And no argument, mainly just wanted to post a diagram haha.

The rods rotating around each other is different than the rods bending, so we are not really in disagreement here.  Haha, I haven't seen statics diagrams like that since college (civil engineer, but not structural focused).

Actually the ends of the rods are well secured, but the rods flex or bend just enough to allow the front of the bed to move.  The stabilizers (see other thread) work so well that the back of the bed has more slop than the front now!

Sorry VBR. I'm with smith on this one, the 3/8" rods bend.

There's about a 6:1 leverage on the front of the bed to the shafts, and due to the mounting through the thin sheet metal, the shafts are basically pin jointed at the ends (see 4th diagram below) rather than fixed as many assume (see 6th diagram below), so about 4x as flexible as you might think...

I feel that most of the flexibility in the system is actually coming through the bed (and also the extruder mounting). I've always intended to mount a shaft up the front of the case to do the stabilising; haven't quite got around to it yet.

w_smith wrote:

The Z rods are held in place properly, but I can grab one of the rods and cause the bed to rotate around the other rod.

These two statement are in conflict with each other.  If they were held in place properly, you would not be able to rotate the bed like that.  Its not your fault, it sounds like you just got a shitty bed and/or frame where the operator had an off day when he drilled your holes in the case.  Unfortunately, solidoodle QC often leaves much to be desired.

Actually the ends of the rods are well secured, but the rods flex or bend just enough to allow the front of the bed to move.  The stabilizers (see other thread) work so well that the back of the bed has more slop than the front now!

The Z rods are held in place properly, but I can grab one of the rods and cause the bed to rotate around the other rod.

These two statement are in conflict with each other.  If they were held in place properly, you would not be able to rotate the bed like that.  Its not your fault, it sounds like you just got a shitty bed and/or frame where the operator had an off day when he drilled your holes in the case.  Unfortunately, solidoodle QC often leaves much to be desired.

+1, PLA is not a good choice.  I've seen the recent thread on bed stabilizers.  I don't know about the wooden beds, but the aluminum bead holder on my SD2 is about the one part this is solid and has never given me any troubles.  Really, unless some part of the Z axis is broken, you should not need a bed stabilizer.  Even if you can wobble it by hand, that is not a motion that happens during printing so its a non-issue.  There are so many things that can be done to improve your prints before doing a bed stabilizer.  Just my opinion.

I've found that one little glitch while printing the first layer (a bump or divot in the kapton, or poor adhesion) can cause the head to hit the resulting bump on succeeding layers, which shakes the bed, Rinse Later Repeat.

I can see the bed shake, so I'm going to do what I can to reduce it.  The Z rods are held in place properly, but I can grab one of the rods and cause the bed to rotate around the other rod.  I mean, c'mon, there's a 12-inch moment arm from the Z rods to the front of the bed, how can you expect that to be stable to within 0.1mm?

And I've officially given up on waiting for the proper connectors from SD tech support, I'm going to switch over to ABS and work my way up to the E3D hot-end over the next week.

Last time I tried 100% infill Slic3r blew up, but maybe the new one fixes those bugs.

I'm printing a bed stabilizer (in PLA, don't get me started!) before I switch to PLA, and I've got the part-cooling fan ready to go, so hopefully I can spend next week turning out spare carriage parts.

BTW...nice idea!

When you print those print them 100% infill. Make sure your extrusion multiplier is dialed in well or the bearings won't have a tight fit.

Edit: dammit ward

- had the X belt too tight
- Used too much acetone cleaning the bed, and the vapors rotted the carriage
- have a lot to atone for in a previous life

Or some combination thereof, the bolt that holds the X pulley on the right Lawsy carriage broke the lower attachment point (and then cracked the upper one).

I managed to use Krazy Glue to hold the upper attachment together, and painted that part of the assembly with acetone to hopefully weld it together.

I then went down to my local machine shop, had a good laugh about putting him out of business, and had him make a reinforcing plate to hold the bolt in place.

It's printing again, but when I switch back to ABS I'm going to be printing off spares of everything!  And I'll probably add some more material to the pulley bolt attachment.