autolevel up and down

Hi just wanted to say something about the autolevel routine this just happened to me and at first it was very confusing and it took some checks to find the answerbut I did and just wanted to give this information to others who may be new to printing and may not know exactly what to look for. The cause could easily be overlooked.

What happened was this I started the autolevel routine and it was going well but when it did the 6th probe instead of going down to the bed it went upward and then it wen to the next postion and went down as usual and when it did the last one it went up again. Very strange

I checked and saw that when it was at home both switches to be activated so was at a loss as to what was the issue I thought firmware issue maybe a a bugging routine. I checked again and started another print and the same thing happened. Again I thought buggy firmware.

BUT

I had been using the same firmware for the past few days and it was working fine what had changed.

So the switches were in the right position
The axis was level using paper as a test on both the right and left side it was at the same height
so what was going on???

I thought well let me check how well the switches were getting activated and that is when I found it
The stiffness of the rods in the extruder carriage was enough to keep one side from resting on the coupler nuts but hanging in midair suspended just above the switch but close to activate it when it was homed.

The way I found it was to press down on the extruder assembly and I saw that one side flex downward indicating it was not on the couple nuts. IT WAS NOT CASUALLY VISIBLE everything looked good when it was just resting.

I had to manually raise the extruder assembly and then adjust the rods to raise the switch assembly on the low side so it was would be fully seated on the coupling nut.

Now keep mind I was able to level the x axis with the paper on each side while this was in the screwed up situation as I normally did not check by pressing down on the axis to see if it was seated properly


SO this is what I check for now and in this order

1. Switch housing is located on the center of the coupling nut on both sides (coarse tuning)
2. The x axis is actually seated on the coupling nuts
3. The switch housing is adjusted so button gets fully activated (fine tuning)
4. X axis is level on both sides(via the paper test)

When I did this the autolevel routine worked perfectly
Skipping step two is easy because it is not visibly obvious but it is crucial

Hope this helps

 

The routine is not in the configuration .h file. That file is to modify certain parameters in a more permanent manner.
I use the normal arduino application and not MC to make firmware upgrades and it also tends to hider some of the more basic things you need to do

With arduino properly installed you need to download the correct firmware version and then open arduino with the main file in the firmware package

That way you can get access to the configuration.h file

how using arduino directly normally works is this you have arduino installed
you unzip the firmware version you want to use
it will create a folder with a specific name in that folder you will see all of the file that make up that firmware package
there will be a single file in the folder that match the name of the folder it is sitting in and it will usually have an ".ino" extension
DO NOT CHANGE THE NAME OF THE FOLDER or the firmware package will not load correctly
double clicking on the ino file will open arduino and load it properly
when it is loaded properly you will see several tabs across the top each correspond to one of the files in the firmware folder
you should see the configuration.h file in one of those tabs, selecting that tab will show you the file and you can make edits or changes as you are required to.

After you are done make sure the firmware package will actually compile successfully BEFORE saving things or else you will not be able to go backward if you made a mistake and it won't compile

After you make the desired changes it successfully compiles you should then save the changes you made and upload the firmware to the printer

let us know if you need help with the uploading part

 

Yes and if possible I try and supply them but in this case you can get a pic of it going up instead of down and vids are and issue for some so I try and describe things the best way I can and answer any questions people have about posts I make. Many of the images in my posts have been referenced several times