Bed leveling ideas

OK I think i have the solution for bed leveling with no loss in bed height
It is very simple and actually developed through reading here and discussions as well



It is very simple yet very effective it is simply two hollowed out shafts that slide inside each other that the screw can pas through each shaft has a 2mm base or cap for support the key thing here is that there is an internal spring that pushes the two shafts apart.
as can barely be seen in this pic

The problem before with just springs is that they generally have no horizontal support and could allow the bed to shift as the bolt tips the intermingled shafts help prevent this.

This was actaully but together with aspring from a pen but was designed for use with a spring from MCMaster-Carr but could be used with similar springs else where.
The important specs:
Item: Metric Compression Spring
Material: Music Wire,
Length uncompressed: 19mm Overall,
Diameter: 9mm OD,
wire width: 1.00mm Wire-WOW nice and thick should make it stable horizontally
compressed height: 7.5mm
so fully compressed the height will be 11mm current height is 12mm it expands about 8-9mm but you should not need nearly this amount.
The McMaster Carr product number is: 94125K633
and the link is: www.mcmaster.com/#compression-springs/=nu4ee2
the cost for the springs is just over $10 for a 5 pack but should be extremely stable in the horizontal plane
The .stl file is attached as well
The current shaft will have to be removed in order to implement this mod as the new shafts take its place.
Thanks to everyone I talked with or posted info about the use of springs.
Have fun.

 

I had posted another mod about this using a threaded shaft but it turned out at this time getting the threading to print accurately was beyond my skills so had to come up with this one.

 

Sick mod jeff!

 

I don't have the correct spring yet but it does work with the small pen spring I just happened to dig up so it is very weak and currently with it in place it could compress not from printing but just by pressing down sufficiently with the stronger spring I mentioned that would be much more difficult it would retain its position. Here are some images

Dont have the exact settings of bed height but I just showed gross examples in these images. You can see the difference in teh amount of teh upper shaft that is visible or by the threads showing

 

They are not actually that tight I simply used a needle nose pliers to hold the nut and then unscrewed with a screwdriver from under neath. The bed slides out so access to the screw is easy get the screw out is a pain if you want to do that but it is not required for this.

 

well, I bit the bullet and installed these today. Works good, I had to move the Z home switch up a bit (but ended up with more adjustment in the zero screw which is fine). Still tweaking the bed level, but at least it is easy to do now.

 

cool that is what I thought may happen
with the adjustment screw

but you could always just lower the four corners of the bed LOL

 

I don't remember getting longer ones but how but I originally had to go through the wood also so they may have changed the size of the screw when they started using the thinner layouts

 

the only issue I see is that the thickness of the "O"ring may or may not be enough but it can not hurt to try them

 

I don't know... that's an awfully big investment you're talking about there money bags.