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Partially Solved Bed level / uneven printing

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by Wingnut, Aug 9, 2017.

  1. Wingnut

    Wingnut New Member

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    So I emailed support about this and got nowhere. Now I'm reaching out to the community.

    I've had my printer almost a year and have barely used it. I just set it up to get printing again and still have the same calibrations from when I took it out of the box. The right side of the bed always prints thinner than the left - see attached photo.

    It seems autoleveling is not working on this printer.

    I printed 10mm calibration cubes and got varying measurements all the way around with lower z-height on the right cubes. I am using MatterControl from Robo so all the settings should be good:

    Here is the current G-Code from Matter Control. What other info do you need?

    Start:
    G1 Z5 F5000
    G28
    M565 Z-0.75
    G29
    M300 S440 P200 ;A4: 440
    G0 Z5

    End:
    M104 S0 ; turn off temperature
    G1 X10 Y200
    M84 ; disable motors

    Layer:
    ; LAYER:[layer_num]
     

    Attached Files:

    #1 Wingnut, Aug 9, 2017
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Autoleveling as defined in the version of Marlin used by the R1 and R1+ does not work correctly if the X axis (left to right as you look at the printer from the front) is not already pretty well level.

    Move the extruder to the center and put it down to the bed. Then with the printer off adjust the left and right threaded rods (by holding one and turning the other) to get the nozzle one sheet of paper width off of the bed. Make sure it is the same left to right sides. Move the extruder back and forth left-to-right and test both sides and the middle. Make sure the Z axis switches (they are on the rods up near where the cross bar comes across the X axis) are both positioned correctly up against the cross bar and not out of position.

    That should get you going. You can review the first video at this link for more details:

    http://community.robo3d.com/index.php?threads/helpful-videos-novice-expert.7478/
     
    #2 mark tomlinson, Aug 9, 2017
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  3. Wingnut

    Wingnut New Member

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    Kinda took part of your advice and ran with it. Grabbed my dial indicator from my toolkit and checked both sides of the rails. The right Z height was -95µ compared to the left. This would definitely explain the difference in print quality I've been getting across the bed. So with the unit off I adjusted the Z-Axis lead screws until both sides read zero on the dial indicator.

    So far the print job is looking great. I didn't even think about checking level on the lead screws. I'm too used to the printers at work. Ha!
     
    #3 Wingnut, Aug 9, 2017
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  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    I wish they had updated those to the latter version of Marlin. Glad you got it going.
     
    #4 mark tomlinson, Aug 9, 2017
  5. Wingnut

    Wingnut New Member

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    I work with commercial DLP and SLA printers so the hobbyist FDM throw me for a loop some times. I would like to get involved in our composite printer but that won't happen any time soon. Oh well.
     
    #5 Wingnut, Aug 9, 2017
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  6. Wingnut

    Wingnut New Member

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    Okay, so it *was* printing fine. I went to print another part today and the Z-axis is off again and it's doing the same nonsense. I readjusted the level with a dial indicator but now it's not resolved it. Should I just disable the autoleveling since obviously it doesn't work? How would I do that in the GCode?
     
    #6 Wingnut, Aug 23, 2017
  7. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Remove the G29 from the startup GCode block in your slicer.
     
    #7 mark tomlinson, Aug 23, 2017
  8. tom1441

    tom1441 New Member

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    That helps me too thx
     
    #8 tom1441, Aug 23, 2017

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