SD4: Right side of Print Carriage wobbles, not stable, can't calibrate (Page 1 of 2)

Thanks, you have PM

Lawsy's carriages work fine with the stock Solidoodle extruder and hot end though you will need to engineer some way to trigger the end stop.

You can tighten one of the teflon pieces with the screw, by untightening, moving it up and retightening. Then the right side of the carriage won't move up and down anymore. As for twisting, pay attention to your X carriage rods. They are not properly glued in place or the glue has worn off. One of the rods is basically sliding inside the 3d printed carriage piece. Glue the rods in the carriages and it won't twist anymore.
My printer had the exact same issue.

A linear bearing upgrade isnt bad at all but its costy and the stock carriage is blamed too much for issues not related to it. Try what I said before upgrading. You'll save the money and time on linear bearings, new rods, extruder and prints.

Let's not forget linear bearings are not used for the front tensioners and z rods either. I've learned brass or telfon bushings aren't so bad and Solidoodle is not the only one using them.

And yeah, Solidoodle's carriages and everything else is printed at 30% infill, but it's not so bad and I don't see many people reporting any part breaking. Even the front tensioners, which even I think are bending too much.

It wasn't the teflon sliders for up and down, I had already tightened those.

Turns out it was the glue, on the left side (by the stepper), so after breaking out a new tube of Krazy Glue I seem to be back in business (though I may let it finish setting till tomorrow...)

Now it's probably stable enough to print off the Lawsy parts, which pretty much involves rebuilding everything.  8*)

Maybe McMaster-Carr should sell a kit, "Buy this BOM and you have a 3D printer!"

Many Thanks, all!

Im starting to doubt that.
I still have no issue with the stock hotend.
And its already been proven that bushings aren't the real cause of backlash.
So dunno.

Not worse, that's for sure, but I don't see proof of it being significantly better either. By better I mean allowing better quality prints.
Though its always nice to have the STLs of your printer parts and printed spare parts...

Just ask someone here to print you new ones it will be better and faster.

Or they just broke because the print quality is absolutely dreadful. Maybe yours are fine but my stock carriages were more or less blobs of ABS that just happened to look like carriages. The tension of the x belt literally tore mine in half because of poor design (a couple ribs or fillets wouldn't have substantially increased print time), low infill and low quality.

W_smith, check your PMs.

I figured it must have had something to do with extra stresses from gluing the parts in place, but other than finding the center point of the wobble by hand, how am I supposed to level the left and right carriage sides?  The resulting bed calibration wasn't any better or worse than I've had before.

Does the picture tell you anything?  The rods are still glued into the carriage, but the whole top of the carriage came apart including the bushing that holds it onto the rod and (fortunately?!) the belt clamp.

+ 1
How I did it was I moved the carriage front to back several times until everything "fell in place" before gluing.
This is just my opinion, but i think your carriage definitely broke because the two x axis rods were misaligned when glued in place so there was some stress when the extruder was moving because the bearings on the extruder piece was pushing one of the rods down or to some side at some points. I hope you get what I mean.
You can carefully superglue the broken pieces back and they will be as strong as before, but I dont know if you can remove the glue you added on the rods to realign them...

So maybe at this point its easier for you to upgrade to lawsys carriage or just buy another carriage from solidoodle ($100).

Yep just let us know if you need help with the install. As I said the center carriage should be compatible with lawsy's carriage, I know of at least one person who still uses the center carriage without issue.

Though I always encourage the e3dv6 upgrade. Best $80 you'll ever spend on your machine

You don't need to replace the stock carriage every "3 months" or at all.
I and many others been using it for far longer than that with no issue.

As for infill goes, many people use 30% infill. That should be enough to not break and not bend in a well calibrated machine. If that's not enough and your carriage breaks, then good, because something was really misaligned and you broke the carriage piece instead of damaging the more precious bearings or shafts. I know lawsy himself suggests to print at high infill (though he doesnt say 100%) I don't know if that's a good idea for the above reason.
Plus there's the added weight and wasted filament.

BTW, why does lawsy's carriage use 4 bearings for the extruder? The 2 bearing stock extruder piece of the stock carriage seems to work just fine.