Ender 3 Pro Z-Axis Calibration – Everything You Need to Know

hey guys rob here at 3d printscape today i wanted to go over calibrating your z-axis on an indoor 3 or indoor 3 pro this would also apply to most of the printers in the creality lineup a couple weeks ago i did a video on swapping out your build plate with a glass one as i have here i was able to account for the height difference uh by using the actual uh spring wheels uh that's not always going to be the case so i wanted to make sure i went into more detail on how to actually adjust the stoppers to account for the height difference the spring wheel does give you a lot of play so first let's start with how much play the spring will actually give you all right let me grab my calibers here so right now i tighten this one side all the way down and let's go and get a measurement here [Music] that's fine all right so we're at 50 millimeters so now what i'm gonna do is loosen that all the way up see what it comes to and then that's how much play we'll be able to get from just the spring wheel itself that said some of it does have to be used to actually do the bed leveling every side is not gonna be perfectly even so we'll probably just uh we'll say half of that's actually usable so let's go and get that measurement then we'll talk about it more all right so that's all the way loose let's go and get the new measurement [Music] make sure we're in the same spot here and we're at 56.86 so let's say that we have six millimeters of give with the spring wheel like i mentioned half of that give or take will be used for actually leveling so let's say we have about three millimeters of give that's going to get a quick measurement of the standard build plate and this glass build plate so we can account for the difference right let me go ahead and turn this off to recalibrate the zero all right so the stock build plate is exactly one millimeter and let me do the same thing here and our glass build plate is 2.95 3.2 2.98 they're not perfectly flat but we'll just say it's three millimeters all right so we'll just say that they're three millimeters um there's probably a small margin of error there just because of the glass being inconsistent but what that does is it accounts for a two millimeter difference um so in this scenario you can account for the height difference between these two build plates by just using the spring wheels and re-leveling it but that's not always going to be the case uh some of the other uh glass build plates i believe the creality ones are actually thicker uh so in those so if you go in that route you might have to make some adjustments so let's talk about how to do that right here on the printer is where your z height is there's the actual stopper for it right here so when it's auto homing it'll come down hit this little stopper and then it stops on that axis there's one for the x and the y axis as well so if we wanted to raise that to account for a thicker bed all we would have to do is loosen these up a little bit [Music] and go ahead and raise this up all right now that that's loose you can see that it's still sitting here on the bottom based on where this little uh groove is that's the standard height for the printer but now we're gonna have to raise a little bit so we have a couple options um one we can just take the build plate itself kind of slide it in here if you don't just be careful not to scratch it right where that stopper is at and then tighten it up that will raise it enough to account for the actual height of the build plate uh another option is you could use really a couple things um let's go and get some measurements i grabbed a couple common household items so we can go over examples of what may or may not work here i just got a plastic fork so let's go ahead and grab some measurements on this guy this is 4.13 at the base so that might not be a good option and then at the top we're at 1.82 so really plastic silverware isn't a good option i grabbed it just because it looked like the thickness might work uh but without actually trying to sand it down or anything it's just not gonna work there are better options so i'll toss this to the side here next thing i grabbed is an iphone cable or just a standard lightning cable so let's go ahead and get a measurement on that this is 2.87 millimeters there or 1.5 at the lightning part and then at the usbc side we are at 2.41 so really the best part on this cable would be the cable itself so you could just bend this here kind of slide it in so that the actual um original groove is sitting on it then you could tighten it down and that would raise you about three millimeters give or take a shy of three so then the rest of the difference can be accounted for with the um spring wheels now again this is for this build plate uh the fork might work if you're getting a thicker build plate so it really just depends uh you can kind of just put the actual item you're looking at right up next to it kind of like that and see if the height is close as long as it's close you can account for it with the spring wheels then the last thing i grabbed was just a little dowel rod and i believe this is going to be too thick as well yeah this is 4.88 [Music] so depending on the height of the build plate that you're working with or you're wanting to change to this may or may not work as well and i lied i did grab one more thing let me go ahead and i just grabbed a basic amazon box it's nothing special but i believe that this looked close and this is 2.99 so we'll just say three so this would work perfect as well if you just wanted to cut a piece off i'll wear my scissors you can use this and just realign it here make sure you're letting it sit level and that this plastic piece i'm gonna move my hand right here is sitting flush on that on the cardboard or whatever thing that you're using then you can just go ahead and tighten one of the bolts make sure that when you are loosening them that you don't loosen it too much unless you're going to have to re-put this whole thing on there because of the grooves if the bolt pops out you're going to have to realign it all all right so the top one's now tight and i can barely slide this in there so i think we would be good and then we just tighten them both down now let's go and plug this in and i'll show you what the auto home looks like you'll be able to see that it's now higher than it was before all right i'm back and we're plugged in just powering up now all right so let's go ahead and just do an auto home [Music] so go to prepare and auto home you'll see it go through and hit each one of the sensors and then here it's lowering the z-axis now it's going to stop right there so now we raised it about three millimeters um just keep in mind that if you are switching back down to a thinner bed like the standard magnetic ones in the future that you will probably have to lower again and that if you are just going with a thinner glass bed that you're probably going to be fine with just using the spring wheels to make the adjustments really it just depends what bed you're using so i wanted to make sure that you had all of the data i believe the creality glass build plates are thicker they're like four or five millimeters so trying to make that adjustment without actually raising this z sensor uh will probably be challenging you might be able to get away with it depending upon how flat everything is to begin with but i would probably just raise the z switch at that point all right guys so that covers calibrating the z-axis as you can see the process is simple it just takes a couple minutes and you just got to get the right height the piece of cardboard in this scenario or with the spill plate worked out great same with the iphone cable the other pieces that i grabbed which were the dowel rod and the fork they were a little bit too thick for some of the thicker beds that might work out well if you have any questions on the process or feel that it should be done differently make sure to leave a comment below i'll try to get back to you within 20 to 48 hours i would love to get your feedback though make sure you guys hit that like button and subscribe if you haven't already it'll really help this channel out thank you talk to you next time

Channel: 3D Printscape

Views: 95,340

Keywords: ender 3 pro z axis calibration, 3d printer z axis calibration, Creality z axis calibration, Creality printer z axis calibration, z axis calibration, 3d printing, 3d printer, ender 3 z axis calibration, ender 3, ender 3 pro, ender 3 pro upgrades

Id: lspkdhtShgc

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2020