When 3D Printer LINEAR RAILS upgrade MAKE SENSE? (vs POM wheels)

Excellent video and testing!
Would be interesting to see if the same tests could be done on a laser cut G10 or Fr4 bracket. Its essentially fibreglass and used in PCBs and has a fraction of the weight. Or try carbon fibre.

hi Gerard...do you have a guide on how to set up this ringing tower to step up in accel and jerk at the same time? did you do this manually in slicer or klipper command?

Is there anything like this for ender3v2?

I know this is not a recent video, but since i'm planning to upgrade my LK5 PRO in the same way i'm asking you what is the length of the rails i need to upgrade both X and Y axis?
Thank you very much, this is such a great video ☺

where can i find the n4plus cad model?

I think your bed springs may affect the results here. (as in rails might be even better?)

Hi ... i have done a Y-Railupgrade to my CR-10 and have y-layer shifts. Could you tell me your max movement/print speed?

Pardon?

How much is a plate like that from PCBWay?

Good day, Sir-- What length are the MGN12H linear rails for the LK5 Pro? Thank you in advance and thank you for your vidoes!

I am looking at buying a new printer to compliment my ender 3 s1 pro that I have klipper for. I realize I need a bigger print volume and would like it to have linear rails for all axis. I think for me its more about adjustment and no more flat spots over the wheels. so benefits of performance would for me be also about stability of the bed and rails over time.
Thoughts?

Very informative video 🎉

Thank you for enabling CC on the video. My ear wasn't tuning to a specific word, I was so confused 😅 It was "Values" I was hearing "Valleys".. I just woke up though.. Coffee has not kicked in yet.

I am going full linear rail on my Neptune 4 Max. It’ll be interesting to see if it can hold the print quality at higher speeds.

Just don't even think about weight reduction or speed with a bed slinger... just no, don't do it. It's not worth the effort. Quality and reliability upgrades only.

Great video, thanks 👍

Thank you for the nice and clear explanation!

it ONLY makes sense with good quality rails if you use the god awful rails from cheapo china , they wont last and they WILL fail .

Have you ever thought about using a counter weight when the bed moves in one direction and weight moves int eh opsite cancling out the swing

Just found this video and will go see the others. I own a 5 year old CR 10S Pro with lots of upgrades. I put in Z axis Synch Belt, Z Axis Struts, Garolite Bed, Micro Swiss Hot end, Micro Swiss DD, BL Touch, OctoPrint in Pi 4B, last Week Klipper via OctoKlipper & OctoDash. I design with Fusion 360 and slice with Simply 3D. A friend who has the twin to my setup just installed Micro Swiss NG DD, so I ordered one too. Then I heard back he did not see any improvements. I recalibrated again and reprinted the 20mm Cube, X and Z were near perfect but Y had ghosting and fat ends, I contacted my 3D Parts Supplier and canceled the NG and ordered Y Axis Linear rails. They also agreed that was the weaker link But they did suggest a Pancake motor to replace the original Creality extruder motor in my MS DD. Thinner and lighter would help for much least that the whole NG DD. Then I see this video..... Seems like I am on the right track. Trying to adress issues with a budget it not easy. But Klipper was by far the single best upgrade I made. I had the Pi for OctoPrint already, the 7 inch screen was $50, Klipper is free, and now the linear rails precut and all the hardware was $125. This will be the most expensive upgrade yet. But i see the Y axis ringing and Ghosting so it made sense. I will go on and see how it turns out. need to consider the pressure calibration too. Thanks Dennis

I ordered the parts for my linear rail conversions just before I found your video. I'm not so sure Longer LK5 Pro can even be called a Longer anymore. I look forward to seeing what else you do to this printer. I've done the dual Z axis upgrade, the SKR3 board replacement, BTT SFS, Micro Swiss Direct Drive NG plus tensioners for both x and y.

Seems like POM wheels provides same results if running CNC slow, makes linear rails not worth the upgrade.

BUT - using a better plate and wider setting on the POM wheels should also give you a better stiffness. MAYBE it might not be as good as the rails, it would be very close.

