A week ago I was printing things for my friends when suddenly my nozzle just fucking crashed out of nowhere into my pei bed and now it is ruined, I removed the pei bed, and installed my glass one that I had for several years, in the process of removing my magnetic sheet, my 3 solid petg spring replacers just MELTED.
I WAS OUT OF PETG, I ORDERED PETG, I DID ALL I CAN TO GET MY BED LEVELLED ENOUGH TO PRINT WITH ABL…
AND… IT… WOULD… NOT… STICK (Can you tell I’m angry right now?) AND! Whenever I restarted the print with different temperatures, glue, not glue ettc… It just maded a mess around my nozzle, I cleaned my bed too.
I am so done right now…
BTW THIS IS a troubleshooot request, I have no way to make my bed level right now…
Ask me for anything
I assume you’re using the springs now until the PETG comes? If so, original or yellow springs? Try this, you might not even need to worry about solid spacers…
I honestly never had a reason for an ABL because my bed leveling simply never moves unless I am working on the hardware. Basically the key is to crank all four leveling knobs down completely closed, open up the back-left corner (where the heater cables come out) by half a turn, and the other three knobs by about 1.5 turns as a starting point. Move the Z switch out of the way and manually move the head down to where you would do the paper test, and get all four corners roughly level to each other. Now bring the Z switch back up until it just clicks, lock it there to set your home position, then power up the printer and do an auto-home to see where it puts your Z at. Then release the motors and move the head around to once again adjust the leveling knobs on all four corners, more precisely this time.
So a lot of people think that the paper test is “good enough” for adjusting the nozzle gap, but in reality you need to get this set withing about 0.05mm of the ideal position in order for that first layer to print correctly, and who knows the exact paper YOU are using? What I do to finish fine-tuning is to find a 5-point bed leveling test print and print that out at this stage. If the filament doesn’t stick, the strands of filament have gaps between them or you can pull the print apart with your fingers, the nozzle gap is too large. If the surface of the print is really rough, the nozzle gap is too small. You can adjust each corner to the ideal setting, then your prints should work as expected.
Of course it can take several iterations of this test print to dial it in, but the key here is keeping the springs as tight as possible. Do it that way and they should never move – it’s currently been well over a year since the last time I even checked mine.
Oh one more thing to watch out for… after dialing in the corners, lay a straightedge diagonally across the bed in both directions, you might see a warp one way but not the other. This is the bane of four-point bed leveling, but it basically means you have two corners a little too loose/tight. Make very small adjustments to correct and it should bring the center into alignment as well. If your center is really low, you can use circles of aluminum foil to build up underneath the glass and get the whole bed perfectly square (mine required 13 layers, I have one of the original warped beds). This not only helps with manual bed leveling, but it also means if you go back to the ABL then it will have a lot less work to do and the bottom of your prints will actually be flat.
Thank you very much for the effort you put into this comment. In response to the first part: I used a custom printed spacer in petg but it was too thin so it melted… In response to the last thing, my bed WAS warped but (please for the love of god don’t ask me how) I managed to unwarp it with my glass bed, now it’s like completely flat.
Damn you’re lucky about getting the bed flattened out! I have one of the original Ender 3 Pro models from the beginning of 2019, everybody at the time was getting warped beds. I know a lot of people got into using an ABL for that very reason but I suffered through and got mine to within about 0.02mm. We do what we can and it really didn’t take much to fix, so I never considered it a real “issue” with the printer. Still would be nice to figure out a way I could mount a dremel to the head and slowly mill the bed flat. I have a G10 bed now, a lot softer so this is actually a possibility it I ever remove the magnetic sheet.
ship it to me!
For real… double check your first layer settings in your slicer.
Also check your e-steps and make sure your flow rate is actually hitting what the slicer is expecting. If its under extruding on the first layers you will have adhesion issues.
Hmm okay will try! Thank you! for not being the guy on reddit that criticized me for asking
Ahh yes, the best way to troubleshoot always starts with gatekeeping.
/s
Yaaaaay!
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Yep. I ended up giving mine away when I wasn’t able to get it to print consistently. That was the second 3d printer I gave away because they’re more trouble than they’re worth (at least the kits are).
I’m not sure if I’ll get another in the future. Maybe a pre-assembled Prusa.
That sucks, but I hold on to my ender 3 as:
1: It is my first 3d printer 2: I have it for over 2 yrs 3: It was a present 4: I really can’t afford a new one. Even at a 100buck 5: I LOVE tinkering 6: With some tinkering it works a bit so I can print the missing parts, tomorrow I will try to MacGyver something to at least make it print.
Best of luck! Hope it works out for you.
Yeah thanks!
I had an Anycubic with an issue in the motherboard and I just gave up on those cheap shitty printers. It’s been the same game for each I had. Ordered a X1C and so far it’s been great. I do expect that though for that price tag.
You can buy silicone spacers on Amazon for about $6 and they’ll never melt. That’ll let ya level your bed, and it’ll stay level for a long time.
+1 for silicone spacers. I think I levelled this a year ago, and that was only because I took the bed off to do some work on it.
Once the Bl touch went on, and the initial set up was needed to set the z-offset.
