Printer Upgrades for my Creality CR-20

So I've been working away on my CR-20 3D printer to reduce the running noise. The base printer out of the box is pretty noisy and I could hear it at the other end of the house. Which means it was driving the wife crazy with her super sonic hearing of a teacher. The printer itself has been great, just the noise level was a bit much for being the same room for long periods of time.

The first and simplest upgrade was to print out some squash ball feet from thingiverse.com. Then place some old packing foam under the printer. This reduced the noise by about 4-5 decibels. Four squash balls and printing some feet cost about $20 NZ. So not a bad start.

They look something like this (just a shot from the web as example)

After that I ordered in from China three dampeners for the motors as this was the next most recommend thing to do. A couple of weeks later they arrived. It took a few days once I had them to go though and get them installed. I ended up having to bust out the Dremel and pull the printer apart to get the Y axis to work. A slip while cutting saw me jump but thanks to safety gear no loses of fingers or blood, just some paint on the metal mounting plate.

This was by far the greatest reduction in noise, even though it only dropped the actual noise level buy another 4-5 decibels, it has cut down the higher pitch frequencies which were the ones that penetrating the walls and you could hear at the other end of the house. For less than $20 NZ delivered its a no brainer.

So after a bit of fun getting the upgrades installed and the printer settings adjusted slightly,  an average of 10 decibels decrease for $40 NZ ... not bad at all and I very pleased with the results.

Now onto printing some more upgrade parts for the printer ... and a few more Manticore's and Scorpions ... you can never have too many tanks after all.