Bed isn't flat; issues with filament not feeding

I've had a bunch of issues for the past day or so with the printer. I ran a print the other day, but the printer never started extruding - it just spun and moved around while nothing happened. The nozzle seemed too close to the bed, like it was dragging on it.

I troubleshooted a bunch of different ways. I tried re-leveling a few times and that never worked. Cleaning the hobbed bolt that runs the feeder seemed to make it work for a little while, at least when I moved the print nozzle far above the plate and ran the extruder for a second. But once I started the print it would jam again and stop feeding. After cleaning the hobbed bolt over and over again, trying all sorts of different things, I re-seated the Z axis nuts and ran the E-string of a guitar through the nozzle while heated in an attempt to clear any obstructions. Then I had it print a much smaller part in the center of the bed and it worked flawlessly.

I went to print my large part again, which uses most of the area of the bed, and I noticed some strange issues. Instead of never printing successfully, it started by not printing at all, in the upper right corner, and then it printed successfully on 2/3rds of the bed in varying thicknesses.

I let the part run for a single pass (plus a tiny bit of the 2nd pass on the bottom right corner) before unplugging everything and taking a picture, so I could show you guys what's going on. You can see in the bottom left corner, the extruder is clearly too far from the bed, and in the upper right, it's too close to print successfully. All of the big circles and small circles *should* be identical, but they're not.

I suspect the bed isn't flat. When I've washed the bed with acetone before today, I noticed the acetone always ran to the bottom left corner but thought nothing of it until now. I just got this printer a few days ago so this is a bit of a surprise to me and I don't think I warped the bed somehow. Is there something wrong with my printer? Is there some way the printer could compensate for a non-level bed? Any ideas?

 

Are you printing with ABS? I think cleaning with acetone is really unnecessary even if printing with ABS. It is too easy to get it on parts of the printer that could be affected by acetone. If that is hairspray on the bed then you should just use water or alcohol (methyl/wood alcohol works fine).

Do you have a newer printer with the bed level sensing switches and the autoleveling ability, or do you have an old version (older than around May or so)?

 

We need some more history than your description. Is the printer brand new? Did you have it printing fine before? If the printer is new it has 4mm thick glass and probably is difficult to warp more than it already was.

 

I've got a new printer, ordered it just last week, so it has the switches and autoleveling ability. It seems to check in three places - top left, bottom left, bottom right. The top right is the side that seems to be problematic, so this is frustrating.

I use a small spot of acetone on the bed and a rag to wipe off material and clean the bed afterwards. Helps with any lingering residue. I've not allowed any acetone to drip elsewhere other than the center of the bed.

I know I used too much hairspray in this picture, but I don't get how water would help parts adhere to the bed? I'm willing to try it, I just don't think it has much to do with this particular issue.

 

I got the printer on Monday of this week. I printed 3 or 4 things successfully with no problems, then when I first tried to run this part yesterday it suddenly had this problem. It would just drag the nozzle around the printer and never extrude properly. This is the first part to go this far out from the center, but I printed some not-small parts (the money clip and the phone holder from the default library in MatterControl) with no problems at all beforehand.

 

If the printer is new and has the level compensation hardware then others will need to chime in to help you get it working. My old printer has a slight depression in the center that does not affect my prints.

 

Ok sorry for the confusion. The water or alcohol was just to clean the hairspray up. They are both solvents for hairspray, no need for acetone. Hairspray especially Aquanet is great for adhesion. Sorry I misread when you said the acetone ran to one side of the bed and assumed that it ran over the side. Anyways you should try Marlin firmware's built in nine point autoleveling ability. Search the forum for Mike Kelly and Ziggy's descriptions on how to enable it with some startup gcode. Make sure you disable MatterControl's leveling if you are doing this. I'm sure someone will chime in with links and an explanation.

 

Turn on MatterControl's auto leveling, I don't think printer's auto leveling works at all, however, MatterControl levels the commands pretty good, I've managed to print objects with it that span the entire bed

 

MatterControl's auto level was on every time I tried it, except once which also didn't work.

 

Did you also configure it after playing with the bed?

The print seems to be the result of a non-auto leveled bed

Is the faint parts on the 4th corner that never gets probed?

I also experienced the same issue multiple times on Simplify 3D, it was the result of a non-auto-leveled print

 

I would also suggest turning the auto leveling on, closing the program, re-opening, re-calibrating, and maybe restarting the program again, and re-calibrating, and printing after that, just to be sure

 

Redo your auto-level calibration. It's wrong.

The bed levelness is adjusted by this calibration.

 

I've both manually calibrated (with a piece of paper and stuff) and run the auto calibration multiple times. I'll try it again, I guess, next time I get a few hours to troubleshoot. Maybe I did something wrong?

 

I don't entirely agree with matter controls methodology for the 3 point leveling. As you're seeing the calibration thinks your rear right corner is lower then the rest. The software doesn't take into account this back corner so depending on your three points it can assume your back corner is lower than the rest.

 

Hey everyone; thanks for all the help so far. Believe it or not I've been so busy that I haven't had time to try the solutions you guys have proposed until right now!

I'm wondering how I can run a different calibration routine than the one in MatterControl. Clearly the printer thinks the back right corner is lower than it is; this is also the one corner MatterControl's leveling routine does *not* check. I'd love to run a 5 - point leveling routine; would anyone be able to point me in the right direction for controls software which accomplishes this?

Edit: just read Post 7, I'll be looking for that stuff first.

 

Use any software not mattercontrol.

Repetier-Host
Cura
Simplify3D ($140)

etc

 

Alright, I've got Repetier-Host; I can't find an auto level command or routine though. Do I have to write my own G-Code to do it? That seems annoying, but I guess I could figure it out.

Sorry that I'm constantly asking all these questions; I'm pretty new to this stuff and I guess I needed more hand holding than I thought.

Edit: Some progress. I tried entering in G29 to have the printer level itself, but it still just does the 3 point leveling. I thought there was a way to do 9 point leveling? I also ran the MatterControl print leveling "configure" button (the wizard to set your Z offset), after which I checked the settings and apparently that resulted in an offset of 0mm. Convenient I guess. I'm testing with MatterControl's auto leveling OFF and printing a test cube.

I'll try Repetier if this messes up again; I'm not sure enough on the custom settings I have to fill in for everything like bed size, etc. I played around with it for a half hour, but all the settings I entered using spec sheets, etc resulted in Repetier thinking my printer was bigger than it actually was; it was possible to crash my extruder into the edge of the x axis for example. Tried Googling for settings for this printer and no one's posted any in one convenient easy to find place.

 

It's actually a one time thing and pretty easy. You're doing fine, it doesn't make sense at first.

In your startup g-code after the G28 to home the printer you should run a G29 command. You also need to add in an offset since you're not using matter controls utility. Most people do fine between .8-1.2 with 1 being a good starting point.


Here's an example of how you'd code it

Code:

G28 ;Home All Axis  <-- This will already be in there

G1 Z1.0             ; Raise Z axis 1mm, this is your Z offset
G92 Z0             ; Force home at current position
G29                   ; Run auto-level

<<The rest of the code>>

Since the nozzle's warm during this I suggest adding a retract before the G29 to mitigate the dots the filament leaves.

Before G28

Code:

G92 E0            ;Reset Extruder Count
G1 E-3.0          ;Retract 3mm of filament]


<<After G29>>

G1 E0              ;Reset filament position

I'd also suggest you extrude some filament to prime the nozzle.