I have considered upgrading my Ender 3V2 printer to linear rails but I did watch a couple of the “talking heads” on YouTube that didn’t think there was much difference in the printed results.
Any opinions on this???
I wouldn’t recommend considering the change unless you had issues with your wheels (something I’ve seen reported twice in the past week) and were going to have to shell out a few bucks anyway.
Rails don’t have the tightening issues of wheels (along with getting flats when not being used regularly) but they require more maintenance including periodic greasing for best operation. Poorer quality rails can have problems with the rails rusting (poor quality stainless steel) and not being perfectly straight. For rails, higher cost means better quality and HiWin brand seems to be the best but they’re also the most expensive.
If you’re buying wheels, I recommend going straight to openbuilds.com, they’re pricing is probably 50% more than what you’ll find on Amazon, eBay and Aliexpress but they’ll be of high quality and somewhere you can go back to if you have problems.
I’ve got rails on three of my printers (Voron 2.4 and two custom machines) and I’m seriously looking at changing them to Exoslides:
These are somewhat expensive as the two kits for an Ender 3 will basically cost the same as the full printer.
Did you find an improvement in print quality with rails over wheels.
Depends on the quality of the wheels and rails along with their maintenance.
Don’t assume that buying rails will lead to an improvement. With rails, you’ll probably have to degrease them before you start using them and then you’ll have to put in lubricant/pack them in grease.
https://docs.ldomotors.com/en/guides/rail_grease_guide
After degreasing and before lubricating them again, you’ll have to make sure that all of the ball bearings in the slider are present and can move freely - this isn’t indicated in the page above. For continued good operation, the rail will have to cleaned and new grease added.
When good quality wheels are used in the right application (a bed slinger typifies it) they are as good or better than rails with much less mess and maintenance.
I have the ExoSlides on a couple of my printers, Biggest change for me was the Ender 5 plus. They were worth every cent. I increased the speed a bit and the position of the print head stays much more predictably.
The printer in general
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I would say that there is no big difference in your print quality when switching to linear rails, your biggest benefit would be reliability.
When you are using the v-wheels you have to make sure they are properly tightened and they can wear out over time, but apart from some lubrication there really isn’t any maintenance that is needed.
Hopefully this is helpful,
Matthew
I looked at the Exoslide site, didn’t explain things well and the x axis kit is tied to the Z axis. I don’t need the Z axis, I have a dual Z axis setup already which works great. The concept looks good though.
I went with linear rails because the ones I got were rated for operation up to 90deg C.