Flashforge Creator Pro - replacing plastic pulleys

thingiverse

My FFCP has has been a workhorse for the last year and printed more than 2200 hours without much problems, thats almost 8.5 kilometer of filament. So yesterday i wanted to give my printer a good maintanance and took it apart, in the process i wanted to change the plastic pulleys. After putting it together again at first site this worked out great as i didn't had to change any of the original adapters, now when starting a new print the size of the printouts don't match anymore. After some investigation I noticed that the plastic pulleys are having 17 Teeths and the new pulleys i used are having 20 which might be the issue. Today i ordered pulleys with 16T to see if this resolves the issue. I also started a topic in the flashforge group for this => http://www.thingiverse.com/groups/flashforge/topic:9788 Update 14/12/2016; Just received some additional information from the topic created in the discussion group and seems you definitly need 17 teeth pulleys otherwise printed objects might have different sizes than expected. i found some on Ebay for half the price of those you can get from flashforge USA website. Update 16/12/2016; After replacing the pulleys for the X-Axis (top corners) with 20 teeth and putting back the original plastic pulleys on the stepper motors only, my printouts are again as expected (both in size and quality). and i didn't need to change the firmware settings to compensate for it. So the top corner pulleys don't make any difference as long as those on the stepper motor are having the correct pulleys with 17 teeths. I uploaded some additional pics to show the difference. On the right side you see how my printouts where affected after so many hours of printing, and on the left you can see that with changing the pulleys in the corner it's improved again almost as if it was a brand new printer again. Next i'm waiting for the metal 17T pulleys to arrive to change the plastic pulleys on the stepper motors. Update 22/12/2016 Yesterday I received the 17T pulleys and replaced the plastic ones I left on the steppermotors and started a new printout, all seems to work just fine now. so my conclusion, most pulleys would work for the corners, if you keep in mind to use 17T pulleys for the steppermotors. Update 12/01/2017 After printing some more during the last weeks (printing an additional kilometer) i can conclude that my printer is like new again, i'm now planning to upgrade the standard bearings with those i have created and published yesterday => http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2031470 to make it more silent. Custom Section some links for S2M 17T pulleys http://www.flashforge-usa.com/shop/parts-accessories/belt-pulley.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Makerbot-3D-Printer-Accessories-timing-pulley_1590215055.html https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teeth-Motor-Drive-Timing-Pulley/dp/B00R1LSTIQ http://www.ebay.com/itm/2pcs-GT17-GT2-6-GT2-17T-3D-Printer-Pulley-Bore-5MM-2M-Open-Belt-Width-6MM-557-/321381340637?hash=item4ad3d215dd:g:M6oAAOxycD9TT2SZ