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I have a Monoprice Maker Select Plus, where I'm doing the Gulf Coast Robotics carriage plate upgrade. I was watching through an installation video just to find any "gotchas" I might want to watch for, and the guy in video recommends removing one of the carriage bearings, going from 4 to 3. The idea is to get quieter, smoother travels, with less weight on the belt.

Has anyone else here done this for this model printer? Or for the very-similar Maker Select v2/2.1? Are there any downsides I should watch for? Everything I know seems to indicate 3 bearings are just better (the whole "3 points define a plane" thing), but if it's that simple, why go to the cost of shipping with 4?

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  • $\begingroup$ As Oscar suggests, removing the 4th bearing eliminates a major source of stress or binding, because it's difficult to place four points into a single plane. $\endgroup$
    – Carl Witthoft
    Jun 11 '19 at 14:10
  • $\begingroup$ @joel-coehoorn My printers has 4 bearings to avoid vibration on the corners not suported like 3 points, on a flat surface is easy to get a single plane. $\endgroup$
    – Fernando Baltazar
    Jun 11 '19 at 17:08
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Ideally you would use three bearings opposed to four. In principle you will only need 3 fixtures to get a stable reference frame. Look at how most Prusa i3 "X" carriages are constructed, they also have just three bearings.

Three bearings are way more easy to line out (especially with tight tolerance bearings), with four bearings you will get binding much more easy than with three.

I've been using three linear (self printed tight tolerance acetal/POM) bearings on the moving bed (Y direction) for quite some time on a Prusa i3 type of printer made from 2040 Aluminium profiles.

A similar reasoning applies to fixating the heated bed/glass slate, only three screws are necessary to define the reference plane. This is how my CoreXY heated bed is connected to the "Z" platform (a slate of glass is perfectly flat as a result of the production process).

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  • $\begingroup$ I went with three bearings. This is now one of 4 total changes as part of a significant re-fit for my printer (carriage plate, fewer bearings, advi3pp firmware, and belt tensioners all at the same time). $\endgroup$
    – Joel Coehoorn
    Jun 11 '19 at 21:54
  • $\begingroup$ as a side note: with 3 bearings, one can use one excentric nut to dial in the force on the beam. $\endgroup$
    – Trish
    Jun 11 '19 at 22:23

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