Ender 3 - Fix Warped Bed, Bed Leveling, and the Best Print Surface

welcome back everyone today i'm going to be talking about 3d printer bed leveling or i think more correctly tramming as well as how to get a really good first layer on every print you make so i'm going to kind of chop this video in a couple different segments first i'm going to talk about the build surface and getting a good first layer surface finish oh and we are also going to look at fixing a warped bed because my bed is quite warped and then after that i'm going to talk about how to tram out the bed and make it nice and parallel to the print head and that will result in a good first layer and kind of circle back to the build material so i'm gonna chop this into sections you'll see chapters down below skip to what you'd like to see for now though we're going to head over to the bench so we can get an up close look at these first layers on these parts so here's a small collection of parts i've printed so far and when i first started doing this i was using the original build surface for 3d printer this was the original build surface again this is a just a basic ender 3 and this is their removable print bed it's pretty flexible it has a rough textured surface and that leaves what i think is actually a pretty nice rough textured surface on the bottom of the part and i like that because it kind of matches the roughness of the top of the part so the bottom and the top are more similar then after that i switched over to this material this is g10 or fr4 or gorolite and it is basically just circuit board material it's fiberglass laminations with some resin um i bought this off mcmaster car for about 12 bucks and it came as a one square foot section so 12 inches by 12 inches then i had to cut it down to roughly 9 by 9 to match the ender 3 print bed one note on that just measure out what you want then use a box cutter a really sturdy box cutter to score on one side then score on the other side because if you do not score both sides thoroughly you'll end up with some delamination when you go to snap it off so definitely be aware of that the kind of surface finish you can expect is something like that really nice now you can see i have some under extrusion right here and right here but this is before i had the my bed perfectly leveled and trammed once i got it perfectly level and trammed i got parts that look like this and i have some you know more close-up macro shots that i'll fill in right here and as you can see those turned out pretty well here is a thanos bust that i did um [Music] a little bit of under extrusion in here but that was more from a not so great first layer because of tramming this is the only part i've done since the uh the tramming and i think the results are much better this is a print duct or a sorry a fan duct that i printed really really rough and fast i just wanted this thing out as fast as i could get it so you can see a lot of print artifacts not a great print but i just want a fan duct to uh to experiment with for better cooling and then with this thing i'll make some better parts and make a better version of this and this one you can also see that first layer and some of this isn't perfect like on this edge over there but on this end it's a little more squished so that's the kind of surface finishes you can expect with this build surface the other nice thing about this build surface is the parts the the first layer sticks down like glue it it is very difficult to get the filament to not stick to the surface when it's warm but as soon as it cools off it pops right off just like that it's beautiful the original ender print surface i had a really hard time getting parts to consistently stick down correctly but then they also had a hard a slightly harder time pulling off at the end and some will never come off so that's why i really like this it's really cheap and it is a beautiful build surface now let's go back over to the machine and look at how i trammed the machine and got everything nice and parallel so now we're back at the machine still using the mini binder clips to hold this thing on and they work perfectly well actually i kind of like this solution binder clips are super handy so let's look at making my print bed less warped there's two tools you're going to need for this a fairly reliable straight edge and a feeler gauge now the thickness of gauge that i used was 0.1 millimeters or 4 thousandths of an inch because of a couple of reasons 1.1 millimeters is um it's about half a build layer height for a 3d printer because the standard layer height is 0.2 millimeters so as long as you're within 0.1 millimeters on your first layer you should be pretty good and trying to get thinner than this is just a lot more work so i think this is the the best way to go and keep in mind that this material is rigid enough that it will span imperfections in the bed so long as you get it globally flat so up front here the bed is is very flat it's almost perfect but over here was the worst um and right now i have it so that the 0.1 will not fit under however there still is a bit of a gap there and if i go under in this area there's still a gap but between this area and this area this is still again it's rigid enough to span that gap without any major deflection so i have several layers built up kind of just you know feeling out where things are i could probably put another piece right here in fact i probably will after this video and that will span this gap you just want to feel around and wherever it's low add some tape this tape right here is just normal aluminum tape for like hvac ducts and this is this stuff is pretty thin i would recommend against getting the thicker stuff um because your resolution of how accurate you can map out your surface is going to be a little bit worse where this thinner stuff although you'll have to use more layers will allow you to get you know something that is on the smaller level more flat for example this piece you can see i rounded off that's because over here in this area it's already flat enough and i didn't want to have just a sharp drop off from uh from where i had the aluminum tape to where i don't have it so this is a really easy way to fix a warp bed i mean you could also just get a thick sheet of glass but that adds a lot of mass to your y-axis and that will lead to more ringing and it'll make your step promoters have to work harder so that's why i like this solution um it's just it's really simple and elegant and it's very cheap so next let's look at how you tram the bed i'm not going to mess up the tram of my bed since i worked so hard to get it all parallel in the first place but i will show you the process and you should have a fairly good understanding of how it works after that the first thing i did was i took the what the z-axis limit switch and i removed it from the machine because i don't really care about where it is right away i want it out of the way then i took all four all four adjusters and ran them up a little bit from where i had them and that way um i have movement that i can move up and down next i brought my z-axis down do it very gently and slowly don't uh don't force your stepper motors and i brought it to um to the point where just by hand i could get a sheet of paper and this is a fairly thin sheet of paper actually this is an old uh flag version for my symbol um that i made and you just move it until it barely touches and i'm also going to move my x and y and then you want it roughly