I have seen so many posts here and on Reddit about printer vibration and asking the question “should I buy the anti-vibration feet?”.
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From my background in engineering, as a machinist, and an amateur audiophile, I thought that I would provide some detailed information so that users can understand what is really going on and make the choice that works for them.
The purpose of anti-vibration feet is to reduce the vibrations transmitted to the surroundings. They are commonly (and more properly) called isolation feet or pads, because they isolate the machine’s vibrations from the surroundings. If you have ever seen a portable generator run you know that the feet are not stopping it from vibrating.
Isolation pads are usually made of some kind of elastomer that is flexible enough to allow the machine to move independently of the surface that it sits on. In shops with large machinery this can be extremely important as a large machine can shake the entire building without them. Another common use is under speakers when trying to isolate speaker vibrations from other audio equipment. Generators, power transformers, air conditioner compressors almost always have isolation pads.
For a 3D printer the pads can help make your desk more usable while printing if the printer is sitting on it.
If you have two printers sitting on the same surface the isolation can help prevent one printer from affecting the other as much.
However, even with the isolation you probably do not have your printer sitting on anything heavy enough to stop it from moving. It does not matter if you have isolation feet or not when the table is light weight and rocks easily, the isolation really will not work. (3D printers are not large machines sitting on a concrete floor.) BBL printers so fast and are so jerky, they are still going to cause the table or other stand to shake, even with the feet.
If the goal is to stop the printer from vibrating because the vibrations are affecting the print, then anti-vibration feet are not likely to help. In fact they actually allow the printer frame to move more because it is sitting on something flexible. If you commonly have problems with tall prints it could be because your printer is just moving too much.
There are some forum posts on the right track to reducing the actual vibration (shaking) of the printer. However, I think they combine both isolation and reducing vibrations and do not explain which solution works for which problem.
I want to discuss several solutions for reducing printer vibration (and ignore isolation).
Slow it down.
The easiest and most effective way to reduce the printer vibration is to slow it down. This is even more applicable to the jerk settings (how fast it accelerates and decelerates) than raw speed. Every time the print head assembly changes velocity there is an opposite reaction in the frame of the printer. The harder the tool head pushes the more the frame moves. If you are having a problem with a specific print you can either tune the various speed and acceleration settings, or you can try just changing to silent mode.
Add Mass
More mass moves less for a given amount of force. If the printer frame weighed 10 tons then the tool head jerking would still require the frame to absorb the same amount of energy, but the frame would not move noticeably. So, to prevent the printer from moving/vibrating as much you could bolt it to a concrete slab, such as the floor of the garage. It would move much less. This is not a very good solution. And it would not even completely fix the problem because the printer is not made of stiff enough material to prevent flexing. You could bolt it to a concrete block and set a large concrete block on the top of the frame and the solid coupling would effectively raise the mass of the printer and significantly reduce any vibration.
Set the printer on a more stable surface.
A more reasonable solution and one that many posts get partially right, is to set the printer on an object with a high mass.
The typical post says: put the printer on a concrete paver on a neoprene pad on your desk.
I want to break this down, because that solution is mixing isolation and vibration reduction without explaining the benefits and drawbacks, or separating out each part.
The neoprene pad between the concrete paver and the desk is acting as an isolation pad so that movement of the paver will cause less desk motion that otherwise would happen. This is good if you are trying to keep the desk from moving.
Setting the printer on the concrete paver without any flexible isolation between is trying to make the mass of the paver part of the mass of the printer. This helps reduce the amount of printer shaking. (It is very convenient that Home Depots sells 16" square concrete pavers for a few dollars and they are just the right size for the printer.) Because the stock printer feet are fairly hard,the coupling is reasonably solid. Bolting the printer frame to the paver would be even better at providing what would be effectively a single object with high mass. I do not know of anyone that has gone that far.
So, in summary, cheap concrete pavers with your printer setting directly on them is the best easy and economical solution to reduce printer vibration. One is good, but more is better. Do not put isolation pads/feet between the printer and the pavers.
I modified a combination of #2 and #3 for my printer. I had an old high end audio rack which has pointed feet that go right through the carpet and into the sub-floor. (Audiophiles do this to provide a solid foundation for their equipment. The also often use mass by making turntable bases out of granite and such.) Now I have the stand solidly connection to the frame of the house. The rack is very short and as inflexible as possible. I filled the bottom shelf with concrete pavers and put more on the top shelf under the printer. It is not as solid as a boulder, but it does not move much and not easily. My printer sits directly on the top paver.
I have my Prusa on an ELFA drawer unit. It works just fine. Putting the P1P on one had it moving about six inches side to side.
I started with the P1P on an old dresser and it printed fine, even though the entire dresser was moving around. The engineers at BBL did a great job compensating for vibration. I just wanted to try to fix the occasion problems with tall prints and not have to watch it shake so much.
My new setup has very little motion. In addition, some of the problems with printing tall thin objects, or strange surface artifacts are gone.
Note: when you make a change like this be sure to run the full printer setup calibration. The printer resonance frequencies will change significantly.
After trying one paver, which worked well, I went to buy more pavers and bought the wrong ones. My bottom shelf currently has 12" ones. I plan to get more of the 16" squares.
The other issue is that my printer is really too low. My long term plan is to build a cabinet with drawers to both store supplies and to set the printers on. I will build the cabinet extra stiff to help eliminate flexing. I am going to leave a spot under the bottom drawer for a stack of pavers, and I am going to provide an inset into the top so the printer is sitting on pavers as well. I expect the cabinet ready to use will have a footprint slightly larger than the base of the printer, but will have a working weight of about 250#.
I will add more info as my printer station changes.
Aside:
You can skip this because I am just ranting about a pet peeve which is triggered by reading anything about reducing vibrations.
