3D Printer Bed Leveling

Bill Arnold

1974
Staff member
Messages
8,622
Location
Thomasville, GA
Part of my effort yesterday with the parts I printed was to make bed leveling a little easier. The corner braces I made to hold the glass on the heat bed are held in place with an M3 nut. I am not using the spring. The thumbwheels are above and below the heat bed; you loosen both, then use the top one to push the bed up or the lower one to pull it down. To level the bed, I left the glass in place and used a piece of paper to set the distance between the nozzle and glass.

This photo is kinda fuzzy but I hope you get the idea. It also shows the bracket I made to hold the glass, allowing the glass to be slightly proud of the bracket - much better than binder clips.

100_1241.jpg


This is the first pass of a level testing print. I didn't try to improve it. ;)

100_1240.jpg


When I got all the new parts in place and tried to connect to the printer via Octoprint, I kept getting a communication error and it would abort. It sounded like a real issue but I couldn't trace the problem to either board directly. After pulling both SD cards and checking them on my desktop, I stood there looking at the machine waiting for it to tell me something. Then, I finally noticed I had not plugged the heat bed cable back into the heat bed! Note to self: don't be so stupid next time!!! :pullhair:
 
I Googled for 220x220x3mm borosilicate glass and got several hits. One was Amazon, but the merchant was out of stock. Interesting thing was that same merchant had plenty of it on Ebay!

The first I bought was this one.

The more stuff I've been doing, the more I saw I could use another so I could let one cool and immediately start another print. When I went back to the Ebay merchant, they still had single pieces, but also offer a two-piece package now.

If you get the square glass, you might think about the supports I made. For some reason, when I click the 'Attachments' icon (above), I see a flash, then nothing. I uploaded the item to Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2078057
 
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