Simple procedure, big effect.
“Bed leveling” is probably not the best name for the process, as what you’re doing is actually aligning the bed’s surface to the X and Y axis of your printer. Don’t try and use a spirit level for this!
Bed leveling
I’m Tom and today i’m going to show you one of the most critical parts to printing successfully – bed leveling, which is essential for your prints to stick to the build platform.
Now, before we start, you should be sure that your printer is trammed, which makes sure that three movement axis are actually perpendicular to each other and that your prints don’t come out slanted.
So, depending on your exact printer setup, bed leveling is either something you do just once and then never touch again. Or for some printers, especially those made from untreated plywood, it’s a procedure that you’ll have to do every couple of weeks. If the first layer of your prints is unevenly overstuffed or too thin, it’s probably time to re-level the bed. The process i’m about to explain works for most printer, but some, like the Mendel90, are built differently.
So your basic tool for leveling your printer’s bed is this: A plain piece of paper. These are usually around 70 microns thick, which is ideal for this task.
On your printer, you’ll find a couple adjustment screws around the bed, these are usually either thumbscrews or hex bolts, and often they’re paired with springs that support the printbed. If you haven’t leveled the bed before, you should set them all to about the center of their adjustment range. Next, heat up the nozzle, move or slide the hotend over to the center of the bed and set the endstop of your printer’s z-axis so that you can just feel it starting to grab on to the paper between the nozzle and the bed’s surface when you send the z-axis to home. Keep sliding the paper around and you’ll easily feel when it touches the nozzle.
Next, lift the nozzle and move it over to the first corner or side of your bed that you want to adjust. Then lower the nozzle in small steps to make sure it doesn’t crash into the bed until you’re all the way at the minimum of the z-axis. Again, use the piece of paper and adjust that corner down if it touches the nozzle at all. By the way, you can always check at what position your printer’s nozzle is at them moment by sending M114 via the command line. Then, instead of adjusting the endstop like before, adjust the bed’s height with the adjustment screw until you can just feel the nozzle scraping on the paper when the z-axis is at it’s zero point.
Lift the nozzle, and rinse and repeat for each adjustment point around the bed.
It’s also a good idea to do a second pass around each adjustment spot, since you’ll often be influencing the rest of the bed as well even when you’re adjusting just one corner.
When you’ve finished all the adjustment points, you’ll have set the nozzle to zero in at about 50 microns above the bed’s surface. To account for that, you can either move the nozzle back to the center of the bed and adjust the Z endstop until the nozzle grabs onto the paper just a tiny bit harder, or you can set an offset of -0.05 in your slicer. Either way, when you start your next print, the first layer should lay down just about perfectly. You can also check with printing a test part like the one linked in the video’s description.
And that’s it! Bed leveling is not a complicated process, but it makes a huge difference to the reliability of your prints. And as always, thanks for watching!
Get the test files