sa25
1
Hello! I have a FlashForge Dreamer 3D printer and I have a slight issue. When the print platform moves up and down it makes a loud squeaking noise. Some grease came with the printer and I was wondering if this was what to use to fix it? If you should use the grease, where do I apply the grease? If you don’t use the grease, what should you do to fix it? Thanks so much for the help!
Mine is a Creator Pro instead of a Dreamer and it didn’t come with grease, but I can’t imagine the two printers being that much different mechanically. I used some Super Lube synthetic grease on mine with PTFE. It needs to go on the linear rods and ball/acme screw threads. I don’t know if that will fix your squeaking noise or not. Doesn’t hurt to try it.
The only squeak mine had was in the Y-axis. It had gotten dropped in shipping and knocked the two front idler pulleys out of alignment and every time the Y-axis moved there was a loud squeak in the belts that was driving it. It worked fine, but it just squeaked really bad and was definitely the belts squeaking. I had to remove the covers, push the pulleys back into place, and retention the belts and that completely solved my squeak.
The Z-axis doesn’t have any belts, at least not on the Creator Pro – and I don’t think the Dreamer either – so I don’t know what you might be hearing. Linear bearings and such can squeak, but usually only to where it’s noticeable long after they are bad enough to need to be replaced. How old is the printer? How many print hours?
sa25
3
The printer is only a few weeks old and I’m not sure how many print hours it has but just guessing I think around 25-30 hours.
The grease is probably for the ball screw threads. The linear rods should be lubed with light machine oil. Your x and y axis rods need to be lube with the machine oil as well.
Hmmm… I think I always do that the other way around – grease on the linear rods and oil on the ball/acme screw threads. Though I usually use Super Lube for both (as it comes it both an oil and a grease), so the only real difference is viscosity and probably doesn’t matter much. I do think you want to use a synthetic lubricant on both, especially the rods, as opposed to a standard petroleum-based machine oil, since the packing in some bearings don’t like petroleum-based products.
Strange it would be squeaking so much with so few of hours on it, since they should have lubed everything during manufacturing. I got my printers used and when I was going through them fixing things, I lubed everything in the process, so it’s hard for me to compare.
You should be able to power everything off and move all of the mechanical parts by hand and determine for certain what is squeaking. My guess is probably the ball/acme screw (threaded rod that’s attached to the Z-axis motor, usually as an extended motor shaft integrated with the motor to eliminate extra wobble from a coupling nut). That’s more likely to squeak than the linear bearings.
It shouldn’t hurt anything to lube it if it doesn’t really need it, except for having excess lube around that might attract dirt and debris and being a little messy, getting on things that might accidentally come in contact with it.
My experience has been that using grease on the rods causes them to gum up overtime. The bearings are much smaller and the grease seems to gum up. The machine oil is thinner an gets things moving again.
Both of mine squeaked in the beginning too. Could be after manufacturing they sat in storage a while and perhaps a moisture issue where ever it was being store. They were not purchase together either. I don’t know, but the oil cleared it up. I do a monthly maintenance with oil. My printers are going almost 24/7.
