life adjust Z - my way  

Re: life adjust Z - my way

what fails? does it come off the bed, or does something else happen?

I've been trying to print this:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3127795

At 0.4mm the base layer was failing to lay down completely or later layers would turn out like this:
https://imgur.com/136ehuA

So, even after I thought I had a decent Z calibration, it was failing. I decided to try printing it at 0.2mm instead and surprisingly it looked good at first, but then I started noticing that the corners were warping. Once it was finished I found that I was able to remove several strips of filament with my fingernail on the first layer.

After that I decided to readjust my PINDA probe, so I did that, and then I started recalibrating, and the above image is where I'm currently at.

Re: life adjust Z - my way

hard to tell but it almost looks like you could lower your Z. it could be a number of things. lucky with Z it's not to hard to mess with it up or down 10 at a time. I seem to used a 75/75mm 2 layer high test square often.

Re: life adjust Z - my way

What am I looking for in a "good" calibration? Should the lines be noticeable? I'm guessing the lines shouldn't be able to be split with my finger easily?

Re: life adjust Z - my way

yes, should not split, and I would say you can notice them. just keep going lower, not that it maters but I have had my Z set to 800 forever, but after a nozzle change and taking apart my hotend it now runs around 750ish. still prints ok at 800 just abit too squished. moving up or down 50 at a time should be safe. only thing to worry about is having it soo low it touches the bed. and youll know you are close if plastic stops coming out of the nozzle.

Re: life adjust Z - my way

Is there one location that lists all of the calibrations that are needed or do you just have to search around? I've heard of a hot end/extruder calibration, temperature calibration, mesh bed leveling, PID calibration and more.
Which one's need to be completed before your Live Adjust Z?

Re: life adjust Z - my way

Is there one location that lists all of the calibrations that are needed or do you just have to search around? I've heard of a hot end/extruder calibration, temperature calibration, mesh bed leveling, PID calibration and more.
Which one's need to be completed before your Live Adjust Z?

Re: life adjust Z - my way

I haven't tried for awhile but see if the temperature calibration works. there is a whole theory behind that. with the setup I have now. I have to warm up with pinda close to bed for 10 minutes before my Z is correct. some people swear there pinda has to be cold. someone has figured out how to manually calibrate pinda temps, but that's too much for me.
I like things easy, ask my wife... 😀

Re: life adjust Z - my way

yes, should not split, and I would say you can notice them. just keep going lower, not that it maters but I have had my Z set to 800 forever, but after a nozzle change and taking apart my hotend it now runs around 750ish. still prints ok at 800 just abit too squished. moving up or down 50 at a time should be safe. only thing to worry about is having it soo low it touches the bed. and youll know you are close if plastic stops coming out of the nozzle.

Well, my print of the TMB box was a success at 0.2mm, looks perfect. However I tried at 0.4mm again, and I still have the same sort of failure with the first layer not laying flat. This is making me think maybe my preset I made for 0.4mm isn't good. All I did was take the 0.2mm one and change the layer height and first layer height from 0.2 to 0.4. Is there something else I should be changing as well?

Re: life adjust Z - my way

Your still trying to get. 4 out of a. 4 nozzle? That will never work. Maybe a. 3

Re: life adjust Z - my way

No layer height should exceed 80% of the nozzle diameter.

So 80% of a 0.4 mm diameter nozzle is

0.8 X 0.4 = 0.36

Neal

Re: life adjust Z - my way

What can I do, what should i do?

It's already pretty good. I would go even lower. On textured sheet you will see no big difference.

On the left side its now smooth and fully a "foil". On the right side its now very rough.

I added some more pictures of my bed levelling studies. 1. is the beginning and 16 is now.

The numbers on the edges are the Bed Level (max. +/-50), the number in the centre represent the z-level and the number in the lower right corner the indexation.

Links:
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Pictures: (Dont work in my Browser ?!)
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Re: life adjust Z - my way

Oh, thanks guys! I had no idea. I just tried .32mm and that looks pretty decent.

Re: life adjust Z - my way

bump to keep this on the first page

Re: life adjust Z - my way

I found that that the latest (6.1?) example causes a problem on my 2.5 - when the print is finished the Z axis lifts to the top of the printer (in fact rattles a bit) and I have to reset...

Looks like line 730 in the gcode raises the Z axis to 210? Not sure why?

Regards

Chris

Re: life adjust Z - my way

Hello,
First sorry for my bad english, i'm french
I would like to thank you a lot for this post, you help me with my first printing.
I'm a pure newbie in 3D printing, i built my kit MK2S and without this post i was helpless and couldn't calibrate and have a proper first layer (it doesn't stick).
I would like your opinion about my Z ajust.
First picture (-0.900)

Second (-1.000)

Third (-1.100). Visually it seems perfect for me, what is your opinion? The value is a bit higher but i just print PRUSA logo and it seems good. What do you think?

The PRUSA LOGO both face

Re: life adjust Z - my way

Catherine:

Those Prusa Logo pics look very good (but kinda blurry) so it sounds like you are getting it dialed in.

Keep in mind that after the first few prints, you will probably need to clean the bed real well - we are printing extruded plastic - as contaminants build up on the sheet. PC sheet use a dish soap wash and rinse and then a quick wipe with 90% Iso Alcohol, PEI should be the same, but with time you may need to scuff the sheet ( see resources for PEI as I am not up to speed on that).

Also, keep in mind drafts on the printer (without an enclosure) and temperature and humidity issues as they can cause issues with everything else remaining the same (lots of good threads on those issues in this forum)...

Re: life adjust Z - my way

My test is to try and pull the test piece apart , (separate the adjoining strands). Sometime the sheets look ok but fail this test.

Re: life adjust Z - my way

This looks like a interesting way to improve mesh bed leveling. Just measure all the points (7x7) and do away with interpolation. Has anyone tried it. It would add a little time but if it got me a good first layer I’d be fine with that. And I would happily trade the power recovery feature that I don’t use for It. A great option to allow the user to select.

https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware/issues/1239

Re: life adjust Z - my way

Live z wanted to move to different heights over night...

After resetting the pinda to 0.72mm above the nozzle tip and re calibrating I ran the 75x75 pla and i got a good result at -1.355.... printed a very nice and difficult print that covered 3/4 of the build area... turned every thing off
(the next day the room temperature had dropped to 16c fro the normal 18c It is winter where I live and when the OAT temperature drops to below -16 the heat in the part of the house where i have my workshop can not quite keep up the heat all the way to 18c... so I put on a thicker wool jumper on those days)
Turned the printer on and did the preheat for PLA and with the same filament that wanted -1.355 the day before it was way too high and the test 75x75 today was correct at -1.47.

this makes no sense to me but I guess from now on I will be setting the live Z with a test 75x75 before I do the days printing to be on the safe side.

any thoughts on what is going on here?

Re: life adjust Z - my way

[...] any thoughts on what is going on here?
This may have been mentioned before, but someone posted that running the on-board Live-Z adjustment to completion is required at least once to set a flag to avoid drift between power cycles. I make a point of doing so any time I upgrade firmware, so haven't had the issue, but drifting Live-Z seems to happen. This will hopefully help.