Hello from PA. I just bouuggt a 3d printer for my son and myself. Already having some issues or perhaps user error but looking forward to learning.
I had a really tough time getting bed level on brand new Ender-3 s1 pro had to completly almost completley losen all bed tension manually. Finally managed to print the bunny which looked great. But it seems like i have to level every print is this normal?With subsequent models i had adhesion issues and a have to make several attemps befofre i can get anything to print.
I did forget to mention after a sucessful print, i attempted another print and the print and the nozzle scraped the build plate.
I am just going to share my usual bed leveling process with you, please give it a try and report back with how it works. If you don’t have any luck just let me know and we can dig into it a bit deeper.
I always start with tightening the leveling nuts up all the way, you want to try and keep the springs as compressed as you can that way the bed will stay levelled.
Next you will want to fold a piece of standard printer paper in half, lower your z axis down to 0 and turn the motors off, move the hotend to a corner of your bed and put the paper underneath of it. You will want to slowly loosen the leveling nut until your nozzle just barely scrapes against the paper. I have always thought of it similar to a buzzing. Once you get this you will want to move to the next corner, keep going around until all of the corners are the same. The next step is to set the z-offset, I usually just start a print and then adjust it while the print is going, often times I will slice a file and add a couple of more passes to the skirt, this gives me time to properly set the z-offset before the actual print starts.
Once you have all of this done you should be pretty much good to go, the bed will slowly come out of being level but the bed leveling sensor will help to calibrate that. Usually I will only relevel the bed if I notice that the first layers are starting to come out wonky or if I move the printer around anywhere. Other than that I usually don’t need to touch it, as long as you keep the nuts tight they can hold the bed shape pretty well.
@Rsprenkle no it is not at all normal for a printer to change. Especially correctly ‘leveled’ (Trammed is actually correct, level really isn’t anything to do with it.) it should hold. This is not expected.
I tend to try the simplest answers first. Please don’t be offended but ‘levelling issues’ are very common when people start. Did you get it correctly levelled? I usually find new people place the nozzle too close. Paper, is variable, I suggest a cheap business card.
It is possible that the bed springs are poor but that almost never decreases the distance it increases.
Mathews instructions are great. I would expect your issue to be more related to user inexperience than printer error.
There are errors that can happen. Again the most common answer is a bad bed. You should also check your bed, it might have nothing to do with inexperience. Take a metal ruler, or something straight and hold it corner to corner on the bed, there should be no gaps. If there are the bed is warped, this can also cause tramming problems!
It worked for a couple prints and i did not use auto level then prints went wonky again. I tried the listed procedure but the bed knobs had to be totally loose to get close to the recomended gap. I had messaged creality but they never responded. Not sure i want to keep this thing…
Did you ensure that after homing the printer you used the menu to move the z-axis down to 0? You shouldn’t have to loosen the nuts very far at all, generally I only have to give them a couple of turns once they are all tightened up.
Perennial issue with the ‘cheap’ printers they are generally speaking not user friendly. The fully automatic systems (there are a few, Bambu being one) are worth looking at they are better out of the box. My work looked at buying a Bambu a while back, the pre sales support was not great. I don’t know what the tech support was like.
My advise ask the manufacturer pre sales questions before you buy I always use that as a support gauge.
Your printer is got something wrong. I would look at the end stops it might be they are out of place and you can lower it carefully. The bed springs should be partly compressed.
@Rsprenkle Have you tried setting a z-offset at all? Most of the time the printers will come with something stock from the factory but it may be that your printer did not come with one for some strange reason.
The z-offset is the difference in height between the end of the nozzle and the end of the bed probe when it is fully extended. You can try roughly measuring this with a ruler/ calipers, then when you go to try and level your bed you will want to move that far down past 0.
For example, if you measure an offset of 2mm you will want to move the nozzle down to 0 and then an additional 2mm down to account for the difference. So you would be looking to move down to -2 on your z-axis.
Z-offset calibration can be daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it you can usually get it going pretty fast. Like anything else it is just part of the learning curve. Like @kitedemon said, many of the brand new printers that are coming out are using load cells in order to automatically calibrate the z-offset, this vastly simplifies things and helps to take some of the guess work out of leveling the bed.
Try doing the z-offset trick I mentioned earlier and leveling your bed that way, remember to re-tighten the nuts all the way up. After that is done you will want to re-adjust your z-offset in order to achieve the perfect first layer. This can be done using the methods I mentioned in an above comment, if you need more help with this step please let me know and I can give you some further pointers.
Thanks for the help. Yes tried adjusting z off set to no avail. I am throwing in the towel on the ender due to their unresposiveness and purchashing bambu lab p1p.
I am sure i will have more quetions in the future.
If you’re going to spend on a P1P may I suggest you get the P1S instead? The enclosure definitely helps in keeping it clean and quiet. And it comes with the extras like the camera, cabinet fan and filter.
Would love too but already pushing my budget. It is my understanding both have camera and can print sides for p1p just wouldnt have fan and filter. Either way super excited hope to get my son interested so we can have a shared hobby. Thanks.
Yes, you can print sidepanels which can be a fun project, you can also customize them and make the machine your own!
If you are looking for something a bit more professional you can also purchase aftermarket kits to enclose the machine, I can’t remember the price off the top of my head, but its something that can be done in the future once you budget allows for it.
