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Hello all,

I have a printrbot metal plus, and i was wondering what kind of regular maintenance should be done to it to ensure a smooth run. i want to try to avoid sevice.

thanks in advance.

Maidyn

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Hey Maidyn,

Everyone approaches maintenance in different ways, but essentially it involves: cleaning nozzles, print bed, machine itselt and levelling bed. It’s how often you do this that will determine your experience with the printer. Regular maintenance is always advised, but you’ll be wasting your time if your cleaning the printer all the time.

For leveling and cleaning I would recommend doing this every few prints. This will help you maintain a consistent print quality. If you clean it regularly your less likely to have major clogs or hard to calibrate beds. However if you leave it too long your print quality will deteriorate and it may mean you need to buy replacement parts.

Its all about learning from experience it seems. The more you get to know your printer the better your prints and services will be.

I would also recommend that you don’t leave the machine for long periods without cleaning, even when not in regular use. Also unloading filament after use should help.

See how many print hours you can go before prints lose quality and take note so you can prepare for the next time.

If you use an adhesive you may want to clean it off after every print or few prints because building up layers of it causes groves and lumps to form on the bed, which may affect you quality.

As long as you make mistakes to learn from then over time you will be able to print consistent high quality prints.

Hope this helps.

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Yeah you nailed it and it all makes sense. One other question, do you have to regularly lubricate? If so what is a good one to use?

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I’m happy I could help you.

I’ve never actually lubricated my printer as I never had any trouble with the parts. I know that may people like to keep the parts lubricated so that it never seizes up, but it’s never really affected me. So I couldn’t really advise what to use. I’m sure there’s plenty out there that’ll do the job.

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This is a much more complicated question than you might think. I don’t know what your specific manufacture recommends but two main schools of thought are oil vs grease. I use both but for different things(this is the complicated part that I’m not sure you want to go into). What I will say is that for grease I recommend standard Super Lube(I use the high heat version for my machine with a high temp build chamber). For oil, I would say any good gun oil like Hops or Break Free. Oil drips and must be reapplied more often. Grease stays where you put it but collects a lot of dust/debris and must be regularly REMOVED and THEN reapplied if it’s exposed to dust/debris. There are a lot of factors/considerations involved(at least for me) in deciding what lubricant goes where. For example, if a part is already greased from the factory then adding oil will dilute and wash away the factory grease (this could be bad thing or a good thing).
For more info: http://reprap.org/wiki/Lubrication

-Jesse

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Thank you for your input I appreciate your feedback as it was very helpful