Is there a recent upgrade (not the bltouch) to get rid of the springs so you won't have to manual adjust the bed no more? This was a real pain on my ender.

A very good video.
Actually I always wondered abot POM wheels om the bed. Horizontal wheels while gravity obviously is vertical... Of course, v-wheels transfer the force on the V-shape only, so in a 45° surface. but still, a horizontal wheel can only use one side of the wheel, while a vertical mounted would at least use both sides.
Anyway, for y-Axis v-rollers seem a pretty bad solution.
In my opinion the reason for using v-wheels is their tolarance to errors in adjustments. With two linear rails in parallel you have to be very precise, else the motion system can block quite easy.
So quite understandable, why cheap chineese printers use V-wheels.
Esp. on bigger printers (>400by400) you also have to take into account the different expansion of differnt materials while temperature changes. Nearly all 3d-printers are staticaly overconstrained. So you actually can get layershifts while printing, as due to different temperatures the motion system is not perfect anymore. This happend actually to me with an old Tronxy X1. An error hard to find, as you normaly check and adjust the motion system while the printer not actually printing...
In my opinion, a staticly constrained system might be better. So maybe on one side a linear rail directly mounted to the bed carriage, but on the other side mounted with freedom of movement at least in x- direction - maybe even just a plate of igus high temp material directly sliding directly on an aluminium profile.
The whole problem of overcontrainment on bigger printers is actually the reason I am not into the hype of coreXY. Theese printers are nice in smal sizes (were overcontrainment is not a big issue), but going big, cartesian system have their advatages (this does not mean bedslingers, as crossing rods like on the Ultimaker II is also cartesian). On cartesian mashines, you can actually quite easy modify to staticly constrained. On CoreXY this is impossible, as the belts go 90° over pullys, so every edge has to be solid.

Just move to core xy

You desperately need a pop filter on your microphone !!! Get one !!!

I just found your channel, it's very good and I hope you keep going. I have two suggestions for a follow-up: 1) I wonder if you might be able to improve your Y-axis acceleration/jerk with a heavier-duty stepper motor. One crazy guy equipped his Ender 3 y-axis with not just a heavier stepper, but a dual-stepper system with a stepper on both sides of the axis. I think he got his acceleration up to 10,000 mm/s/s, maybe higher. 2) Would you see any improvement by removing the bed springs and mounting it rigidly? Teaching Tech has a video showing that springs aren't really needed anymore if you have BL-Touch bed mesh and some hand-tuning. It's possible that the springs are still helping a bit by vibration dampening though, so I'm interested to see if it makes things better or worse.

i have an lk4 pro and an lk5 pro. awesome printers. I'm definitely subbing to this channel. you seem like you know your shit plus we have the same printer so i can do the same upgrades with exact parts. awesome vid.

Biggest drawback of wheels is the reliability. Tune them and in few days/weeks issues will appear again. Dirt and loosening screws due to forces. For speed dont use bed slingers, those are cheap and best suited for large and slow prints with thick layers (0.4+) and high flow. For anything faster than 100mm and smaller print, you need coreXY based printers. upgrading bed slingers will only allow to go from 80 to 100-120mm/sec

Is the Z axis worth upgrading to linear rails at all or should we stick solely to X and Y?

Why not 3d printed base instead of aluminum sheet?

Why not skip the bed platform entirely? Go straight from the adjuster screws to the rails. Since the bottom platform is only to adapt the single V wheel rail to the edge of the bed it is no longer needed if you got 2 rails that can be under the screws.

You are not comparing the sliding mechanism actually. The major change is that you actually made is the connection points. With the linear rails is wider vs the stock configuration, but you can achieve the same thing of you just get 2 more extrusions and mount them the same way as the rails, but with rollers .

Do you a print profile for different materials for the LK5 Pro you would be willing to share? I have an LK5 Pro and want to get good profiles

Why not ditch undercarriage alltogether? The table can be leveled with shims and for the rest there is bltouch

Was the linear rail here only on the Y axis and not the X ? Curious if replacing the other axis would erase the ghosting ?

