3D Printer Bed Leveling - You Are Doing It All WRONG! Try This Instead!

if you're checking out this video you're probably struggling or frustrated with leveling your 3d print bed and trust me i've been there but i'm going to go through all the techniques that i've learned over four years of 3d printing on how you can get really good bed adhesion and that perfect bed level using paper before we begin let's talk a little bit about the paper we're going to use to level our 3d printer now most people recommend using sort of traditional printer or copy paper from our computers and this is hammer mill 24 pound paper it's a very common type of paper and if i measure this with the micrometer you'll notice that it measures in at about 0.11 millimeters of thickness a lot of other pieces of paper a little bit lower weights 20 pound paper book may come in at about 0.10 millimeters of thickness here's the thing the optimal gap that we would like on a 3d printer is point zero seven to point zero eight millimeters so when we're using this sort of traditional paper in a little strip like this we're actually getting a little too much gap now it will work and many people get fantastic results using this but i'm sure that they're getting a little bit more tension when they're using the paper and the paper is a little stiffer and can be a little harder to sort of dial in easily but here's what i recommend and this is what i started using and it was a game change for me as far as i know no one else has ever really recommended using this and that is using a thermal receipt now this is a typical receipt you'll get at all your box stores grocery stores pizza places from you know from gas pumps things like that and this is the sort of paper that is on a spool and it rolls out and it uses heat to transfer the image and the numbers and letters on the paper and if i measure this with a micrometer you'll see that it comes in at .06 millimeters so it's a little thinner and it's a little less than the optimal but that'll give us a little bit more bite to the bed so if you're struggling with prints midway they're sort of lifting up midway and failing your print going to this thermal receipt might give you that little bit more bite to the bed that you're looking for the other thing i find out with this thermal receipt is that because it's really thin and very lightweight and it has a little bit of a slippery surface to it it's really reactive under the bed in the nozzle so you'll notice when you're getting a little bit too much pinch from the nozzle to the bed okay so are too small a gap and it slides very easily and you can feel a lot of vibration through this piece of paper so give a thermal receipt a try if it doesn't work for you you can try some other different pieces of paper sometimes you can even cut strips up in a magazine or something like that but thermal receipt was the game change for me hopefully it will be for you now that we've talked a little bit about the paper we're going to use let's be sure that our 3d printer is up to spec and ready to print so to start with let's be sure at full operating temperature for the bed and the nozzle and then let's be sure that we have a really nice and clean bed surface either using isopropyl alcohol or maybe a wet paper towel with just a little bit of soap and water really rung out well get that nice and clean that will help with our bed adhesion then we want to be sure that our ecocentric nuts and belts are adjusted properly everything should move nice and smooth and nice and firm we shouldn't get any wobble in the bed or we shouldn't get any wobble at all out of the x carriage or x axis here everything should be nice and tight if you're not 100 sure about this i'll throw a reference video up here what to check for to be sure that you're good to go this will really affect uh getting good first layers down if we have things moving it's gonna mess everything up okay now let's get into the bed leveling technique but before we do that do me a favor hit that like button down below it really does help me out all right let's get going first thing we're going to do is hit auto home on our 3d printer that'll put the carriage in this position right here the home position and then we want to disable steppers that'll free everything up we want to move the bed forward about an inch to inch and a half and the carriage over an inch to inch and a half the zone we're looking for here is right in this sort of sweet spot inch inch and a half in on both sides we don't want to try to level the bed right on the corner okay we want to take our receipt fold it in half this will just give you a little bit more rigidity make it a little easier for getting under the bed now using your eyes to see here i can see that i have a pretty nice size gap so the paper will slide over under nice and easy and if you notice that we're pinching the bed all right and we can't get the paper under here go ahead and just sort of um you know tighten it up and create a little gap so we can get that paper under there all right so slide it under all right now here's the key here we want to keep the paper in motion the entire time all right we're just moving it back and forth nice and easy like this and we're turning the dial to for the bed just three to five millimeters at a time so just small little increments very slowly as we're moving the paper and we're looking for that point to where we just start feeling a little bit of tension on the paper alright so you're gonna just feel nothing nothing nothing nothing and then you're gonna just start feeling a little bit the drag of the paper as it's moving that's what we're looking for here and if you do this right you should feel the vibration of the fans coming through here into the paper so as you're moving it you'll feel a little bit of like the paper almost feels like it's going through all right so just like vibrate a little bit that's the sweet spot that's exactly what we're looking for we don't want to feel like it's just dragging through it okay just nice you almost feel like a little bit of vibration as we're sort of at that just really fine point but touching and then all the little grains of the paper is removing it will vibrate through with the fans all right so here we go keeping it moving and we're going to slowly turn the dial here all right till we feel that first point of tension right there i can feel that little bit of vibration so there's no tension here just a couple degrees and i feel that tension there and you can see that the paper is moving but it's it's reacting so it's just a little probably a little tight sliding nice and easy keeping it moving i can just barely feel it if i turn just a little bit more now i feel that tension if i go a little bit more from this point you'll notice i'm binding up the paper that would be too tight okay so that means we're our gap is too small so go ahead and just move that back you have movement here nice and easy this is the key right here slowly move it so i feel that tension right there that's the perfect point right there that's the sweet spot just a little bit of tension on the paper we're good to go now if we have this okay so loose if we have we turn this too much okay so right there that's the sweet spot if i turn this a