This is the noise difference between greased and oiled linear rail. The difference seems much more stark in real life than in the video playback. Also, MGN12 linear rail and carriage for the X gantry is here!
The motors are much louder than these things. You can lube with grease (for lowerer speed) and with oil (for higher speed or oil tank for no maintenance). The grease is sound dampener but the oil is not really.
grease on linear rails is an absolute "no" from the machinist courses and even on the machinist handbook explains why ... grease will trap any debris, chips, even air particles, the bearings will jam at any Time, on the other hand oil cleans when pushed in and pushing out dirt...
fireblade639 fair enough for machining but the risks are lower in a 3D printer. It doesn't help that the Hiwin documents talk about grease and they put grease nipples on their larger carriages. Any particular, readily available oils you'd recommend for a 3D printer application?
Maybe but take consideration on those, oil niples are Equal to grease niples, 3D printers are high speed low torque aplications, if you drive it by belt the jaming will not be notorius until the parts Is all Twisted, grease Is used when reaching the part Is big trouble, even for particles, but if you have it open to air it Will start losing steps, "way oil" Is used on linear rails, with a "one shot pump" and tubing... Those rails are expensive parts and believe me, the risk to make a silent machine just does not worth to mess with them...
fireblade639 that's interesting and I'm experiencing less binding with grease than I did with oil. The smoothness was at least as desirable as the reduced noise but obviously harder to convey in a video. Of course, it's too late for my rails but thanks for the machinist point of view for others looking at this. I was surprised to hear that grease is an issue for these rails as one of the most widely discussed improvements to the non-branded linear rails is to clean the oil off the ball bearings and give them a coat of decent grease.
Hi. The HAAS milling machines we use in our shop have pump injection lines to all of their linear bearings. All 3 axis slide on grease that is pumped centrally. The whole thing runs flood coolant. Splash oil/water all over the place - over the rails, splash chips and shards all over. The rubber wipers clear the path. If for whatever reason the grease pump malfunctions, the linear ways are soon next to break. Internally new grease is pumped into the carriage and old seeps out. Machine alarm will sound if grease malfunction, and we lose our service contract warranty if it is not properly maintained.
fireblade639 That must be why all the large rail manufacturers sell auto grease lubricators for their products do you think? They do. You'd have to be running some insane preload to be worried about grease causing binding, contaments sure, that why they offer replaceable wipers and seals. Maybe in a clean room enviroment grease would be a concern, certainly not in a precision machine shop and definitely not in a 3d printer.
but have you measured the performance of the greased bearings vs oil? I don't care about the noise even when it is 10 feet away from my bed, as long as the part is on optimal performance... I live in a sandy environment and in the Military, we try to avoid using grease as it tend to attract sand. Does the grease attracts more dirt than oil? I know we are talking about 3D printer and they are mostly indoors, but does one lubricant is better than the other besides noise buffering? Thanks!
hello thanks for the quick answer are you using a 20x20 t-slot with the model size 7 ( rail base width=7mm) it seems to fit well (as far as alignment is concerned), but I'm worried because the contact surface is too small
I'm using 2020 t slot with 9mm and 12mm width rails. There is no 7mm rail in my design! 9mm is *just* about OK but I think 7mm will be too small on the aluminium extrusion, as you say. I recommend 9mm if you want to save money (instead of 12mm) but only if you have two rails in parallel. If you want to use a single rail (like on the gantry) then I think 12mm is the minimum you should try.
Hi there! thanks for all the tests. I am going to buy the robot digg mgn15's. What do you use as nuts on the rail? i am trying to find long t-nut slots, since it must be impossible to center the rails with multiple nuts. I can't find these kind of nuts however.
ISFRedSandman I used these kinds of nut: M3 M4 M5 nut carbon steel T nut hammer head fasten nut for EU standard 20 aluminum profile hammer head nut 10pcs s.aliexpress.com/mqA3MVb6?fromSns=Copy to Clipboard
Vlad B Hiwin was definitely the quieter when bolted to the single piece of the aluminium extrusion. However, once installed in the corexy configuration, they were both effectively silent, relative to eg motors and fans (even quiet motors and fans).
Simon Merrett thanks simon. I custom CAD designed my new printer and now in a process of building it. My rails are sort of loud right now, but they have factory grease in them, actually oil, which is very thin. I am gonna try to clean that out tomorrow with WD40 and maybe apply some lithium grease that i have handy. I am so anal about everything, that I will want my printer much more silent than this rails are, I am sure. Interesting what if someone makes these out of composite material, something like IGUS drylin bushings. What do you think? Would definitely be much quieter. I also went with using aluminum angles instead of extrusion. Maybe that was a mistake. Will see :)
Vlad B Igus bearings are lower accuracy, potentially to a degree that would affect your prints. If you look at the comments across my various linear rail comparison videos, you can see there is plenty of advice about what lubricants to use with these rails - an oil type seems to be most correct, rather than a thick lithium grease style.
Simon Merrett i also went ahead with higher quality carriages and replaced the X axis middle rail with custom made titanium rail. Good to have an access to good stuff! :))) whole X axis is much stronger and twice lighter now. Less vibration and does not bend nearly as much.
So, do you think it's better to go with 12mm rails and carriage than 9mm? Can you share some link where you bought your HIWIN rails and carriages? Thanks
Maksym Riznyk yes, either a single 12mm rail or you could try a pair of 7mm rails if your gantry is strong enough to not rely on the rails for its beam strength. Links are in my earlier video on the rails comparison. Let me know if you can't find them and I'll seek out an updated link.
Thanks for quick reply. I've just found them. The prices are crazy for original HIWIN. Not ready (yet) to spend that much. I think I will go with RobotDigg rails. Is this the one you bought "Quality 440C SUS"?
MGN9 is the smallest I'd recommend for stable seating over the gap in 2020. MGN15 is the smallest I'd recommend for a single rail (on the gantry) for the torsional stiffness.
@@simonmerrett What about carriage size? MGN15 has C in 42mm, and H in 59mm size, MGN12 has 35 and 45mm. I was thinking about them for Y axis in Hypercube Evolution....
I would go for the longest carriage to counter rotation torque, as they are used in single quantity on each end. If they were used in pairs it would be less of an issue.
Sorry, don't remember what length the machine screws were. M3 standard hex socket head. I'm sure you can work it out from the dimensional drawing of your linear rail and extrusion. I did use 2020. MGN9 is almost too narrow to mount on 2020 slots.
madfcuk sorry, no. Judging by the variety of opinions in the comments I'd probably get it wrong! Check the Hiwin documents for advice - I'm sure I have seen some in the pdfs. It might not go into detail about the exact application method though.
I'm sorry, I think I didn't express myself correctly What I meant by vertical was actually with the linear rail rotated 90 degrees to the left/right, so that you could bolt on simple gantry plates to it, kinda like the openbuilds Ox machine
Perhaps - that's how Frank Howarth's CNC is built (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dY8v0j6uEJc.htmlm35s) but you then have a more complex gantry assembly. Mine is a beam, the other way would be beam+plates. I also think I'd find it harder to mount the belt pulleys but if you're not using corexy that might not be a problem.