-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
Resurrection on the cheap part 2
This part is going to get a specific but I'm going to do my best to describe what I've found out in way it can be used for any of the various printers.
Leveling/Tramming is getting the bed close to parallel (coplaner technically) with the movement of the nozzle. Everyone in 3d printing calls it leveling but I've seen this confuse many people online who try to use a bubble level for it. Cnc people call the same thing for cnc machines tramming, but if I call it tramming I'm sure it will confuse some people also.
My machine is a mini+ so I'm hoping that what I say is applicable to all the others, if not please post about it in the discussion page and I'll try to get this page updated.
Look under the print bed and look for screws near the corners and a some sort of circular thing, I'm going to call a stationary point, kind of opposite of the screws you should find a minimum of 2 screws and one stationary point maybe up to 4 screws. To get the print bed up you can tell the printer to start printing and then unplug it when it's at the up so you can easily see under it.
The mini+ has 2 screws that use hex keys near the back and a circular thing that's the stationary point in the front middle this is 3 point leveling system.
When you have found the screws and stationary points find a tool to turn those screws, hopefully you won't need it but probably. Then plug the printer back in and while it starts up back to makerbot print to make a leveling print file.
Turn off the raft for this, this work is to make it so you don't need it. Then clear bed and add a 20mm cube. In the model settings go to scale and turn off uniform then shrink the height until it's 0.2mm tall, this when printed should make a single layer square. Duplicate the short cube so you have enough for one per screw/point. Now arrange them on the print bed so they are all close to where the screws/points are. For the Mini+ it would be one in each back corner and one front middle, this arrangement doesn't have to be prefect just kind of close.
Now try to print it. This probably won't go well but that's expected and okay. If it scrapes the bed with the nozzle cancel it and go to the utilities menu in makerbot print, then calibration and then Z-offset and move it up a few. Try again and if it still scrapes keep moving it up and trying until it doesn't, if still does at max, click run home calibration then try again.
Now that it's not scraping figure out your first square. If the printer you're working on has a stationary point reference that square first if not pick one and pretend that's your stationary point.
If that first square looks good and smooth go to the other squares step, if it isn't sticking it's probably too far away, in makerbot print go to utilities-> calibration-> Z-axis offset then move the arrow down a bit. If the print lines are overlapping with each other in makerbot print go to utilities-> calibration-> Z-axis offset and move the arrow up a bit. Repeat until the first square looks good, you can kind of ignore the squares until the next step.
Now you are looking for consistency between the squares not perfect layers. We will fix that later.
Look at the other squares and if any aren't sticking because the nozzle is too high you will adjust the screw that's "under" them to raise the corner a bit. If the lines are overlapping like the nozzle is too close you will adjust that screw to move that corner down. If they are good you're done
Run the print again.
Those squares should look at least a little better, if they look worse you went the wrong with screws. Now repeat adjusting those screws and reprinting until all your squares look consistent. If they are all a little too close that's okay you can then raise the Z-axis offset a little.
Perfect now you have properly leveled the printer. You shouldn't have to mess the actual screws much after this, you might need to adjust the Z-offset setting sometimes though so remember where that is.
If you want you can rerun the "run home calibration" command this will try to auto detect the Z offset by pushing on a specific spot with the nozzle. This would hopefully allow you to have a lower z-offset setting. If the printer was better this would make the Z-offset 0 so you didn't have to change that per smart extruder but I've not had such luck.