little bit more and i pull you'll notice i really feel it dragging as it's coming out and i can actually see on the paper where it's made a crease it's almost like a little indentation there in the receipt that's too tight okay so that means we have to too little gap all right so then break that gap again all right so one more time here nice and easy the paper is moving freely i slowly tighten up the gap feel that tension that's the sweet spot right there all right anymore it's gonna start binding any less it's moving too freely i feel the vibration coming through here this is a perfect spot level right here all right we're gonna go just move the carriage over we're gonna do the same thing on this corner and i can see just with my eyes i can see that i've got too much or too uh not enough gap in there so we'll go ahead and just tighten this up a little bit put the paper under there all right moving freely slowly turning keeping it moving all right and you see that i just now it's binding up that's a little too much back it off a little bit and just look that's that just that little bit of degree makes a difference between it binding and not so we want pretty much right in the middle of those two all right so it's moving freely with just a little bit more all right there we go and now i'm just starting to get that tension notice the papers i can see a little bit of friction on here but it's not making the paper completely fold up if i actually go a little bit more here now i can't slide the receipt at all and it's pinching okay so nice and easy all right that's good we're gonna move the bed forward and then about an inch and a half in right here as we adjust these other corners we're actually disrupting this corner and even though we might start off with this like bigger gap every time we go and start leveling we'll notice that the adjustments get less and less and less until we're at that perfect spot and then we're just keep going around and you may have to do this three times five times typically for me i do three maybe four times going around until basically i'm finding that i'm not really making any adjustment or if i do it's just so incremental maybe one degree and then i think that that's a good spot to just say okay we're good that should be good all right now we're going to go ahead and hit print and now as it's starting to print here i have this set for skirt and i definitely recommend especially as a beginner that you go ahead and run the skirt and i usually suggest maybe like three perimeters here and what that'll do is that'll give us a chance to sort of really be sure that we've got a nice even bed level what we're looking for is the lines to be going down consistently on all of the corners if we see okay looking really good nice and consistent i can see all my lines are connected here here's a quick little demonstration so you know what to look for whether you're getting too little gap or too much now this bed i deliberately canted at an angle like so on this side of the bed it is the bed is touching the nozzle and on this side i have a very large gap so if you notice here immediately super thin this is the nozzle literally just scraping along the glass trying to force out whatever it can sort of creates this almost thin translucent look i did hear a little extruder pops from uh when i was printing and that just means the filament is just not even flowing can cause a causing clogging issue as we go along here you'll notice there's these little ridges here from little valleys this is uh basically causing an over extrusion issue the nozzle is still too close it is flowing but the plastic doesn't know where to go it's trying to extrude a certain amount of plastic for a certain amount of space and there's basically not enough space so it starts squishing off to the sides and then coming down here this was actually looks very good this is a perfect good adhesion everything looks really nice in this sort of little short band here and then as we come along here we're starting to get a little bit too much gap and you'll notice that there's these little hair lines uh in between each of the lines that are being extruded this is too much gap and we're not getting that squish of the layers that's sort of pressing against the other sides so normally this would all be filled in because you're getting a little squish the filament sort of flows off to the sides and connects everything up and then as we get over here we're getting into a serious too much gap situation there's all these holes and pockets here it's a good indicator that the nozzle is just extruding in the air it's not really bonding very well or very little this is not even connected you'll get all these little weird uh things like this and then you'll notice on the skirt normally this is supposed to be round like this but because it's printing in the air as it's coming around here the filament is not bonding at all in fact there's look you can see it's a little bit of movement here it's basically going to the path of leaf resistance you'll sort of see the straight line and that normally went over here but as it shrank up it it went straight like this and you can see these little gaps in the lines here this is uh very typical what you'd see if you've got too much gap so that's basically it too much gap here you need to lower the nozzle this area right here is really nice and then right here we're definitely too close to the bed with the nozzle and we're basically creating an issue where the filament can't flow that's pretty much going to wrap up this video on how to level the bed using the paper technique this is one of these tricky techniques it's kind of a knack to get the handle of it also you have paper that has different thicknesses i do think the thermal receipt does give a little more consistent results if you're interested in learning how to use the feeler gauge method i will throw a link in the description up here for you on that this is definitely a much more consistent method and you can have varying levels or different the thicknesses of the feeler gauge give you a little bit more adjustability and see what works for you um if you have a question regarding this video do me a favor leave me a comment down below i will try to get back to it in about 24 hours also in the description i will have links for um you know micrometers and filament and all the different things so 3d printers and all that kind of stuff if you're interested in i'll have links down below if you haven't done so already hit that like and subscribe down below you know totally blows my mind it gets me super excited to produce this content for you but until that next video i'm out you

Channel: tr3nD maker

Views: 99,065

Keywords: how to level bed 3d printer bed with paper, how to level 3d printer bed paper, level bed paper, 3d printer bed level, first layer, 3d printer, ender 3 level bed, ender 3 level bed paper, level 3d printer, level 3d printer paper, 3d printer paper, how to level bed, how to level 3d printer, how to level ender 3, how to level ender 3 pro, ender 3 v2, level ender 3, level print bed, tutorial, how to, tutorial level 3d printer, tutorial level ender 3, leveling 3d printer

Id: MhIE0ms-n7U

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 11 2021