Recessed vibration absorber for Prusa I3 mk2

thingiverse

An ultra low profile recessed vibration damper / silencer foot for Prusa I3 mk2 or others, designed to fit in an IKEA Lack table without raising the printer more than about 1.5 mm. This is not just a springy foot that allows the printer to shake without shaking the table, it's a real shock absorber. The shock absorbing function comes from filling the cups with fine sand (clean and dry). The sand adds some weight to the feet, and effectively transforms the energy in the vibrations to heat through friction in the sand instead of storing the energy in the spring and giving it back to the printer frame. At least that's the idea... :-) But really, the idea was to make an ultra low profile silencer foot, since I'm building an IKEA Lack enclusure and I didn't want to raise the upper table, which works only as long as the printers is not raised either. The sand is just because I got the idea and couldn't resist trying it out. So far it seems to work as planned, but it could very well work good enough without the sand also... I added some thin cloth between the cup and the lid to make sure that no dust from the sand escapes and starts to wear away the bearings. The sand should be washed anyway (and thoroughly dried). The original display mount on the prusa got in the way for the lid on the front feet, so there are two stl files, left and right, for the prusa front feet that have a cutout to make room for the display. If you have moved the display (or have another printer), the round back lid can be used for all four feet. The springs fit the lid only when mounted in exactly the same way as in the transparent drawing, except for the front left foot, where the lid is simply mirrored from the right one and because of that the springs has to be mounted 90 degrees turned... You probably need to trim the edges in the square holes and also the tips of the springs with a knife to be able to mount the lids. The feet can naturally also be used without recessing them into the printer platform. This is part of my take on the IKEA Lack printer enclosure thing, more will follow.