent.

I printed the XYZ cube and the elephants foot is gone and the print quality is excellent, BUT the cube dimensions are fine except that the Z axis dimension was 18.6 instead of 20.

I searched for a fix for and found this
https://letsprint3d.net/how-to-calibrat ... 3-5-cr-10/

So now I'm going to try and adjust and reprint

Alwyn

Well its been a fun couple of days playing with the settings on the printer and in Cura and I found the following:

In the speed settings on the printer there is a number of steps per mm for the z-axis which was set to 400. I changed this up gradually in 5 step units to try and get the right height on the calibration cube until I set it to 420 and got to as near as dammit to the correct height.

I had to change various settings to reduce elephants foot in CURA in that I set the flow rate for the first layer to 115% and the main flow rate to 135%, I'm still playing with this as I don't think I've got the optimum settings yet.

Otherwise things are proceeding well.

Alwyn

AlwynTurner wrote:
This issue has taken me two weeks of blood sweat and tears, loads of frustration, plentiful bad language, and alcohol abuse to resolve but
Alwyn

I am afraid my wife will tell the same about me

Finally got things dialled in



and quality



Yaay!

Alwyn

wow, that looks good

well, printed the cube too, I have to make some changes but it starts to look ok:

WhatsApp Image 2021-12-22 at 20.40.42 by Jaap van der Kooij, on Flickr

WhatsApp Image 2021-12-22 at 20.40.42 (1) by Jaap van der Kooij, on Flickr

After battling with z-axis problems since the machine arrived, I finally turned my attention to the z-axis coupler between the stepper motor and the screw, and found that it wasn't gripping the screw properly. I then replaced it with a standard 5mm to 8mm coupling that I had lurking in my spares box, and hey presto, problem solved. I am so annoyed with myself for not checking this right at the beginning, but my excuse is that it seemed a pretty beefy coupling and it did seem to grip the stepper motor and screw fairly well. It just goes to show you how sneeky the gremlins are on new kit!

Alwyn