STOP Bed Leveling Between Every Print! - 3 Surprisingly Simple Fixes For Your 3d Printer

one of 3d printing's biggest problems especially when you're new is leveling your bed there are a number of reasons why this gives so many people so many problems and in this video i'm going to give you three simple things you can do to put your leveling issues to bed once and for all stay with me till the end because the third reason is something i hardly ever see anybody talking about and i believe is the main reason why some people can never quite get on top of their bed leveling issues i see a huge amount of people with bed leveling problems and in some extreme cases people are spending hours leveling their bed between every print this is not normal i take roughly about five minutes to level my bed and the only time i ever re-level it is if i've changed a component or if i accidentally move one of the bed level adjusters this means i can sometimes go months without re-leveling my bed first let's discuss one major issue that confuses a lot of people bed leveling this name has become the most common but it's a wholly inaccurate term what we are actually doing is most accurately described as tramming the bed according to the collins english dictionary tram means a fine adjustment that ensures correct function or alignment tramming the bed is basically aligning the print surface to the x and y axis that is all what we're not trying to do is make the bed level with the surface that your printer sits on the frame of the printer or the center of the earth what can also confuse the issue is because of the way that popular printers like the end of three find the zero position of the z-axis we need to set the z-height at the same time as trimming the bed what you need to remember though is that they are two different things and need to be considered separately so how does your bed go out of alignment once it's been set as we've seen tramming the bed is simply aligning the print surface to the x and y axis the only way it can go out of alignment is if one of these things moves with that in mind let's look at three key areas that need attention if we are to solve our bed leveling issues i'm going to assume here that you know how to tram your bed if you don't then check out the link at the end of the video and down in the description below where i explain the process so onto the three things you need to focus on to lock in your bed alignment for months as i do number one now this may seem obvious but you need to make sure your bed isn't moving many people tell you the first upgrade you need to make to your printer is to replace your standard bed springs with silicon spacers but from a physics point of view silicon spaces are just stiffer springs exactly the same effect can be achieved by just tightening all your bed adjustment knobs so that your springs are more compressed as a guide look to compress your springs to about two-thirds of their uncompressed length with your printer turned off see if you can feel any movement in your bed try gently pulling up one side at a time to see if you can feel any play do the same front to back and if you can feel any play anywhere take your time track it down and eliminate it the most likely place for any movement is in the bed rollers eliminating play here will take careful adjustment to ensure you don't go too far and cause too much friction in the bed rollers the best way to check that you've not gone too far is to make sure that every roller can still slip on the guide rail and turn with a little force by hand only once any play here has been eliminated make sure that your bed adjustment knobs are not turning on their own setting the correct spring tension should have taken care of this but try marking each adjustment knob with some tape or a paint pen to make sure 100 they aren't moving while you're printing once you've ruled out bed and adjustment knob movement you can be confident that your bed is not your issue now some of you may be thinking well what about heat surely when the bed heats up it moves well no not really yes heat will cause your bed and print surface to expand slightly if you have your bed adjustment screws rigidly locked in position with some sort of solid mounts then your bed could warp as it heats up this is why manufacturers use springs and not rigid mounts for the bed these mounts allow for a small amount of horizontal expansion of the bed material without any vertical movement that would affect the alignment with the x and y axis this is also the reason why i stick with the standard spring setup the physics makes sense and it works if you're enjoying this video then hit like and think about subscribing i make regular content to help people with 3d printing and other projects the second area to pay close attention to is your z-height sensor this is not strictly a bed tramming issue but as we said before we need to consider the zed height when tramming the bed if your bed height sensor is misbehaving you'll get inconsistent first layer results which many misdiagnose as a bed leveling issue there are many different ways for a 3d printer to sense the z-height position the most simple is a mechanical switch but a bl touch a cr touch or any kind of proximity sensor is effectively doing the same job as far as the printer is concerned when it comes to z height automatic bed leveling is another misnomer that we need to look at in a separate video as again it's a separate process to trimming the bed but is often confused as being the same thing to see if your zed height sensor is giving inconsistent results