This is why I put BL touch on, I don’t see any conceivable way a bed can be level to the accuracy of +/- .05mm if you are heating it unevenly with these heating pads in a cold room. especially in aluminum and with the collection of parts that are common on 3d printers. I think most prints can tolerate more than this error, stick to the bed and not matter . but the stated tolerance to where it has no effect on a print with .16mm layer heights is very small and in my mind not possible with these components. BL touch at least gives the machine a rough map of the surface every time it prints and hopefully get it closer to ideal than you can manually.
I don’t even want to putt an indicator on my machine because I know it would send me down a rabbit hole that there is no solution for.
Hi! I did a cold level and the resutls were the same. Very rough brim and intial layer to the point where you could hear - and see - the nozzle grate over what was printed. No amount of on-the-fly adjusting seemed to help nor did making changes in Cura in terms of Z-hop, retraction, print speed or flow. I then did another hot level and got the same lousy results. I’m not a veteran 3d prniter, but it shouldn’t be this hard to get a decent level and good print. Neither of my other two printers, Ender 3 V2 (heat bed is 3mm thick, B1 looks to be 2.9, close enough) and a CR 10S Pro V2 have had these issues. I think the good folks at Big Tree got in a hurry and pushed out an essentially decent printer that just has lots of problems that were not fully QC’d before releasing it. Nevertheless, I’m done with wasting more time and money on it.
Hi Glenn,
Wish I could have gotten the BLT to work. It may have saved the aggravation I’m continuing to have with it. I truly wish I’d just gotten another Ender 3 V2.
Les
Hi Glenn,
I calmed down. Unfortunately no, we live in Colorado Springs Colorado. I wish I’d hung on to the box it came in becuase I would have no problem contacting PJ to let him know that it’s on its way back to him so that he can do his magic and make it work. I would love to have him update the firmware, replace all the fanes with better quality ones and install the BL Touch to where it works as it should all the time. I would have no problem paying for that service plus the associated shipping costs. Becuase down deep I think it’s a very sophisticated printer that has amazing capabilities in the hands of skilled and experienced 3D printer. I am not that person. But I am running a current print that is working fine. I have a bad tendency to overengineer things and I think that’s what I did with the Cura profiles. They kept getting longer and longer with adding more and more settings and requiremetns. And the prints kept getting worse and worse. So the little bird on my shoulder told me to knock that off and take it all back to the basics. I reset the defaults on the printer and used the straight up Standard print quality pre settings in Cura. The only changes were to reduce the PLA flow (I’m using Hatchbox gray PLA), slow down the print speed and reduce the nozzle temperature. I then did a very deliberate hand leveling at temperature and so far it’s doing exactly what it’'s supposed to do. So stay tuned for the continuing adventures of a older guy and his printer!
Les
Hi! Where the fans you replaced on the hot end or inside the base? I’ve already had to replace the right fan on the hot end after only about two weeks of use adn it’s quiet. The noise is coming from inside teh base.
Had to replace one in the base the other failed, the replacement Is noisy again. 3dpc sent that one. The right hand hot end fan went out a week ago. The left is fine and quiet. Today the hot end fan started to have trouble so you might as well say they are all bad and the good one on the left is a fluke.
I changed the hotend and had to replace the part cooling duct piece becuse it wouldn’t fit. And the replacement PJ sent the Stl for works fine with the one fan which is great, its horseshoe shaped and I see how petg really needs cooling.
The folks at 3DPC sent a replacement for the right hot end fan and so far so good. But I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be bad to have a couple on had. They seem to go out pretty quickly. Mine wasn’t more than a few weeks old when it quit. I went ahead and got an entire new hot end that I use when something goes wrong on the original. I was looking at other fans that are the same size and voltage that claim to be higher quality. And am wondering f they would work or if you have to get proprietary Big Tree replacement parts?
You only really need to make sure the voltage is the same. Ideally, you should also make sure the volume of air moved is similar. To do that, you’d have to know the make and model number of the original fan and the make and model number of the replacement.
The issue of replacement fans has come up before. If you check out my post here:
You can see an excerpt of a data sheet with the data you need to pay attention to.
I replaced two. One in the base beside the power supply. It pushes air to cool the stepper drivers on the main board. This fan would start sounding very loud on power up of the printer. The other was on the right side of the hotend assembly. The replacement B1 fan wires are super long, and either has to be cut and re-soldered, or folded up at the top of the assembly where the small circuit board is.
