I am out of ideas, hoping someone could offer some insight.
No matter what I do with the Z offset while the first layer is printing the nozzle will not move down.
Have never had any issues till now have tried a couple different things and no luck.
-Manual bed level
-Multiple auto Level and bed meshes
Worst case I do a factory reset and start from scratch.
Any ideas would help before I reset everything.
You might want to look at you Z stop, it could be too high and not letting you set the nozzle down any further.
Moved my BL Touch higher as the printer uses this as it’s Z stop.
Didn’t help, actually made the gap between the nozzle and bed worse.
The odd thing is that the printer was printing without any problems one day and not the next.
Could the BL Touch be giving up the ghost?
Going by it’s readouts it’s working fine.
Update:
I’ve flashed the printer with the original Marlin firmware same problem.
When setting the Z offset I can slam the nozzle into the bed. As soon as you start a print the nozzle won’t lower more then 2mm off the build plate.
Main board dead in some weird way?
Are you absolutely sure your z-offset is not affecting the nozzle. It moves in very very small amounts, sometimes less than you can realistically notice. What is your z-offset currently set at?
It could also be the setting or offset between the BL touch and the nozzle.
Check the bed for a warp. BL touch will correct small variations but the glass beds like yours can warp way beyond its ability to compensate. If it is out beyond a mm this might be the issue.
My sidewinder warped after months of printing and ended up out beyond the width of a nickel. BL told me it was beyond the ability to compensate.
Ok, update here. The customer dropped off the machine for service yesterday. I was able to get it on the bench and do some tests this morning, found a couple of interesting things.
Firstly, the printer definitely does not allow changing z-offset during printing. After a little more research it seems that this was a pretty common issue with machine. There are a lot of really hacky workarounds with the start gcode, but the best way to go about it is to home all axis and move z to 0, then you can set your z-offset using a piece of paper, if you save this z-offset the printer will properly apply it at the beginning of the print. But you cannot change it after.
The plate and glass after leveled came in very flat (>0.2mm of variation end to end) so as long as the offset is properly applied the printer seems to handle the first layer perfectly.
The other really interesting thing I found was that the machine was only really printing in the x direction. If it moved in the y direction it would squish the layer down far too much, but the x-direction was perfectly normal. I had never seen this before so I figured it must be something with the nozzle as all other axis were functioning properly. Upon removing the nozzle I found that it had been chipped at a 45 degree angle meaning that it was printing properly in the x axis but was squished in the y axis because the nozzle was actually lower in that direction.
Anyways, after a nozzle replacement and setting the z-offset manually the printer seems to be functioning phenomenally now!
Thanks Matthew much appreciated.
Was not expecting to hear that the nozzle was chipped a 45deg angle.
Appreciate the help.
