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Topic: Im having trouble leveling my bed

After having my printer for a little over a week I have to say that its totally awesome! I do seem to be having a little bit of trouble leveling the bed. I have been using the paper method as I do not have a dial indicator yet. The problem I am having is that I a just the 3 bed screws(2 in the front and 1 in the back) so that the extruded just barley grabs a hold of the paper. I do this for each of the 3 screws twice just as the instructions say to do. And the corners are great but the middle of the bed is so high that I can't even force a piece of paper under it. So I set the screws so that the middle of the bed just barley grips the paper and now the 4 corners have too much of a gap in them. Is this normal? I have tried with both the bed cool and hot with the same result.  Its almost like my bed is bowed or warped in the middle.

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

Sounds like your bed is warped... You can probably test it with a ruler or something really straight.
Or, You can bypass it by using a raft.

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

Try getting some glass. My bed was warped in a way similar to yours. Initially I just leveled it for the center because thats where it prints, but with larger prints the edges would curl up. The glass solved that problem and it also just seems to stick better than the bed anyway with some hair spray. I got mine from the local hardware store and they cut down a few pieces for me for 9 bucks.

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

I'm curious to know If the bed is shipping warped or if use of the printer is causing warping.

Has anyone considered getting a machine shop to mill it level? I figure this is the route I go if my bed shows up warped but it might not be as easy for some to get done

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

I think the bed is prone to warping during use due to it's relatively thin gauge to start with, as well as the heating element being only in the center.  Milling it flat may help initially, but may also make the situation worse going forward.  I would try the glass route.  You will be assured of a flat surface.

SD2 - Stock - Enclosure - Heated Bed - Glass Plate - Auto Fire Extinguisher
Ord Bot Hadron - RAMPS 1.4 - Bulldog XL - E3D v6 - 10" x 10" PCB Heated Build w/SSR - Glass Plate
Thanks for All of Your Help!

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

I like the idea of the glass bed because you can print multiple items without waiting so long for the bed to heat up. I'm a little worried though as I don't understand how the printer will know how to compensate for the extra few mm of height that the glass takes up. Wouldn't there need to be some code changes? Also wouldn't this change make the new high res profile that SD is about to release not work. Again because of the extra height?

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

You compensate for that using the Z-stop screw adjustment on the back inside of the case, about midway on the left-hand side of the bed carriage.  If your glass is, say, 2mm, Lower the bed 3mm using the manual control on Repetier, and then lower the screw to hit the microswitch again.  Home the Z-axis and readjust the screw up a bit at a time and keep homing until you're close enough to begin to re-level using the bed leveling screws.

SD2 - Stock - Enclosure - Heated Bed - Glass Plate - Auto Fire Extinguisher
Ord Bot Hadron - RAMPS 1.4 - Bulldog XL - E3D v6 - 10" x 10" PCB Heated Build w/SSR - Glass Plate
Thanks for All of Your Help!

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

got my glass on order and will pick it up this afternoon.

thanks guys smile

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

So I have my glass too but I haven't tried it yet. What temps should I set the bed to? I tried getting it to 90c+, but it barely gets up to 80. Is that enough for parts to stick?

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

After I got the glass I set my bed temp to 90c and it gets there. I give it a few minutes after the temp reading says 90 to insure that the glass gets up to that temp. The good thing about the glass/hairspray that I've found is that you don't need to get it really hot because the hairspray helps a lot. I'm also in Arizona, so the ambient temp never gets too low. If you're in a colder area the ambient temperature can make the bed take forever to heat up.

A case will help keep the ambient temp up. If you didn't order one (I didn't because I thought it was for cosmetics), you can make one from a standard 12"x12" shipping box. Just assemble the box and cut off the flaps on the open end. Then, cut off one of the sides. This will be the side that goes towards the back. Cut one adjacent edge from one of the sides to make a large "door" with a hinge at the top (or side if you want). Then you can use some blue painters tape or other tape to secure it to the frame.

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

the bed is a pain.