Has anyone tried the Marlin Mode for setting up a print? I wanted to see how it works and discovered that there is no “Print from Media” setting as per the manual, only ’ Change Media’ with no options, so there’s no way for it to print.
Try putting your SD card in the rear SD card slot. I find marlin mode quick to use if I’m just repeating commands over and over. and I use the interface if I really need to pay attention.
I did the same thing at first on my Ender 3 Pro, watched too many YouTube video, changed too many settings in Cura and made things worst!!
As you did I reverted back to basic profile in Cura and adjusted the temp for the filament I have 195c PLA 210c PLA+ now prints comes out fine and my test cube was at 20.01 for X 19.99 for Y 19,90 for Z
I do a manual level once in a while even if I have a BLTouch so it dont have to compensate too much plus it is easier to switch between the glass plate and the mag plate with the BLTouch.
I found the same. it was suggested that a BL Touch could compensate for a bed that was not flat. It can’t really. New bed, and manually level first and it prints better. They seem to be a ‘polish’ to compensate for very slight variances.
I pretty much burned a day exploring the firmware thats been out for this printer. I discovered a set of instructions where the author says the B1 doesn’t consult the mesh when it’s printing and I think that is an earlier firmware because the three I tried today all adjust the Z axis as it’s printing. I settled on one from " Luke Harrison" that really works well and it’s one of 2 I tried that eliminates the Z home switch and uses the BL touch instead. I stuck with it because, using the unified bed leveling scheme it only has to probe 3 points before a print to tell if it needs to be fully surveyed again and that saves a lot of time. It also sets home to the middle of the bed.
It probes so many points initially to get the mesh, twice each, it also probes out to the very edges of the bed beyond the blue lines on the build plate to get a more complete map to average the bed level from. (which reminds me, to do that the Y axis has the ability to print 25mm beyond it’s limit if the bed was longer). This firmware also fixed PID autotune for the nozzle but my temperature problem remains. There was a new official FW release yesterday I don’t think he’s added in yet so 'll keep an eye out and try that too now that I know how to compile it.
EDIT: one more thing there are save slots for the bed probe meshes so if I wanted to use a glass top or anything else I just have to run the ABL probing again and save the settings. This should work if I swap back and forth because the initial 3 probe points at the start of a print will tell if the saved mesh is still good.
Hi Glenn,
I’ve switched over to Marlin Mode for setting up prints and am getting more consistent results. And it looked like the BLTouch actuallty worked on a print last night. The initial layers were consistent and smooth. The only downside was that the first string it puts up and down the left edge of the plate was about one or two millimeters off the plate. But the print turned out very good.
The screws holding the internal side fan in place were also loosened and the noise stopped but returned this morning when the printer was turned on. It’s the Poltergeist.
Les
That seems troublesome. your home isn’t in the right place? I put come commands in my start Gcode to activate the LEDs it came from one of the people that made the firmware I tried, the colours actually mean something now heh. I’ve got TPU printing now for the first time. it’s working pretty well so far but it’s still got a couple hours too go, so lots of time for it to go off the rails. I took video of my first start up with the LEDs doing their thing and the signs showing up and the screen.
There’s a long pause in the video at around 1m for the nozzle to come up to temp because I didn’t preheat it. I turned off the sound so you don’t hear … the radio of me curse when I realized it was waiting for heat heh. ah and it shows where the purge line is at the end when it goes white and starts printing.
Hi Glenn,
Ohhh, so that’s why the lights come on in Marlin when I Auto Home. And won’t turn off even after clicking ‘off’. They come back on till the actual pritnt starts and then I can shut them off.
It Auto Homes to the near-front left hand corner and the nozzle is off the plate. How can that be corrected? I have never done any sort of firmware update or messed with GCodes.
Les
Yes, Mine homed on the front left too until this firmware, and also off the plate but the purge line was always on the plate. If I extruded more filament after it homed it would drop on the table next to the machine and not on the plate. If your purge line is off the plate then something isn’t set right somewhere. The guy who made the firmware I’m using now had an extensive tuning guide I’ll see if I can fid it and post back it’s linked through GitHub and I haven’t worked out how to find things on there easily yet.
