Hi there! I’ve had this printer about a year now. I used to use my buddies og Ender 3, and when the V2 was on sale I “upgraded” and got my own.
I realize now that for just a bit more money I could’ve had a much more performant machine, but, oh well. I’m gonna use this for a good long while. I only print as an occasional hobby, or to augment my other hobbies.
Anywho, it’s been on a shelf up and out of the way all winter, unused, in a climate controlled room.
I pulled it out the other day to do a few prints, it works great. Ran about 12 or 16 hours of prints through it. But today I noticed these cracks. This seems to be the belt tensioner for the bed? Did I have it too tight? Am I supposed to relax it while it’s being stored?
I can probably print a replacement. But I was just wondering what your thoughts were.
Thanks!
Keep in mind that any heat created from stress on plastic will still be minimal and it will just take lots of time to create visible deformation. You can mitigate this mostly by printing critical parts at 100% infill.
I always over-engineer parts that are mechanical. That is just my preference. If you look at the original part, it is likely designed to be strong on only one axis. This saves money and time for bulk manufacturing. (Compensate home prints with better materials or bulkier parts is my own rule of thumb. Everything is a trade-off, is my point.)
IMO heat formed from stress will not be a big deal, especially considering that people frequently build machines out of PETG (Prusa’s i3 variants, custom CoreXYs like Vorons and E3NG). The bigger problem is creep, which suggests that you shouldn’t use PLA for this part.
Petg inside the enclosed though can definitely have a short service life, the original x axis idler on my mk3s gave up the ghost after a month or so of pretty consistent printing of abs in the summer, had expected it so i the first thing I did in abs was a set of prusa spares which lasted until I did a bear mod last year.
There’s obviously variation in filament though so YMMV, petg is still a solid material to use if you don’t have an enclosure (though I’m always recommending then if only for gasses and fine particles while printing)
Yeah, I agree. In the photo I didn’t see an enclosure so I said PETG is fine for this application. With an enclosure you’d really want to use ABS/ASA, though PETG could work in a pinch.
I also agree that an enclosure (combined with a filter) is a good idea. I think people tend to undersell the potential dangers from 3D printing, especially for people with animals in the home.
What filter would you use? I’ve never played with abs because I didn’t want to have to vent an enclosure outside, especially in the winter. But if it could all stay inside that’d be great.
I have a cat. Cat tax:
Cute cat! Nevermore and Bentobox are two super popular ones.
Since you’re running an E3 V2, first make sure you’ve replaced the hotend with an all-metal design. The stock hotend has the PTFE tube routed all the way into the hotend, which is fine for low temp materials like PLA, but can result in off-gassing at higher temperatures such as those used by ASA and some variants of PETG. The PTFE particles are almost certainly not good to breathe in during the long term, and can even be deadly to certain animals such as birds at small quantities.
Thanks for the information!
Maybe I’ll take a crack at it then, thanks!
Please do! Success is awesome, but failure is important. Enders are pure hobby printers, after all. Half the fun is tearing them apart, rebuilding components and learning what works and what doesn’t for your own use cases.