TronXY X5S upgrades by pbannister

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Bought a cheap Chinese Core-XY printer with a lot of shortcomings. With a number of upgrades, this is a much much better printer.
Ended up replacing the rollers for X-motion of the print head with solid printed-plastic bearing, with much better result.
Note the theme here is a minimal upgrade. Addressed only the worst flaws, and stopped when I had a decent printer. Did not need to replace the motor mounts. Did not need to replace the Y-motion frame and rollers. Kept the funky belt "pulleys", except for the front corners, as they work well enough.
Insulating and reinforcing (flattening) the print bed was critical. Stiffening, dampening, and forcing frame alignment with the large corners was critical. Routing the belts in one plane removed asymmetric forces from the gantry. Replacing the X-rollers with a solid bearing was critical to force more exact head positioning. Putting all the electronics on a single backplane made the wiring much cleaner. Entirely removed the control panel (with the horrid Marlin UI), as the OctoPrint web-based control panel was much(!) better.
And at this point I stopped. This is a now very serviceable PLA (mostly) printer.
Also note the large plastic corners are superior to metal brackets, as they force exact frame alignment, dampen vibration, and are more than sufficiently stiff.
Update 2018/05/13
Slightly updated the X-sliders to be even more precise. Tightened up tolerances and added a slight slope to the bearing surface. The result is improved. The prior iteration had less "give" than the stock bearings, but there was still a slight amount of play. Eliminated the play with these changes.
Update 2018/06/10
Again, in the theme of minimal upgrades ... added a simple support tower for the cable chain. Tie-wrapped the filament tube to the cable chain (after losing a print, due to the tube snagging on one of the clips). Nothing fancy, but works.
Update 2018/08/11
The printed-PLA bearing for X-motion continues to perform well. No noticeable wear or "play". Note that I took advantage of the slightly porous nature of 3D printed parts, and soaked the bearing with a generic oil spray (from the local hardware store, which also claims to contain Teflon and silicone). Sprayed a (Telfon-based) mold release on the rail (though this may not be needed). This just works. Weights less than the original X-motion bearing (wheels) and has no perceptible "play" (thus more precise).