I have an Ender 3 V2. It has been upgrade to a MicroSwiss Direct Drive, and BL touch.
Lately, while printing, the machine keeps “squeaking and creeking sound” during the print. The print quality does not seem to be affected, but the sound is getting louder. It seems like the sound is coming from the direct drive, but not entirely sure.
On my bowden Ender 3 I had a similar noise during retractions, a random higher pitched squeaking during some retractions.
It turned out to be the extruder gear set screw, I just repositioned the set screw and tightened it down and the noise vanished.
Mine was screwed into the flat part of the stepper shaft and wasn’t clamping hard enough allowing a tiny bit of movement between the gear and stepper motor shaft.
That is where I might check first.
I’m referring to the tiny little set screw that holds the extruder gear in place on the stepper motor itself, both bowden and direct drive systems should have one.
I’ve just circled the screw I’m talking about on your direct drive system in the photo below so we are hopefully on the same page!
@Keith or @g_fazio Recently got an Ender 3 S1 and I seem to have the same squeaking noise. Any way either of you could send a picture or diagram of where this bearing is that I need to lubricate. If so that would be wonderful, thank you for your time in advance.
(PS: Would putting lubricant directly on the filament feeder gear help?)
I fixed the squeaking on mine by wedging a piece of paper under the release switch of the motor controlling filament speed. I would recommend testing on smaller prints because I haven’t tested the long term reliability of this.