Banding on tall parts

number40fan

Anything that is toothed. Do you have 20 or 16 toothed pulleys on the motors? Are the bolts passing through the upper pulleys 3mm or 5mm? I bought a pack of 5 or maybe 6 from Amazon that were toothed, 3mm through hole and even had a bearing for just a few bucks. Cheapest ones I could find, really, and they worked good.

If the pulleys on the motors are 20 toothed (and looking at your config, they probably are), you might consider getting 16 toothed all the way around. It will up the resolution from 80 to 100 steps/mm.

BPisLife

@number40fan said in Banding on tall parts:

, 3mm through hole and even had a bearing for just a few bucks. Cheapest ones I could find, really, and they worked good.
If the pulleys on the motors are 20 toothed (and looking at your config, they probably are

Nice, ok I will take a look. They are 20 teeth right now. The banding is very visible in vase mode but its very hard to pin point. I think that pull may be the issue as there is a ton of play. It is on a 3mm bolt and is free to slide forward and back. It also it does not have teeth so I can see the belt bounce with each movement. Keep in mind I don't think any of that is causing the banding pattern though it is hard to do. I am going to right a macro that just moves slow up and down over the area that bands. Does anyone know how to do "loops" in a macro or am I better off just copying and pasting a ton of gcode repeats manually.

number40fan

If you have nothing better to do, you could try twisting the belt a half turn so the smooth side of the belt rides on the smoothness of the idler pulley. Might have to re-tension afterwards.

You'll need to copy and paste the code to get it to repeat.

BPisLife

So an update in case others face this issue. It turns out that when I was changing the top pulley wheel of the front right tower that it didn't feel smooth when i turned it. I put the belt on it and moved it (disconnected from everything else) and I could feel as if the pulley developed a flat spot, always had it, well whatever it was there. Definitely seems like the culprit. I didn't notice before since I didn't have a new pulley to compare it to. It is subtle but you can feel it. Since I never just do a simple repair, I am upgrading the pulleys on all towers to the 16 tooth version, replacing the linear rails, new carriage, belts, 16 tooth gear on the stepper motors, and since I am essentially rebuilding the entire printer, I am also upgrading the motors to 0.9 degree motors.

So yea I definitely think it was just the pulley, but since I already ordered all the parts I am upgrading everything else.

Once I am done replacing everything and re configuring the printer I will re-run the test and post the progress.

BPisLife

made all the changes and the banding seemed worse and significantly messier (not perfect shape). I took a closer look at the way I was training the wires and I do believe that caused some issues and will be taking care of that. The majority of the problem however I believe is that the new 16 tooth pulleys (at least the motor side) aren't perfectly round. You can feel it pretty easily. Junk. Anyways I am ordering more but not sure the quality will be any good. Anyone got any good suggestions for high quality 16 tooth pulleys?

number40fan

Dang, what brand did you get? The ones I bought were Qunqi, cheapest I could find.

BPisLife

@number40fan kingprint. This is so odd. The chances of the banding being exactly the same with a whole new drive line make me think it might be the mounts or something related.

BPisLife

So I just changed the pulley on one motor that made a noticable change in belt tension as I moved the carriage and now i want to see if the banding changes at all or not.

BPisLife

Success!! After adjusting the pulley on the motor on the X tower I adjusted the pulley on the right tower as well. There were two set screws and I had both torqued down. There was a lot of play between the pulley and the rod without both, but it turns out using both set screws offset the pulley so that its oblong when secured to the motor shaft. After only using 1 set screw on the flat portion on both motors, the major bands are gone. This is the first time I ever printed this tall without those thick bands.

Now the next thing I need to do is clean up the smaller bands on the printer.

number40fan

Awesome.

BPisLife

@number40fan Thanks for your help. So I printed the original part and I am getting banding again. At least it is significantly better and I know where the issue is. Will wait until I get the new pulleys.

BPisLife

As promised I am going to keep this updated. I completely tore down the printer and put it all back together. In the process I replaced the flat style T-nuts that anycubic use with traditional ones as the flat ones can slide over time. I say this because I noticed a 1mm gap in one extrusion to the corner bracket that wasn't there before. I realized this as I found the top of the circle that had a flat spot that aligned itself with the Y tower. Maybe all the work to swap the PCB with the Duet WiFi I moved it. In any event I squared everything up and replaced the corner brackets with metal ones from RobotDigg.

Here is a picture of the progression. The bottom was with old belts and pulleys, middle is with new belts pulleys, and the top is the latest. You can see it is a lot smoother, but I still can't figure out the banding.
Top picture is the base and the bottom picture is of the top. The bands vary with print time. The first two rods had infill with the latest being printed in vase mode.

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dc42

Are you using PID or bang-bang control of the bed heater?

BPisLife

@dc42 PID. I am convinced it is the bed. What do you use on the delta to hold the build plate. This printer came with plastic holders but I wonder if they have warped over time as I have been printing with nylon so needed that bed hot.

BPisLife

Finally, I get to close out this post!

The thin banding in previous pictures went away with the frame rebuild. The thick banding went away when I tightened the bed's feet up against it so there was no chance of movement.

The result, a perfect print with no banding.

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T3P3Tony

@bpislife starting to look very good!