Say what you want , I have a gen 2 with silent board sitting on stock feet next to the first gen on balls.. No difference in print quality between the 2 machines.. I run the same code on both machines , and you can't tell which one the parts come from. Not trying to say its better , by any means , and as I stated newer machines just dont need it period. But without the balls , I couldnt run that machine in my house at night. period.. So until you walk in my shoes you can think I'm stupid all you want my man.. My choices are either run balls on my oldest machine or be down a machine running at night.. That simple.. So Until I put a new motherboard in that machine it will run on ball feet... And I will put a new motherboard in when the OG 8 bit burns..
I never called anyone stupid. I was referring to the idiots that initially started sharing the idea they came up with to dampen the noise on their machine by adding ball feet, which is a really dumb idea. They started posting it in the 3d printing groups as an improvement, when all they had to do was buy these cheap dampeners instead...
Dorhea NEMA 17 Stepper Motor Steel and Rubber Vibration Dampers with M3 Screw for Ender 3 Creality CR-10 CR-10S 3D Printer CNC Machines All Nema 17 Motors (Pack of 3)
https://a.co/d/5Xlvmw0
By the time you buy the raquetballs, spend time, electricity, and filament to print the mounts, you could buy these dampeners that solve the problem, without causing any adverse affects to your machine.
I have told Grey about all the wannabe engineers that started surfacing, as more and more people bought 3d printers. People became experts overnight. The spread of misinformation was like a wildfire, where noobs would get a 3d printer, and within a couple weeks were spreading bad info themselves, as if it were the gospel. And the other noobs listened. The ball feet idea is like the pinnacle of that idiocy. Just look how many ball feet mods are on Thingiverse! I sat and shook my head at post after post in the Creality groups, and after trying to correct people, only to have morons tell me I didn't know what I was talking about, I just gave up. So yeah, I probably come off a bit coarse, but that is why. Just trying to help here.
On the smaller Enders, the shaking of the machine probably is not nearly as much an issue as it is on the bigger printers, like I have, which initially led me to design a better gantry support system than what was available on Thingiverse. A system which Creality now uses on their machines.
Even though you might not see it in your prints, just imagine taking your printer and jiggling it back and forth for 12 hours or more, day after day. Do you think that is good for it? No it is not. Especially since the Enders have the spool holder up top. That is adding a lot of weight and stress to the gantry, and causes the gantry to vibrate if your printer is not stable, whether you see it in your prints or not. The higher your gantry goes, the more it will be apparant. As it climbs, it adds even more weight to the top of the machine, causing even more vibration. Since most people only print things low to the bed, it doesn't show up much. But it is there.
Take this how you will. I have a lot of machine setup and operation experience, and mechanical design is something I am very good at, and very proud of. I made a very good career based on my understanding of work holding solutions to hold very complex parts for machining, and removing vibrations while doing so was critical to producing a good finished part. It was my special skill so to speak. Understanding vibrations in machine movement is something I excelled at, and allowed me to come up with some really crazy fixture designs that not only produced flawless parts, but did so faster than the attempts to produce them with prevous fixture designs. So yeah, just sayin. Ball feet are a bad idea, especially since there is a much better, and much easier to implement solution out there.
