Adjusting Z Offset on your 3D printer

hey everybody my name is Tom Tullis this is the tomb of 3D printed Horrors and today we're going to take a look at adjusting your Z offset value on your 3D printer now before we get started if you would please click that like And subscribe button and if you have time leave a quick comment those three things really help me with the YouTube algorithm uh that algorithm no longer promotes small channels like this like it used to uh it makes it very difficult to get uh my videos out there get new subscribers so if you are watching this if you like what you see and you want me to do more videos like this uh click that like button click that subscribe button and if you got time to leave a few words as a comment I would really really appreciate it it really helps me out thank you um not every printer gives you this option in the LCD menu it's in the firmware uh most newer creality printers do uhad does uh bamboo Labs any of your better printers or newer of the you know cheaper ones like creality they all give you this ability to do this now on older like a original Ender 3 if you if your nozzle was too close or too far from your print bed you had to adjust the print bed you if in the case of an under three you would adjust the four corner wheels and raise the bed up or down to get it closer or further away from the nozzle that is not the case anymore now uh if your bed is adjustable you adjust the bed to get it level but then you go into the LCD menu and adjust the Z offset to fine-tune the gap between for this is all about the first layer by the way but when printing the first layer the height the nozzle is away from the print bed for beginning to print that first layer so I've had a number of people uh message me in the last few weeks asking how to do this and they didn't understand whether they needed a positive number or a negative number so I just thought it'd be a good idea to do a quick video on this and go over how to do it I'm going to show this being done on an ender3 V3 se but it's the same idea for any printer that has a z offset option in the LCD now um when your printer homes and you have your uh home zero for the uh z-axis the nozzle will be above the bed that is your zero so if you're wanting to lower your nozzle and get it closer to the bed it's going to be a negative number now this is the part that confuses people the higher the number the lower the nozzle will go and the reason for that is as you can see on this graphic the further away from zero you get is a larger number minus 3 is going to be lower than min-2 min-2 is going to be lower than minus1 and minus1 is lower than zero so if you need to get closer to your bed than where you are now you need to go to a greater number but it needs to be a negative number so what exactly are you looking for when doing this well here's an example of What's Happen happening if your first layer seems really rough your nozzle is too close to the bed and what it's doing is it's depositing the melted filament onto the bed but at the same time it's scraping through it it's not giving the filament enough room to just be deposited the nozzle is also kind of like dragging a trench through it so if you have these little trenches parallel trenches in the first layer of your print means your nozzle is too too low and you want to back it off a bit you want to go to a lower negative number on your Z offset so if you're at say -2.1 mm you might go to minus 1.7 or something but it'll be a smaller number to get you rising up and heading in towards zero now you can also be too high in this case the nozzle is too high off the bed for the first layer and the individual lines of filament that it lays down are not getting squished um in the previous graphic they were being merged together and this one they're not even touching each other side to side and you don't want this either because it creates a very weak bond with the bed the print is likely going to break away and the individual lines of filament don't bond with the uh adjacent lines of filament so you don't want this uh if you were to print a first layer like this and pull it off you could actually pull apart the individual lines of filament just with your fingers so if the nozzle is too far from the bed you want to increase that negative number if you're at uh minus 1.5 mm you might go to minus 1.7 1.8 or even minus 1.2 but you want to increase the number to drop that nozzle down ultimately what you're looking for is something like this you want the individual lines filament squished enough that they merge into the adjacent line on either side but you don't want the nozzle dragging through it and creating those trenches that you saw in the first graphic and it's just something you're going to have to Tinker around with and find that perfect number or something close enough to it for your taste um on your LCD with the Z offset but this is what you're looking for uh the individual lines of filament are merging but the nozzle is not so low that it's scraping through them so what's your you're going to do and this is again uh each printer and each firmware is going to be a little different but this is an ender3 V3 SE and it's going to be pretty much like this on most other printers but on the SE you're going to go to your main LCD menu and select prepare then you're going to go down to Z offset and select that and you can dial in whatever number you want and you can even live adjust this while printing so if you've got a large uh square or something you want to print that has a large first layer you can fine-tune this as it prints until you find that sweet spot once you've found the number you want you need to go into the control menu and select store configuration so it stores that new zoff set number otherwise as soon as you turn that printer off and back on again that new value will be lost so make sure you uh store that new number once you found it and that's it that's all you've got to do to fine-tune your Z offset um the ender3 V3 SE automatically determines the Z offset most times it gets it right but sometimes it's a little bit off and it helps to be able if you really want to fine-tune your printer to go in and manually adjust this so that's it if you would please click that like And subscribe button and thank you for [Music] watching keep

Channel: Tomb of 3D Printed Horrors

Views: 40,784

Keywords: 3d printer, 3d printing, creality, D&D, 3d printable terrain, 3d printer construction, 3d printable dungeon tile, 3d printed dungeon tile, Ender-3, how to 3d print dungeon tiles, How to 3d print miniatures, 3d printed miniatures, Ender 3 v2 neo, neo, ender 3 neo, 3d printer assembly, Auto bed leveling, cr touch, Ender-3 V3 Se, Ender-3 V3 SE assembly, z offset, adjusting z offset, z height, nozzle height, how to fix ender 3d printer, ender 3 tips and tricks

Id: gkfT2Prrfb0

Length: 7min 34sec (454 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2023