In my previous post I explained how I acquired an Ender 3 v1, v2, and v3 over the course of a week after not owning any 3d printers, well, it's been a couple more weeks and I got a couple more printers. I spent several days trying to troubleshoot the Nebula pad that came on my v3, finally got it unbricked only to have it stick in a sort of boot loop so I gave up, I was going to just buy a screen for $40 but I got a whole nother machine for $70 which is good because I ended up replacing the screen and main board and now I have the rest for parts (the first one has several mods so fixing it rather than using it for parts made sense to me).
I fixed the v2 that I got out of the dump by adjusting the bed and replacing the stepper on the x axis and then gave that one and the v1 to my oldest daughter.
Deciding that I need to unlock the wonders of multi color printing I bought a FlashForge AD5X for $160 that had a bunch of filament caught in the bowden tubes and extruder. After fixing that I gave it a wash and tried printing a benchy but I can't get it to stick. I'm going to play with some settings tonight and see if I can get this one printing as consistently as the Ender 3 v3. I saw glue mentioned a couple of times, would a glue stick do or does it need to be something special?
Also, what type of grease do you all recommend for your machines?
Purple "School Glue" is all you need. It's cheap and if you work in an elementary school, free for the bending over and picking it up. I've got a life time supply from teaching for a mere 4 years.
Lubrication is kind of an issue. You want to oils over grease. And only a thin coating. You will find that lubricated rods and rails attract dust. A lot of dust with kids and pets. And that dust is VERY abrasive and will chew up the seals on you bearings unless you are constantly wiping and relubing. So, this is a time when less is more.
I use a SuperLube silicone grease to fill the bearings before assembling them onto the rods for my Mk3S. They have wiper seals that are meant to wipe the linear rods as they move and hold the grease in. I never oil those rods. The dust they attract will destroy those wiper seals in short order. I do, however wipe the rods with a dry paper towel before I print. In the 8 years I have owned the machine, I have replaced the bearings just once after about 4 years.
The little Bambu A1 Mini I have has open bearings on their linear rails and rods. Those require wiping clean and relubing with a special high tack oil on a scheduled basis. And yes, they are filthy when I clean them.