My Form 2 recently started getting noisy when the build platform decends - this only happened during certain parts of the journey, and only on the downward direction. I looked up in the formums here a recommended lubricating product and used it, and the problem went away… for about a week of blissful quiet operation.
It started again recently, so I applied another small amount of that same product. But my question is kind of a silly one: where the heck did the last dose go so quickly?
Is there a chance that there’s some place lower down on that threaded rail where old grease is collecting, that might cause an issue later? The rail itself doesn’t look dirty, I’m just curious if there’s a cleaning step I perhaps should do next time the noise returns, or a panel I should look under just to make sure the machine is not quietly hoarding the grease someplace it really shouldn’t…
Or perhaps I didn’t give it a liberal enough dose the first time around, and it gradually evenly coated the surface? After all, matter not being created nor destroyed - it went SOMEWHERE.
Periodic lubrication is something that some folks have to do. I don’t have great data on why/when, but in my experience, it’s rarely been a chronic issue where someone has to do it more frequently than every few months. Given that, the noise returning after 1 week is pretty odd!
I don’t think there’s too much risk of grease collecting anywhere, because the platform moving up and down should apply the grease relatively evenly.
It’s not quite clear based on your message where you applied the grease, but the most effective method i’ve seen is applying a thin line down the entire length of the z-screw(the screw that raises and lowers the platform). With a thin even line up and down the whole thing, it should get distributed the way we want after just a few cycles of the platform moving up and down.
Let me know if that’s helpful for you, but if you’d like to post a picture of where you put the grease specifically I’d be more than happy to take a look for you.
