I got my hands on the SV06 Plus ACE recently and so far I think I got great results.
But besides assembling it and running the inbuilt calibration routine I haven’t done much in the way of maintenance.
The box came with a little bit of grease but no instructions on where to apply it. From watching car mechanics YouTube channels I know packing bearings with grease is a thing and can be an involved process.
My question is: Which bearings or other parts should I grease and how often? How do I get to them with as little hassle as possible in terms of disassembly? Is there some other maintenance advice that will keep the machine from wearing out as fast? Is there official documentation on this somewhere?
The printer has run for maybe 50 hours total now. There is some loudish noise when the device moves in a certain way but I couldn’t figure out if it comes from the head or the bed and under which circumstances. This has prompted my inquiry here. Print quality so far is fine for my standards.
Thanks in advance for any replies and advice surrounding this topic! The only other threads with a similar topic here have a different scope and non too helpful answers IMO but here they are for reference: SV06 ACE Maintenance , Maintenance of SV06 3D printer
@sovol3d
It is sad that you have to come here for advice on how to maintain your printer.
The only components on your Ace that require lubrication are the Z axis Screws and Z axis linear rails. With the location of them and the likelihood of touching them with hands and tools I would personally toss the grease and use a sewing machine oil (or 3 in 1). 1 drop every week or 2 on each of the 4 items should be plenty. If you elect to use the grease only reapply every month or so and use a TINY amount.
The X and Y axis rollers have sealed ball bearings - no maintenance
The motors each have 2 sealed ball bearings
The belt idlers have sealed ball bearings
The biggest maintenance item is the adjusting the eccentric nuts for the X and Y rails. They need to be snug enough that the rollers roll not SLIDE. Sliding will cause flat spots on the rollers and damage the rails. Unfortunately too tight runs the risk of overloading the bearings in the rollers and damaging them.
Sovol should provide a procedure on how to adjust them.
Hey cardoc, good to see you again, saw your reply in the other thread, thanks for replying here too!
While it would be great if we could get a perfect set up from the factory, given the price point and otherwise seemingly sturdy build of the printer (as opposed to the SV07 e.g.) I am willing to get into tinkering a bit myself. But yeah instructions would be great because apparently they thought it might be useful to have grease but whatever for? Anyways…
These seem to not be specifically for the SV06 (Plus) ACE so I was wondering, given your answer, that some of that might not apply to my exact printer model. Are you saying the sealed bearings come correctly prepacked with grease?
Looking at the video it does seem like you can get the head to move pretty much silently which mine indeed never did and I think I would be willing to go the extra mile and take it apart to pack the bearings fully at least once if that meant the wear was reduced. In my mind less noise = less wear. Do you think that would be wasted effort?
The github links for the belt tensioning seem kind of confusing to me. Getting scientific about the tension seems really tough because measuring the span of the belt is one thing but how would I even measure the actual tension on it, assuming it does deform elastically a little also. I mean it’s rubber. And also what you say I have no clue what “too tight” looks like and also no clue on how to “prove” if the rollers are slipping instead of rolling. I guess you could hear it?
Anyway thanks for the reply. I will check out what sewing maching oil is. I have some fairly thin silicon oil and some bike chain oil, which is a bit thicker. Also I have lithium grease but apparently that is not great for bearings either…
Hello,
This forum is for users who want to help each other like you.
It’s funded by Sovol and that’s it.
Sovol also publishes tutorial videos that can be viewed.
And you can always write to info@sovol3d.com if you need more help.
FYI, I’m not paid by Sovol.
Have a nice evening!
Belt tension on a “bed slinger” isn’t that fussy. Core XY machines are a different matter because both belts effect both the X and Y axis on every move.
As for packing the tiny sealed ball bearings, unless you have near clean room conditions you could do more harm than good by disturbing the seals.
When specifying a lubricant for a sliding bearing the engineer relies on PV (pressure * velocity) tables for the materials in use. Neither the lead screws nor the linear bearings are “high speed” nor “highly loaded”. Super silicone mega lube with moly and finely powdered unobtanium in a triple refined snake oil base might reduce the wear by 50% over time. The lifespan with plain old 3 in 1 oil is 10 years so the wear improvement doesn’t amount to much. Having that gooey sticky crap in the open 1 foot from a build plate that needs to be oil free is, IMO, not worth it.
Note: early design printers with linear bearings under the bed did wear our fairly quickly but they were easy and cheep to replace. Your Ace has rolling element bearings and don’t have that problem.
Too make this stupid simple, use sewing machine oil at the red line.
You really only need to add it maybe once a month, depending on how much your printing…but once a month is fine…JMO.
@Lion thanks, I really needed that. I was eyeing the printer earlier and tried to figure out where to apply the stuff cardoc suggested specifically and got a little confused.
Thanks everyone here for the replies. I hope this thread can stand for anyone with the same questions. I think the info in here answers my questions/worries. At least for now…
