My point was never that waxing chains is the perfect end-all solution. I originally replied to a person that said they degreased their chain and only got about 2-3k miles before needing to replace it. From my experience that’s due to stripping away the factory oil, and if you are degreasing anyways you are halfway to just waxing the chain.

If you want something to be dead set reliable modern group sets aren’t going to be your friend, no matter what you are using on the chain. A single speed chain with geared hub is going to be more reliable than pretty much anything else on the bike.

Waxing has real benefits but it’s not always worth it depending on where and how you ride. For instance, the dirt in my area is extremely dusty and destroyed my lubed MTB chain in about 2k miles. Waxing was a massive improvement and has already saved me from replacing $300 worth of chain and cassette.

It’s your bike though, and different strokes work for different folks. I fight against cars, not fellow bikers.

I mean oil is oil, some are better as lubricants but all of them are going to reduce friction somewhat. When I rode fixies there were all sorts of weird home solutions being used in my group, but it didn’t really matter because those chains are bomb proof.

I can’t say for certain but if you tried the olive oil trick in a modern 10/11/12 speed drivetrain it would not last long. Not really because of an increase in friction but all of the dirt olive/vegetable/mineral oil attract. Lubricant is much thinner and doesn’t ‘hold’ dirt to the same degree, especially inside the roller links.

Wax improves the lifespan not by dramatically reducing friction, but by making dirt ingress virtually zero. The actual power gains are maybe a few watts, and that’s if you use special wax additives to further reduce friction.

Also shows a big difference in location between us. I only have like 2 weeks out of the year that I have to break out the indoor rollers because of rain.

Hope you stay safe though, I wish everyone could have the benefit of coastal desert weather.

Oh I’m sure you’re doing a decent job and wax isn’t a perfect solution for everyone. I’m just saying that one of the reasons you may only get 2k miles out of a chain is the degreaser takes away the factory oil. When I was on lube I was getting about 1% stretch per 1k miles, but it also depends a lot on the drivetrain and what kind of riding you do.

I would definitely consider wax though, especially if you move up into 10, 11, or 12 speed drivetrains. Everything is so damn expensive on them that wax is well worth the extra work, not just the chain but my cassettes look almost new still.

The roller links are what you want lubricated and protected, and wax stays in those places much better than liquid lubes. While some chunks will flake off there is a thin layer left behind, I ride near the ocean pretty frequently and had worse rust problems when I was using lube. Ofc whatever works for you is the best practice but wax has been very easy for me. I track my rides, after about 150 miles I re-wax the chain. I’ve never found that I have to check it more often, but I also ride steel frames so I don’t ride in the rain anyways.

A quick tip on bike chains; if you are using lubricant you should never use heavy degreaser on the chain. The factory oil is the best lubricant and normal lubes don’t penetrate between links enough.

However, if you are going to degrease you chains, you should use paraffin wax instead of lube. I have an 11 speed chain with 3000+ miles and it’s only showing around 1% stretch. I don’t even use fancy bike specific wax, just food grade gulf wax. Another plus is the whole drive train is dry; doesn’t get your hands dirty if you need to remove a wheel, cassette, or derailleur.

Admittedly waxing the chain is a pain in the ass, but some of my chains are like $70 a pop so getting as much life from them is more important.

No problem, I hope you find something that works for you. There’s definitely a ton of money to save if you forego a lot of the cutting edge features of the XL. I just feel jaded about waiting for years and still having a product that feels unpolished.

I know this thread is a bit old but I want to rant a little about my experience with the 2T Prusa XL. Hopefully this helps your decision a bit.

First off if you’re gonna buy it, build it yourself. 100% anecdotal but the people I’ve seen with crashing tool heads and major issues all have pre-assembled units. Maybe something happens to the frame in shipping, but my semi-assembled unit hasn’t had any tool crashes or serious flaws… yet

Secondly, the price is much higher than the website tells you. Prusa doesn’t secretly overcharge you, but they also don’t include many things I feel should be at this price point. The lack of enclosure being the most egregious to me, but I also would like a camera or at least support to add one. I’ve had to spend an additional few hundred dollars getting more nozzles (seriously, fuck 0.4mm on a 360³ build plate), an enclosure, and even another peice of extruded aluminum so this thing doesm’t rattle itself to pieces. It definitely feels more like a ‘first gen’ product more than anything I’ve had from Prusa in the past, but I do think the platform has a ton of potential.

So far performance has been good, not great like I expected out of Prusa. Mainly; it’s a bit slow for a coreXY, and I’ve had some adhesion problems even with pla on a textured plate. I think I solved the adhesion issue with an enclosure, it’s in my garage so the temperature varies a ton. Still, keep in mind since they do not even give you the option to buy an enclosed XL.

Multi color and material has been where this printer really starts to shine, I would argue that the single tool head isn’t even worth producing. The filament waste is negligible and tool changes add very little time to the print (about 12 minutes per 100 changes), although I have had some issues with z shift after a tool change. It’s impressive to watch it change extruders effortlessly, and probably the only part of this printer that I would say was worth the price.

If I had to do it all over again I probably would have just cancelled my pre-order. Seeing printers like the peopoly magneto at a similar price really drives home how long this printer was delayed. It almost feels outdated upon arrival, especially since the XL still has a lot of software features missing.

TL;DR it’s a good printer, but not as good as I expected out of Prusa. Compared to truly state of the art printers it seems overpriced, and unless you plan on exclusively printing multi-color or material you will be better served by other products.