Once again, you gave us an amazing information and content. You're not going to make too many friends with other 3D printer YTers :) Talk about myth busting!! There are other advantages to linear rails even if they don't necessarily translate in print quality. Or more precisely within a hobby setting. The benefits to a less maintenance system could be of value in a print farm or similar setting.

Looking at the dynamics of a bed, it is somewhat easy to understand why those changes doesn't make a large difference. The rotational forces are front-back, not side-to-side (like you showed with your dial). In this fashion, the wheels, rails or simple rod bearings all do a good enough job to keep the deflection small enough to almost make no effect on the print.

And I'm surprised why everyone is fighting to make the bed lighter with spending $$$ as opposed to just switching to a larger motor and belt system - again, all assuming you need to make a change there in the first place.

Anyway - excellent content and great presentation. Job well done!

I'm sorry, your heavy accent is very difficult to follow. Would help a lot if you slowed down..... Do people really noodle around with their 3D printers to this level.? I've had my Creality CR 10 for 3 years.... Never had a print issue, apart from those self inflicted as I got to grips with using it.... My prints are incredible, fine detail.... I use a heavy mirror as my build plate,..... All this weight reduction and velocity/jerk talk is for design engineers, not end users...... Think your likely to introduce more problems to resolve for anyone that tries modifying..... I wouldn't consider linear rails an upgrade... Just an alternative.... Nicely filmed video though. Thanks.

Why not use carbon fibre plate instead of aluminium? They're cheap enough. Edit: that's already suggested

3D production machines with many linear rails and guides can be expected to be used for many purposes. surprise!

I am excited to see you shed more light on Klipper for people who have yet to experience it.

I have an upgrade design you might be interested in. It is a brace for the gantry uprights that attaches to the side, under the lowest level the X axis travels. It features a pivot point reinforced with an M5 screw, and an M6/1/4"-20 bolt to adjust the upright's squareness and lock it in place. I've only had it installed on my Ender 3 V2 Neo for about a week, but the testing is very promising. I'm going to upload it to Thingiverse as soon as I'm satisfied that the design will not fail under normal operating conditions. My printer is new, and I'm new to FDM, so I have a few bug with my printer to work out. I originally made these as temporary bracing to fix the uprights from being out of square by about 2 degrees. It's perfectly square now, but still having Y axis stability problems. Let me know if you'd be interested in this brace system. I've grown to like it more than bracing rods since they are out of the way, but the bracing rods are probably slightly more stiff.

Those "affordable" rails have poor quality control. Keep that in mind

I don´t understand the premise of those videos. You modify an inferior bed slinger design with this and that...just save that money and buy a Core XY design instead form the get go. All those problems are already solved in a Core XY design, that´s the whole point of that mechanical design. Don´t buy those shitty "i3 Prusa since 10 year alsways the same style stuff"
You can also improve the alu. bed design further with more cut outs or make it thinner with beads and flanges (if possible).

I'd love to see the differences with a well tuned setup to begin with (Klipper, input shaper) and accelerations of 5k-25k.

I have a Duplicator i3, for me a massive improvement was designing a center mount that goes on the screws for the springs to mount firmly on. This prevents any kind of shifting with will both offset the bed and also help stiffen the spring. Then the next major improvement was adding wool around the edges to act as thermal insulation but also to dampen the springs.

*i also added a teflon sheet on top of the bottom frame the bed goes on, both to reflect the heat back up to the bed and as a side effect also help even distribution of heat on the bed

I have not had to level the machine after over 2,000+ hours of printing, or about a year

Side thought; I don't think i've ever check a slicer for X/Y specific jerk/acceleration settings, that way you could run more better/different X speeds and Y speeds by tuning each independently.

Or just build a non-bed slinging printer.

Kind of a related question I've been wondering about but haven't tested completely: Toothed idlers or not? "They" say that smooth idlers have larger bearings (good), but that high belt tension causes vertical artifacts.