Please make a quiet printing mode for the Form 2 so that it runs quieter during a set time range.
It largely affects those of us who live/work in apartments or small spaces. It disturbs sleep if it’s a 16+ hour print. It’s a lot of noise during the day too, so I’d be happy with 1.5x-2x print times if it meant quieter printing. My Form2 is in my living room but 15 feet from my bedroom.
The speed of the mechanical platform/wiper motors seem to be the source of the noise levels. Granted if you slow the motors it’ll take longer to finish a print but it’d still be a much better experience overall. It’d let us small cave dwellers do way more overnight/daytime prints, thus enabling us to have prints done more often while we have most of the day left.
Right now I start all my print jobs in the mornings before heading to work, but prints sometime finish late at night. Or, it’s just annoying to be home while it prints so I rarely print on weekends.
Don’t think so. The Z axis move has nothing to do with the actual printing. That’s already done then it peels. After the peel step them the Build Plate is lifted so the wiper can stir and clean the resin.
Yes, I’d really appreciate some way to make the printer quieter. Perhaps instructions on a safe way of adding sound insulation (while also preventing the machine from overheating) would help as an alternative.
Headphones are admittedly quite popular in our office though the printers just sort of provide a nice ambiance at this point. I run an FDM printer in my apartment and spent quite a while tuning the stepper drivers and dampening the motors to make it as quiet as possible. I’ve forwarded this to our software team and we’ll look into methods of implementing this!
You setup looks good. I think adding a vibration absorbant bellow the printer would help attenuate even more. That’s something I plan to do as my printer is in a cabinet as well but I feel most of the residual sound comes from vibration which is amplified by the the cabinet walls.
The printer would vibrate much less if the motors would be driven differently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvW93yCbqFE – maybe this could even be possible with a firmware update?
The TMC drivers use microstepping(like all drivers). The smaller the microsteps, the less accurate your stepper motor will turn. Motor torque will be reduced drastically as well so the chance increases you will miss steps and have to throw away the print.
Oh and formlabs is already using the chips from Trinamic, the company shown in the video. They use the TMC2660.
Note that the floor and back of that box was made from an old fire door. We were concerned that with a less rigid floor there would be resonance leading to the bench ‘sounding’.
The drivers shown in the video are physical objects that would have to be replaced in the machine. A firmware update won’t magically make junk drivers quiet.
Maybe future Formlabs printers will use better drivers. Until then you’ve got three options.
Print during waking hours, which is what I do.
Build a soundproof cabinet as shown in this thread
Don’t print at all. I’m being facetious here as that is obviously impractical.
Thanks everyone! I’m thinking I’ll have a contractor build me a box, and perhaps have them just drill some holes for air or put a small computer fan in the back. I’m also thinking putting the printer on a heavy slide-out tray so I can make the box dimensions much smaller… I just now saw this related thread started by BillB in April where someone did an acrylic enclosure with a fume vent on top: Soundproofing a Form 2
where someone did an acrylic enclosure with a fume vent on top: