Making the TronxyX5S quieter

My Tronxy X5S was not quiet. It is actually surprisingly good now.

Note... if you haven't swapped out your fans etc that is by far the first thing to do. This is the next step.

I have a very high bar for quiet printing largely because my printers live in a very small room above my kids bedroom. The Wanhao i3 noise was borderline ok once I had a variety of pads in place but when I then stacked on the Tronxy the vibrations and noise through the floor was hard to ignore. Overnight prints were not great.

I saw random comment on motor dampers and gave them a shot. I was truly surprised. I had tried dropping the potentiometers slightly but still couldn't get the vivid vibrations to go. If you have no idea what tuning your drivers means here's an oldie YouTube from Thomas Sanladerer on steppers and drivers. What the dampers did was reduce the rattle through the aluminum extrusion frame. I added them to the A and B motors only and it was enough.

What are they? These are basically two metal plates with some rubber in between. Rather than securing to all four corner mounts on your motor they secure to two diagonally on the motor and the opposite two diagonally on your printer. There is a few millimeter offset that comes with this but if you can slip your pulley up slightly on the motor and secure it there, it should not be a problem. The outcome is vibrations that were previously passing straight from your motor to the frame are now reduced by the rubber layer. As your motor connects to the belt it also is not directly passing vibrations to the frame.

Check this video out for more detail:

I love the MatterHackers content and would highly recommend you check out their channel.

If you do get these, one side mounts more flush with the motor than the other so flip them a few times to see which way mounts best.

You can find the exact ones I purchased from Amazon US on this page http://practicalprinting.blog/products/