BBL calls them anti-vibration feet. This is great, and sort of correct.
But, most of the posts in forums and even ads from companies who make such items call them "vibration dampeners", which is false.
1. dampen means "to make slightly wet", such as dampen a cloth to wipe up a spill. (It can also have the emotional meaning such as "that dampened our spirits")
2. damp (as a verb) means to reduce oscillation or vibration. We put sound damping in a room to improve the acoustics. A car has a damper (shock absorber) along with a spring so the uneven road does not cause it to bounce up and down forever. The damper, damps the oscillation and causes the bouncing to quickly stop.
Sorry, I just had to put that out there because I see it so much. Almost every listing on Amazon for sound deadening material also calls it sound dampener. Grrr. :wink:
I suspect I did things wrong based on your excellent write-up.
I got the (new) anti-vibration feet with my X1C less than a month ago. I noticed that when I placed the AMS on top they get REALLY squished down. In fact, if you move the printer around and aren’t paying attention the feet will squish diagonally which is not good IMHO.
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I then went out and got a 16"x16" paver and put on top of some foam used for packing some random Black Friday equipment purchase. Then I set the printer on top of that with the anti-vibration feet. I suspect this was bad because you said: “Do not put isolation pads/feet between the printer and the pavers.”
Every time I make a change I run a full calibration, but on a recent tall PETG print I saw vertical lines form and continue to get “worse” the taller the print went. I’m 99.9% sure these are vibration related. I ran another full calibration after that and a similar print didn’t seem nearly as bad, so I find it odd I have to run the calibration multiple times.
So, to confirm my suspicion - I should not be using the anti-vibration feet in between the printer and the paver stone, correct?
I’m also curious if anyone else has any thoughts on the use of the anti-vibration feet w/ the AMS on top of the printer - independent of the use of a paver stone w/ padding or not. I swear I read somewhere not to do that (someone even said the AMS was never meant to go on top of the printer being shown that way non-stop in marketing materials).
Again, thank you for a really great write up. It’s nice to have somewhere to go to reality check what I am trying to do with my likely overthought implementation.
I really wish it wasn’t sooo long ago that I did my MSc in Sound and Vibrations Or that I would have worked in the field since then.
What I remember from all those years ago tells me that indeed the use of different (!) vibration isolators chained behind each other would quite likely distribute the vibration energy across the spectrum. >This reduces the peaks. It is actually the peaks that we humans usually find most annoying. Just 3dB equates to halving the peak sound pressure. So it can be quite effective from a human perception point of view.
However, to be most effective, the system-of-systems would need to be well tuned. And prefferably transfer the vibration example into heat through internal friction in the damping component. I expect that with a good frequency response function through the feet it would be possible to increase the damping spectrum a bit and print some in TPU.
With sound, it’s more challenging as there’s a whole bunch of transmission paths. Of course secondary noise which emmits from all vibrating surfaces, but more importantly primary noise directly from the printers key emitters (now propably the fans and the print heads jerk) through any air gaps and of course the enclosure. So it is much more difficult to effectively isolate or even dampen noise paths than vibration paths.
Typically, noise cancellation is more effective the closer to the sound source a measure is implemented. With the motors, Bambu is already there. With the fans, it gets more difficult. Usually what is good for airflow is also good for noise reduction so there’ll probably not be so much potential except perhaps blade passing frequency (air gap distance and passing velocity) and serrated nozzle edges (distributing vortex onset).
For a DIY solutions, there’s of course the application of damping material to the printer itself. However, that would probably turn the printer into looking like a very unfortunate accident.
An extra enclosure made from acoustic dampening panels (characterized by a very high mechanical impedance mismatch) and lined with foam cones on the inside should be quite effective though. I know that some people have their printer in a cabinet, so lining application would be fairly straightforward and effective as long as the door can stay closed.
So, I am not really sure if any of that was any use or help at all. Sound and Vibration control is a rather specialized and tricky analytical field. After all, the energy is there and needs be either A) prevented at the source from becoming kinetic, B) converted into other forms of energy like heat or electricity or C) forced to cancel itself out by diverted and/or reflected waves.
Hi dgarcu,
I do not think that the wheels will be the main and initial issue as usually it is a good idea to trace the path from the sound and vibration source.
So starting from the top, it does make sense to add a paver as close to the printer as possible. But as you point out, that leads to a likely safety hazard.
Personally, I’d priorize safety anytime and put the paver in the bottom for that reason alone.
If I would put a paver on top of the moveable cabine, I’d want to put two in the bottom. But that rather defeats the point of the cabinet as pulling 100kg around, even on wheels, is a bit of a nuisance rather than a quality of life improvement.
If the paver goes into the bottom, you’ll have a large framework or body through which the vibrations travel rather unimpeded. Both Steel and Al are rather stiff with a high speed of sound. So I’d expect not only a strong vibration transmission, but also a very effective excitation of the first harmonics of the individual members. And if you use panels, they do tend to get excited rather quickly in my experience.
Did you consider wood for the cabinet? That would provide more effective damping also due to its internal impedance mismatch. While discontinuous materials (chipwood, MDF) will provide slightly higher damping, I believe that for optical reasons you may want to look at classical boards and beams.
And of course you can go absolutely crazy on the looks Just put “River table” in the youtube search bar
Regarding the rattlesnake effect, I do not think that this can be avoided fully by anything other than lining the drawer with foam and the generous use of drawer seperators.
Going further down, we finally come to the wheels. With so much mass on top of them, I very much doubt that you will hit a harmonic. So you’ll probably select a relatively soft wheel that can carry the load of the cabinet individually (i.e. safety factor).
I do hope that this helps a bit,
Eno
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