try homing your printer five times in a row and see if the z height goes to the exact same point every time if it doesn't your sensor most likely needs replacing the third and i believe most important area to focus on is your x-axis gantry level if your bed has no play and is consistently staying parallel on your y-axis and your printer is consistently homing to the same z height then the only place left for movement is your x-axis how can the x-axis gantry go out of level though well actually pretty easily if it's only driven on one side like my end of three if you can move one side of your gantry up and down independently of the other side then it's very possible that any bed levelling issues you have can be attributed here if the non-driven side of your gantry has a lot of resistance then when the driven side is pushed up the non-driven side is going to lag behind changing the plane that the x-axis moves on same happens when the lead screw pulls one side down except now your x-axis is out in the other direction hopefully it's easy to see that any movement and excess resistance on your x-axis gantry can cause your x-axis to continually move trying to tram your bed to this axis then becomes almost impossible try taking some manual measurements after driving your z height to different positions and then see if there's any variation between each side if there is then this is a problem you have to fix to have any chance of getting any consistent printing results so what can we do about it well there are two options to completely remove the possibility of the two sides of the gantry moving independently of each other you could install another lead screw and then connect the two together with a belt that is exactly what i did on my cr10s pro even though this printer comes with dual lead screws as standard they aren't mechanically linked and every time you turn the printer off the two stepper motors would go out of sync and you'd have to tram the bed every time you turn the printer back on the other option which has zero cost is to carefully align and adjust your x-axis gantry so that it stays level all of the time every print is going to be a little bit different but these are some steps you can go through to try and improve things for yourself firstly your frame needs to be straight and most importantly your two vertical extrusions must be parallel one way to ensure this is to loosen the fixings of one side top and bottom and move the gantry to the bottom before nipping up the bottom bolts and then to the top before nipping the top bolts then go back and fully tighten the bottom and then the top the gantry should keep the two vertical extrusions apart and act as a spacer as you do the bolts up once you're happy that your frame is parallel you need to check that your x-axis gantry is at 90 degrees to the driven side vertical extrusion if you can get to the fixings to loosen them while you align the gantry and then tighten them again then happy days but i couldn't do that on the end of three i would have to completely remove the gantry from the top of the printer before aligning everything on the bench and then reassembling i went through this process on my end of 3 version 2 in great detail in my assembly and setup video give that a look if you have this printer it's also a good idea at this point to back off the tension on the non-driven side rollers leave these loose until you have the gantry at 90 degrees to the frame once you're happy that the gantry is straight you also now need to make sure that the non-driven side is straight too if possible loosening the fixings pushing into the frame and then tightening the fixings again should do the job all you need to do now is readjust the tension in the non-driven side rollers as with all the adjustment rollers you should be able to just about turn them by hand once they're tight with these though you can afford to go very slightly looser than with the other side just keep checking to see if you have any play in the gantry and whether one side lags behind when you move the driven side up and down take your time to get this adjusted as best you can if you get this right you may never have to tram your bed again congratulations if you've worked your way through all of these steps then if nothing else you've improved the operation of your printer by aligning everything correctly and possibly cured your bed leveling woes tram your bed and try driving each axis through full movement check all four corners of your bed again there should be no difference to how you just trammed it if anything has moved find the cause and eliminate it you won't enjoy 3d printing until you do check out the links in the description for a few tools that may help you when completing the different stages in this video i'll also link to the other videos that i've mentioned too leave me a comment if anything in this video has helped you or made you aware of something that could be causing you a problem click here for a video on tramming your bed or click here for another video you might like thanks for watching

Channel: Ricky Impey

Views: 335,508

Keywords: 3d printer, bed level, bed leveling, ender 3 bed leveling issues, 3d printer bed leveling, tramming, tramming 3d printer, bed tramming, ender 3 v2 bed leveling, 3d printing, bed levelling, 3d printer bed levelling, first layer, perfect first layer, troubleshooting, fix, tutorial, fix bed leveling, stop bed leveling, 3d printer problem, solve bed leveling, cure bed leveling

Id: 9eQ_rBzfm5s

Length: 9min 5sec (545 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 25 2022