VIbration Isolation Feet Using 50mm Mini Hockey Balls

I wanted to isolate my CR-6 SE printer from the desk on which it stands, to cut down on noise and to reduce the risks of printer vibrations impacting prints. I have been very happy with the results of putting my Ender-3 up on squash ball feet, but the CR-6 is that bit heavier and I can see the Ender-3 slowly flattening those squash balls, so I was attracted to stevenfayers' thing #2772861, which includes a foot sized to use racquetballs.

When I went shopping for 3 more racquetballs, though, I found something called "mini hockey balls", which are ~50mm in diameter, even harder to compress than racquetballs or squash balls, and cost ~1/2 as much as either of those.

I split the base off thing 2772861, scaled the cup to be 50/57 smaller, then reattached the base. I fastened them to the base of the CR-6 SE rails using 2-sided foam mounting tape ("No more nails")

I also made an extra (5th) thing 2772861 foot with a racquetball to stick under the arm of the filament reel holder..

UPDATE - 28 Feb 2023:

About 12-18 months after installing these feet, I noticed that the mini hockey balls had flattened a little. Although the rest of the ball remains pliable, the bottoms have become flat-spotted, lowering the edges of the cup on the feet to within 10mm of the patio tile on which the printer now sits.

The balls I originally purchased seem to have vanished from the store shelves, so I decided to experiment with printing my own 50mm spheres to replace the hockey balls. I uploaded that model here, for those who do not have their own modeling tools.

Printing with 4 walls, 0.2mm layers, 30% gyroid infill, in transparent TPU, I now have spheres that are not compressible by hand, once cooled. They do pop into these feet (though I managed to snap the cup on one foot, so you may find you have to replace a couple of those, too.

We'll soon see whether they still provide sufficient isolation...

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Creality

Printer: 

CR6-SE

Rafts:

No

Supports: 

Not for feet, but yes, for spheres.

Resolution:

0.2

Infill: 

30% gyroid

Filament: SunLu PLA Black for Feet, Filaments.ca Transparent TPU for spheres.

Notes:

I did not mind a little blobbing on my prints, so I printed them at 100mm/s with no supports. Each one took a little over 2hrs to print .

My printer does not do a good job printing the lower half of the spheres smoothly, but I stuff the ugly side into the cup of the foot - no problem.

Category: 3D Printer Accessories