jagowilson wrote:

I mean you need a sheet of paper to check the bed balance anyway without a dial indicator ... so you might as well use sometning that will get you close enough and a sheet of paper will. This is trivial stuff.

I set my z stop and rarely touch it after an initial adjustment. Balancing the bed every few prints is a good idea anyway because if its even slightly unlevel your part is almost guaranteed to warp.

After 1 year and about 8 spools, I've gotten to the point on my SD2 that I can do the entire leveling and first layer height check visually.  Personally, I don't like the paper method as much since the standard of "just a little drag on the paper" is somewhat subjective.  But many people do get good results with this method, so I encourage everyone to find what works for them.

+1

I mean you need a sheet of paper to check the bed balance anyway without a dial indicator ... so you might as well use sometning that will get you close enough and a sheet of paper will. This is trivial stuff.

I set my z stop and rarely touch it after an initial adjustment. Balancing the bed every few prints is a good idea anyway because if its even slightly unlevel your part is almost guaranteed to warp.

After 1 year and about 8 spools, I've gotten to the point on my SD2 that I can do the entire leveling and first layer height check visually.  Personally, I don't like the paper method as much since the standard of "just a little drag on the paper" is somewhat subjective.  But many people do get good results with this method, so I encourage everyone to find what works for them.

I set my z stop and rarely touch it after an initial adjustment. Balancing the bed every few prints is a good idea anyway because if its even slightly unlevel your part is almost guaranteed to warp.

IMO, people get too bogged down about checking their first layer height with a sheet of paper.  There is no substitute for starting a print (probably a decently large one) and visually examining the first layer as it prints.  Get close to printer and take a very good look at the area between the nozzle and the bed.  You should be able to tell if it is printing too far or too close to the bed.  Then look at your first layer when it is done.  Do you have gaps or poor adhesion between paths?  Then its too far away.  Do you have so much squish that it either didn't come out at all or has blobs when the back pressure gets enough to push it out?  Then its too close.  I encourage you to loose the sheet of paper and do it visually, but thats just what works for me.  YRMV.

As for the other things...
Yes, the thing you are pointing to is the drive gear but the more likely scenario is that your filament is slipping between the teeth and the idler, not that the drive gear is slipping on the shaft, which would make a bad sound that is easy to diagnose.  You could check the tightness of the tension arm, but I don't think that is your problem.  Also check the teeth and make sure they are not full of filament parts.  If the drive gear was slipping on the shaft, you would have to take of the acrylic to get to the set screw.

http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/har … ation.html

scroll down a little to the z-stop section. I use a calibration cube to do my final z-stop setting, tweaking the z screw till the bottom layer becomes solid.

As for the second part ("Make sure you drive gear is not slipping on the motor shaft."), there is so many gears, I'm not sure I know what you are talking about. Are you talking about the thing i'm pointing at in red ?
How do I access it and thighen it ? do I have to remove the acrylic front ?
How do I check if it slips ? (pulling the filament while cold ? hot ?)

Extrusion width seems irrelevant : I use 0.48, but I tried many many more (even 200%), the result still shows gaps : there are just fewer (but wider) lines...

Hypothesys : When extruding "over nothing", the filament is extruded at some rate (defined by E mm/steps); but when the extruder is close to the plate, it needs to "push" harder the filament on the plate, I imagine. May the extruder lacks force ? Could the filament be "slipping" ? how can I test/check if this is happening ? (and if so, how I could correct it).

  I have a solidoodle 2 and, from the very start it seems, I've been struggling with some thing while calibrating.
  I have calibrated the Extruded Steps just fine.
  I tried printing a cube with 1 bottom layer, and 1 perimeter to calibrate flow rate/extrusion multiplier and here in the picture is the result of tfe first layer (with extrusion multiplier =1) : There are gaps, the first layer isn't filled completely. I tried different slicers (curaengine & slic3r), all with the same result.
ua  The only way I found to have it filled is to cheat the extruder multiplier in slic3r at 1.5, but then, the flow rate is wrong, and uaa wall that is supposed to be .48 is .90 (which is more than 1.5 bigger, which would suggest that the multiplier should be 0.8 actually, so even thinner).

What am I doing wrong ?

Regards.