Bed Leveling for Beginners (Page 2 of 5)

Oval circle fixes - http://voltivo.com/forum/davinci-peersu … -not-round
To summarize, check the tension of all your belts including the shorter one above the stepper motor in the top right at the back. Check your bearing mounts, there's a good chance one or more is broken. And it's a good idea to shim the white pulleys.

Same way, just start a print and as soon as it starts printing the skirt/brim/raft/ or whatever your first bottom layer consist of, turn off the power and proceed with the process as if you where on stock.

However, Repetier firmware does require some additional setup on first run aside from bed leveling. I would suggest readiing and following this post and do the parts you have not done from flashing of the new firmware.

http://voltivo.com/forum/davinci-firmwa … issues#442

My First Post.

Thanks for all the intel here on calibration issues.

I have had my Duo for 3 days and it has been an "Experience".

There is 0 support from XYZ Printing. The online site for Firmware updates is Offline and the support ticket page is broken and the Submit button does nothing on both IE and Safari.

I have emailed them.

Below is the content of what I tried to put in a support ticket.

Any advice from Forum members would be appreciated.

Cheers

Unpacked Printer

Downloaded test Print Job from Gallery Dual colour model.

Unable to update Firmware from Mac. Set up Windows to download firmware.

"says oops online service not available try again later". Been trying for 3 days same response.

Printed Test job and Extruder 1 had filament jam. Re loaded filament it was OK.

Extruder 2 then had filament jam. Could not reload filament would not extrude.

Unloaded filament and found that filament feeder had scratched the filament and could no longer pull the filament.  Unloaded Filament, cut out scratched filament and re loaded.

It would then reload and extrude.

Printed test job again and had same issues. Filament would not extrude after contact with print bed.

Issue found. Extruder too close to print bed. Print bed blocks extruder flow and filament feeder scratches the filament try to feed until it can no longer get a grip on the filament.

Issue print bed out of calibration. Assume moved in shipment.

Ran Calibration utility to get reading on print bed.

Reported 164, Err, 62.

Cleaned contact point at calibration point 2 as per user manual. It did not fix the Err.

Adjusted print bed to calibrate. The is either an electrical or mechanical issue at calibration point 2.

I spent 14 hours and many calibration attempts to calibrate.

The issue is the calibration  at point 2 will only make electrical contact if point 2 is 160 higher than point 1 and point 3. That edge of the print bed will only make electrical contact if angled up from rest of bed.

By moving the calibration nut by the width of one of the thread grips on the screw it will go from 160 to Err.

When the extruder attempts to locate the calibration point 2 it does not land on the surface but the edge of the calibration pad. Hence only makes contact when the edge is angled by greater than 160.

So it is impossible to calibrate via the calibration utility.

I did notice that the spring on the adjustment point for point 2 has a different spring tension from the other 2 springs. It is a softer spring and does not hold the bed very tightly as the other 2 do.

I then manually calibrated the printer at all 3 calibration points by hand, with the printer off and manually moving the heads and print bed the same way as the automatic routine.

I used a 100 feeler gauge to do the calibration. (On the assumption that the factory calibration was as advised in the manual as 100,100,100)

I then ran the auto calibrate to check the success of the cold manual adjustment.

It reported 101, Err, 96. The Err due to the issue with calibration point 2 described above.

I ran the calibration utility a number of times and these numbers changed but within +-004

I retried the print test and it now work  as expected without issue.

The questions I have are.

Is the soft Spring the issue with calibration Point 2.
Is the print bed out of alignment with the Extruder mechanism causing it to miss the calibration point?
Will not having a saved calibration reference point cause me issue continuing with print operations?
Would a firmware update correct this problem. If so How do I perform a firmware update with the update service not online?
     
The software update site works OK for Windows but not Firmware.

For the Mac it does not recognise the hotfix for Mac OSX Yosemite. This has to be downloaded manually and installed.

Please advise the answers to the questions and what I should do next.

Cheers Brian Roberts.

a lot of time will be spent searching for this '3d printer bed level' fails so far

cheers, yes just found that myself, not long search.

Beware The manual levelling approach.

I failed far worse than the 30 attempts of the auto calab.
My bed is so far out of whack the screws become loose.
It does not solve the problem of quessing which way to turn the screws.
And it incurs upon you to do the level measuring trying to get the 0.15 feeler blade under the nozzle, which at least the auto calab gives you.

Sorry I am too screw-turning clueless to do this manually.

I will try to get the bed level, and hope not to get 999 values in the auto calab.
So my hope is the android app 'davinci calibrator' which I have installed on my galaxy ace, and gives screw turning numbers. That app would encode the fulcrum of the bed mounting triangle and the measuring offset points, which you have to imagine on quessing screw-turning.
Hopefully that will give less than 30 attempts at getting in range.

Fellow dude, have you tried this?  How did this method give you better visualisation of the fulcrum as you turn the screws to get each placed extruder close. At least with the auto calab you get a clue as to the overall bed alignment.

But this still evades the flaw of the manual method: which screw to turn which way?

Ok I'll try head near screw, only rotating the screw near the head. Thanks for your help. Sorry for the frustrated outburst.

Hi all, was looking for solutions to a little frustration with my printer and stumbled on this forum as a result. 

In general very happy with the printer and have a couple of hundred hours on it now (is the dual extruder model), and it works very well for small to mid size models.  Am having issues though when trying to print large.  It will almost always start to lift on the rear of the print bed and often the front too.

I was using the auto method previously, but have now used the posted manual method.  What did surprise me was how much gap there was on the back corners when the front was indicated correctly.  So ran through the manual method and got a nice "drag" on the piece of paper on each corner.  But still see a lift on the edges.

What I am suspecting now is the heated platform is going to be cooler at the edges which is causing it to lift.  Has anyone been able to print a large surface that prints front to back successfully?  Am now at the point where have modified the design of my model in order to print it vertically and stop wasting filament with failed attempts.

Hi everyone

I am going crazy but i cannot get the calibration right, The values that I get now are +265, +325, +355 and  I am unable to understand how can I get them to what they are supposed to be. Also I am unable to understand what does the rotating of the 3 screws actually means and results in.

Someone please help