I got my first printer a few months back. It’s an i3 clone with an acrylic frame. It’s running a ramps board with Marlin. Good fun and I’ve been able to steadily improve my print results but two things keep driving me insane.
It’s got auto- bed leveling on a servo arm and after many hours of staring at the x-carriage … The arm never seems to deploy/return to exactly the same place. Is it worth spending money on a better servo or is this normal? Is it better to just do manual bed-leveling or have a manual attachment for the servo so it’s an exact distance every time?
The second issue might be part of the above problem… my z-axis offset is always out. I ran the auto homing via the LCD panel, then slowly drop the head to the bed and I got an offset of 5.9mm. This prints off the build plate. I manually changed it to 6.2 via the LCD and it’s all good. So I updated the value in the firmware but still have to add an offset ( it’s now 6.45)
Any words of wisdom are greatly appreciated.
I personally hate servo setups for this exact reason. Having any play/inaccuracy in the servo or the microswitch can cause issues. If you are going to use autoleveling then I would get a sheet of aluminum and throw it on top of your heated bed. Then get an inductive sensor and use that. Tons of guides out there on it. In my opinion it’s the most foolproof way.
The other option if you want to stick with glass is checking out the BL touch. I’ve heard good things about that. Personally I use the inductive sensor without any issues.
Ok great, it’s always nice to get confirmation lol.
I’ll definitely go search for that, thanks. At this point I was leaning towards omitting it completely on a new aluminium frame I’ve been putting together.
@Griffin_Paquette , if it’s designed correctly (deploy against a bump-stop) then it’s not a problem. All you need is something for the servo to bump against so that it deploys to the same position each time.
I have had similar issues with my z offset… And mesh bed leveling … Found that reflashing the firmware with the neslw offset and then using the LCD to default to firmware settings … Then rerun the leveling. This clears the leveling points.
@Andrew_Stansfield yep – just have a physical barrier that the servo pushes into. A “hard stop”, that’ll solve any play issues you have with it. Using a servo isn’t a bad thing, you just have to design it right.
Thanks, I’ll play with the physical end-stop for this frame. Then I’m about 80% done on an aluminium frame with aluminium bed so I’ll look into the other two options for that. It will make it easier to play with things on an “unassembled” frame.
