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Print Bed Leveling Issue

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by Wade Mann, Apr 12, 2019.

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  1. Wade Mann

    Wade Mann New Member

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    Greetings,

    I am having a strange issue when trying to level my print bed on my C2. I have followed the instructions in the pinned forum article "Leveling the print bed of a C2 printer" and have added shims to two corners and they seem to be all about the same. The problem is everywhere that is not a corner the print head moves away from the bed. As you can see in the photo, the start and ends of the test lines are flattened but the center of the lines are narrow. I get this with both of the print beds that I have.

    Any help would be appreciated.

    Wade
     

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    #1 Wade Mann, Apr 12, 2019
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Sort of hard to see in that photo, but if it is round in the middle and flat on the edges then your "plate"/bed is higher on the edges than the middle :)

    Try it without autoleveling enabled to be sure you are not fighting that when manually leveling the bed.
     
    #2 mark tomlinson, Apr 12, 2019
  3. Wade Mann

    Wade Mann New Member

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    Great, I will try that tonight. Is autoleveling turned off in the touch screen panel or do I turn it off in the web interface?
     
    #3 Wade Mann, Apr 12, 2019
  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    #4 mark tomlinson, Apr 12, 2019
  5. Wade Mann

    Wade Mann New Member

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    Mark, thank you for the earlier information and I have been scouring everywhere looking for any reference to OctoPrint on the micro SD card from the RasPI and cannot find anything. I also looked in Cura for any reference to auto-leveling but could not find anything. I am at a loss as to where to find OctoPrint/the start up block.

    I am new to 3D printing and RasPi so in that I am floundering. I tried looking online for possible clues, but alas, my google-fu failed me.

    Do you know if I am looking the the right place?

    Thanks,

    Wade
     
    #5 Wade Mann, Apr 12, 2019
  6. tkoco

    tkoco - -.- --- -.-. ---
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    I contacted the Robo 3D support about the bed. The beds are manufactured using nylon. Injection molded nylon is deemed a high shrinkage plastic (read here: https://omnexus.specialchem.com/polymer-properties/properties/shrinkage ) While the print platform is designed for mechanical strength (check the underside of the print platform), I believe that the shrinkage factor introduces stresses which affect the surface level of the print bed. I have 2 print beds and both of them exhibit doming - the center of the bed is higher than the corners.

    This being said, let's place the matter in a proper perspective. By analogy, when the oceans of the world are viewed by the ISS in space, they appear to be smooth surfaces, However, when you are on an ocean going cruise ship the waves in the ocean are very apparent. When you pick up a print bed and look at it, you are essentially the perspective of the ISS. When you accomplish the leveling procedure, you are essentially viewing from the cruise ship.

    So, I will be posting another project to address this issue. For the interim period, you should seek a balance between the various parts of the platform. If you have a digital micrometer, seeking a balance is fairly straight forward process. The key is to insure that the low spots do not exceed 0.32 mm in thickness. When the line is higher than that, adhesion to the print bed becomes flaky - which is another way of saying that you risk the print peeling / warping off of the print bed.

    Also, I have noticed that you are not using the Buildtak sheets. The painter's tape - what reassurance do you have that the tape is uniform in thickness? ( ISS vs Cruise ship) The auto-leveling routine can only compensate a narrow range of variance in height. I would recommend that you try the leveling procedure with the Buildtak instead of painter's tape. Buildtak sheets are very uniform, not perfect, but infinitely better than painter's tape.
     
    #6 tkoco, Apr 13, 2019
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  7. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    #7 mark tomlinson, Apr 13, 2019
  8. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    The bundled scripts it details are probably NOT the same as what Robo bundled, but the locations of where you change them in the OctoPrint GUI will be
     
    #8 mark tomlinson, Apr 13, 2019
  9. Wade Mann

    Wade Mann New Member

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    Thanks for the information tkoco. I will find a balance. As far as the painters tape goes, the buildtak sheet is under it. I will start printing directly onto that.
     
    #9 Wade Mann, Apr 14, 2019
  10. Wade Mann

    Wade Mann New Member

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    Thanks Mark. I will look into that as soon as I get my wifi connection back on the printer. Some how I borked it when looking through files. Do you know if restoring the micoSD from a backup resets any of the wireless information? It seems to be working as I can see SSID's but I get "Unable to connect Make sure you have a strong signal and the password you entered is correct." I get the same error when I turn off WPA and make it an unsecured connection.

    Sigh... seems like it is always something. I appreciate everyone helping out. :)

    Wade
     
    #10 Wade Mann, Apr 14, 2019
  11. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    restoring the SD card restores everything for the Pi including the WiFi configuration.
     
    #11 mark tomlinson, Apr 14, 2019
  12. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    In all fairness some of that might be an issue with the "RoboOS" itself since I have lots of happy Pi 3s, but that C2 sometimes give me that same issue and ... the only way I found to recover it was to bail out completely and reformat the SD card AND use an older copy of the OS Image. Not their most shining moment there with that setup. It may be that something is getting updated/overwritten with an unhappy config. It is not generic to the Pi though... so it must be something specific to how their image is setup.
     
    #12 mark tomlinson, Apr 14, 2019
  13. Wade Mann

    Wade Mann New Member

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    OK, thanks. I found the instructions to hardwire the C2 so I am going to try that and hopefully just bypass wireless.
     
    #13 Wade Mann, Apr 14, 2019
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  14. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Excellent idea. I run most of the printers hardwired to ethernet myself, but there are a couple we have wireless.
    Ethernet is better.
     
    #14 mark tomlinson, Apr 14, 2019
  15. Wade Mann

    Wade Mann New Member

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    This is not my night. I cannot get into the system to follow the network instructions. The printer gets an IP but the web interface does not come up and I can not telnet or SSH into it. After reading other forums I think it is because the new "you have to turn on remote connection" was never set up and it sounds like my only option is to load an older version of the OS. Have those ever been put someplace to download?

    Wade
     
    #15 Wade Mann, Apr 14, 2019
  16. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    By Robo? No, because each one is slightly customized by the machine name :)
    You can try the one I have here (GenericRoboC2.img)

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6DXaWMGZJHTeF9sSUxJaHhVZW8?usp=sharing

    You should change the machine name / host name before using it, but that assumes Robo ever gets back into the updating them business (I'd still change it and there are instructions on this forum in other threads).
     
    #16 mark tomlinson, Apr 15, 2019
  17. Wade Mann

    Wade Mann New Member

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    Thanks. I will give this a try probably tomorrow evening. Today is going to be a long day.
     
    #17 Wade Mann, Apr 15, 2019
  18. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    #18 mark tomlinson, Apr 15, 2019
  19. Wade Mann

    Wade Mann New Member

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    That image worked and I now have my C2 on the network, system name changed and running. Now I need to troubleshoot the touchscreen not working. I think I might have bumped a cable when replacing the microSD card. If that does not resolve it I am going to try the suggestions from the other thread about the frozen touch screen.

    Thanks again for all your help.

    Wade
     
    #19 Wade Mann, Apr 16, 2019
  20. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Good luck. If, worst case, you need to replace the screen I can point those to you on Amazon (or BangGood if price is more important than time). It is probably something else touching the screen unexpectedly :)
     
    #20 mark tomlinson, Apr 16, 2019
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