I used the spacer method, (proper metal gauges) when I first got the printer, I measured over the entire range of the printer, and set it quite good, there was about 0.05mm deflection in the bed, (some places the 0.3mm gauge was fine, some spots were a little low and the 0.35mm gauge fitted.

after a while using the printer, the bed warped to be practically unusable. the low spot stopped being 0.05mm low and started being in excess of 0.1mm, then there were high spots as well as low spots. I used a dial guage to map the bed, and produced the following heat map:

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t166/daniel_rainbow/solidoodle/Untitled.png

blue is low going through green yellow orange red as it get higher, you can see that one corner is very high, while the corners bow extra low. but importantly you can see that the bed has like a spine running diagonally from the lower right to the centre of the bed.
total deflection on this picture is -0.08mm to +0.43 (0.5mm total deflection) - a real problem when you're trying to set the bed 0.3mm from the nozzle!
(this map is produced after I already tried bending the plate to straighten it, - which did have some success.)


long story short, either get some thicker aluminium plate and put that on top of the bed, or get a sheet of glass.
the glass is recommended since it can be thinner than the plate would have to be in order to hopefully stay true, and given that it's made by floating on a bath of molten tin is about as flat as flat can be!

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

I have a warped bed on my brand new SD3 that arrived a few days ago. The issue seems to be that they are cutting the aluminium plate with a guillotine, which cuts up, bending the sheet slightly. As the guillotine cuts at a slight diagonal the bow isn't dead set in the middle, more a varying height semi-diagonally across the bed. Laser cut beds shouldn't have as much problem. Though the 3 screws don't allow for uniform thermal expansion. I wonder if a slotted screw hole in x direction at the back, and slotted holes in y direction at the front would eliminate warping due to thermal expansion (however this may lead to wobbling of the build plate if done incorrectly).

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

Glass is the way to go. I tried one print on the kapton then switched to glass and no going back.
I got a 12" x 30" x 3/32 piece of glass and glass cutter kit (cutter, oil, greese pencil) from Home Depot (like $15 total) and cut the glass myself. Use the oil, straight edge, and make one pass with the cutter. Hold on edge of bench or table and snaps right off. Can even use sand paper to smooth edges. I used my electric disc sander with 80 grit! For real it worked.

Smitty

14 (edited by DynamechGT 2013-05-13 16:18:47)

Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

+1 : Glass, binder clips, and either hair spray or ABS/Acetone wipe

@ danny -
Excellent heat map of the bed heights!  I was thinking about doing something similar after I alter the gauge mount to work with my gauge (holder on back of gauge gets in the way).  What did you use to make the map?  I was probably going to run a matlab script on a spreadsheet of the measurements.

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

Mine is warped near the edges especially in the back. It is like 15 mil lower than near the screws.

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

Dynamechgt, instead of altering the gauge holder. just print a new gauge back for your dial indicator without the mounting tab.  That is what I did to mount a guage on my SD3.

17 (edited by DynamechGT 2013-05-16 21:46:20)

Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

nlancaster wrote:

Dynamechgt, instead of altering the gauge holder. just print a new gauge back for your dial indicator without the mounting tab.  That is what I did to mount a guage on my SD3.

Thats a good idea!  Although, I also need to slightly alter the overall design for hole size and pinch points regarding the wood strip at the extruder - I'll probably keep the tab (mostly for alignment) and just extend the length of the piece.

I'll look at it a little closer when I get home this evening - I'd like to keep the indicator shaft as close to the extruder as possible to maximize measurable bed space.

Ive even thought about putting an extension on the indicator shaft and then have the body of the indicator positioned more on top of the extruder than out in front.

Edit:    why?    .....because I'm a dork and want to try to measure the whole bed!  smile

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

Ahhh - now I know what you mean by "gauge back for the dial".  I got hung up on "mounting tab" and thought you meant the tab on the holder front piece that glues on to the part that actually mounts to the extruder.  Printing the gauge back is better.

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

Also have problems, having had my SD2 for almost a year now and printing 4-8 hours every day. Few days ago I noticed  some problems with the straightness of the bed, and with dial indicator noticed that there is over 1mm (!) of warp in my alu bed... Going to get some glass tomorrow, and hoping to find some binder clips, PITA to get them here...


OH, about ABS&acetone... Used it myself until I accidently bought a can of xylen instead of acetone... For some reason I get better prints with ABS&xylen than with ABS&acetone, no idea why... big_smile

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Re: Im having trouble leveling my bed

1mm? That should be visible to the naked eye