above the center of the adjustment screw something else that is important is to make sure that you do not have a little piece of filament hanging out of the extruder i happen to have that because as it's cooling down it kind of leaks so remove that otherwise you'll get inaccurate and inconsistent results and for the record i'm doing this cold i'm not doing this hot so bring down your z-axis until you just feel it drag just a little bit and you can kind of determine for yourself how much drag you want you can either have a fair amount of drag or just you know just barely touching and i would suggest as you're doing it initially have more drag and then then you'll know for sure that you have good contact with your piece of paper so because now um your z-axis is just kind of floating on its own you can bump it up or down especially down if you're pushing on this extruder head a little too much so just find a tool and then gently push it as as parallel with the x-axis as you can and go over here feel it and then move the adjuster until it feels as similar to this side as possible then use your tool go back over to this side and feel it all right go back and forth i don't know four or five times whatever you think it takes to make them feel nearly identical at that point move the y-axis to the other end of the bed and repeat that and make this one feel as similar to this one as you can once they feel fairly similar and you should only have to go back go back and forth again about four or five times go to the other side and do this with side over again because as you adjust one it's going to affect how all of them are it's not going to affect the adjustment of the other four but it's going to affect the parallelism between all of them and then go back here and then what i do is instead of going from left to right i will measure i will try and even out from front to back and try and make these two equal and then those two equal once all four feel the same and this should maybe only take you at most five minutes then go to the center and see how the center feels it should feel it should feel the same as all the other ones if you have a flat build surface in my case even with this fr4 the center is a little bit firmer than the corners but i'm willing to accept that because on a first layer a little bit more squish in my opinion is more acceptable than um than the extruder nozzle being too far away from the build surface and getting a weak or you know um an underextruded first layer i'd rather have it over extruded than underextruded from there i would i then reinstalled the limit switch for the z-axis so that it just barely clicked where i had the z-axis position for where i leveled it after that i then made sure that i wasn't going to have any crashes so i removed the binder clip on this corner and i had it auto home with wherever i set this in fact i'm just going to power up the machine and have it auto home and show you how i did the process of leveling the bed again with accounting for the limit switch so i'm going to go into the menu here go to prepare go to auto home the z-axis will now be slightly higher or lower than you initially had it when you did that first bed leveling so the print nozzle should still be parallel with the entire print bed but it will have a z offset either up or down based on where you put your limit switch so now what you want to do is go back into prepare and go to the menu that says move axis and you want to move your z axis up by let's just say one millimeter you should hear it unclick the limit switch so now you know your nozzle will for sure be above the print surface so you're not going to have a crash now you just go into moving your y-axis you can use the course 10 millimeter setting and bring it so that it's above this first this first adjustment screw and we're gonna move the x okay and now there should be plenty of room for your piece of paper to go under so now go back to your z offset or not the z offset go back to the move axis for z and go to the point one millimeter setting and then bring it down until it's point two millimeters off the bed and make sure that it's still not going to crash into the build plate go down to point one you should still have room once it hits zero you should hear the limit switch click at this point you should have the same amount of drag as you did before if you don't if it's more or less than it was before adjust this foot adjust this adjusting screw and then through the the ui here adjust the entire bed to be re-leveled with the new z height that you have from your limit switch and that's all it takes now once you do that you go through all four corners again and then double check in the center you should have it completely trimmed in the reason why you want to do this twice or why i think it's important to do it twice is that doing it manually um by moving the axes by hand is a lot faster than having to fiddle out fiddle around in the menus then once you've reinstalled your limit switch and it'll be off slightly at least you've got all the screws very very close to where they're going to end up in the final adjustment so with this information you should be able to fix your warped bed and level out the entire build surface once you do that all of your prints should start turning out like this this is a maker coin that i just made today um i figured i'd throw my hat in the ring for maker coins i just put the channel logo in and this was was fairly easy to make i'll actually link a video in the description from angus of maker's muse out of australia and he has an awesome video tutorial on how to make these they're very simple and if you're looking for an easy first project to do in cad i'd recommend this this is cool in it you can make you know your own customized and or personalized coin another thing that i think is important about making sure your build surface is level and flat is it gives you a lot more confidence in the machine to put down that first layer so you're not having to watch with eagle eyes where it's putting it down and then have it not be right and wonder is it will my part lift off the bed because when you're printing something that's taller like this if there's enough drag on the top of the part as the extruder is going by it can pull this off and then you're gonna you know if you're not watching your machine you're gonna end up with some 3d printer spaghetti look up on google images 3d printer spaghetti it is not something you want to have so i think that's all i have for today let me know if you have any questions about leveling or flattening your build plate it's really a simple process if you just you know set yourself a cup of coffee off to the side and take your time rushing through this is not going to help you just get yourself your feeler gauge a nice straight edge metal is preferable to plastic and a thin piece of paper thicker office paper will work but the thinner the better i think as long as it's not tissue paper and of course some duct tape and that's i mean it's really simple so until next time see ya

Channel: Casey Schmidt

Views: 40,739

Keywords: Casey Schmidt, 3d printing, fix warped bed, how to, diy, level print bed, tramming, adjusting, fine tuning, g10, fr4, goralite, fiberglass, ender 3, cr-10, creality, prusa, feeler gauge, aluminum tape, makers muse, Angus, maker coin, fixing bed warp, print surface, first layer, layer adhesion

Id: o5m_bxZAjIg

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 09 2022