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Hey,
In the Rostock MAX assembly guide, it recommends using thread locking compound to keep the grub screws in the motor gear and mounting hardware to ensure they don't come loose.
Is this a necessary step? Or is it skipping it something that just adds some maintenance time down the road? If its just an inconvenience, how serious of one is it?
Thanks!

Skipping it would add maintenance time later that could be avoided, but that is after you figure out what is wrong and where. Additionally, you'd be lucky if it doesn't mess up a print which could already have hours of work into it, but that's unlikely because why would you notice something is wrong before it messes up?

I wouldn't skip it for those particular screws.
If the drive gears slip on the motor shaft, it tends to be more subtle than you would expect and can lead to a lot of swearing tracking it down.

Don't skip this, in fact I would consider filing a flat on the stepper motor shafts to ensure no slipping. I just had a pulley move(with flats and thread lock) back toward a stepper. There is a fair amount of vibration and movement involved with a Max. Do anything to keep things in place, you will thank yourself later.

this shouldn't be optional, its a must to prevent those screws from undoing themselves, which they will overtime. threadlocker will prevent this from happening and save you a bunch of troubleshooting time later on.

Batteau62 wrote:Don't skip this, in fact I would consider filing a flat on the stepper motor shafts to ensure no slipping. I just had a pulley move(with flats and thread lock) back toward a stepper. There is a fair amount of vibration and movement involved with a Max. Do anything to keep things in place, you will thank yourself later.

FYI, the current stepper motors that come with the RostockMAX (Wantai) already have a flat side and the pulleys that come with are dual grubs, at least in the kit I received early June.

Either way as others have stated highly recommended to use the thread locking compound, it's not that expensive and may save you a world of hurt later down the track, far easier to do it now.

Don't use the permanent thread compound. Ie, if you are using Loctite use the "Blue" and do not use the "Red." The only way to get the red to break loose later is to either super heat it or drill out the screws.