Category: Bed Mesh

In 3D printing, achieving a level print bed is crucial for quality prints. However, there’s often confusion between ‘bed leveling’ and ‘mesh bed leveling.’ Although they sound similar, they have distinct roles. This post will clarify these terms and their significance in the 3D printing process.

What is Bed Leveling?

Bed leveling, or manual leveling, involves physically adjusting the print bed to ensure levelness relative to the extruder’s movement. This process includes adjusting bed screws or knobs at each corner of the print bed and using a leveling tool or paper to gauge the distance between the nozzle and the bed. It requires checking and adjusting at various points across the bed to ensure overall levelness.

What is Mesh Bed Leveling?

Mesh bed leveling is an advanced technique that often involves software and additional hardware like sensors. It compensates for bed surface imperfections by creating a ‘mesh’ map. The printer probes various points on the bed to map the bed’s surface and uses this data to dynamically adjust the Z-axis height during printing, compensating for irregularities. This method can achieve greater accuracy, especially for larger print beds.

Comparing the Two:

In terms of ease of use, manual bed leveling is straightforward but can be less precise and time-consuming. Mesh bed leveling requires initial setup but then automates much of the process. Equipment-wise, mesh bed leveling may need additional hardware like a BLTouch sensor.

Regarding suitability, manual leveling may suffice for smaller printers or less detailed prints, while mesh leveling is beneficial for larger beds and precision prints. In terms of maintenance, manual leveling might need more frequent adjustments compared to mesh leveling, which typically holds calibration longer.

Both bed leveling and mesh bed leveling are essential for successful 3D printing, catering to different needs. Manual bed leveling involves physical bed adjustment, while mesh bed leveling uses software to compensate for bed irregularities. Depending on your printer and printing requirements, one may be more suitable than the other.

Level the bed, print. Turn off the printer for the night. Try to print. Bed needs to be leveled. Level the bed. Print. Turn off the printer for the night. Repeat. If this is happening to you, your bed may be wobbly because the D rings are loose. A lot of times, the adjustments will be stable until the printer is turned off and turned back on. It will seem like your bed is constantly losing its level. This is because…well…it is. Most beds ride on a series of bearings that ride in a track or v-groove. To adjust the tightness of these bearings to the track many manufacturers use a D ring, which is a ring that fits in the middle of the bearing to hold it in place, but it has a hole that is off-center so that it can be adjusted.

The D rings are usually located on the four corners of the bed, and they have screws that can be tightened or loosened to adjust the tension of the bed. Here are the steps to adjust the D rings on a 3D printer bed that is loose:

  1. Turn off the printer and let the bed cool down completely. Do not touch the bed when it is hot, as you may burn yourself or damage the bed surface.
  2. Locate the D rings under the surface of the bed. You may need to remove the print surface or the glass plate to access them.
  3. Use a screwdriver or an Allen wrench to loosen the screws on the D rings slightly. Do not remove them completely, as you may lose them or damage the bed.
  4. Gently lift one corner of the bed and check if it is loose or tight. If needed, rotate the D rings to adjust the tightness against the track.
  5. At their proper tightness, the D rings will prevent the bed from wobbling, but will not inhibit the bed from moving back and forth.
  6. Replace the print surface or the glass plate and turn on the printer.
  7. Perform a bed leveling procedure to ensure that the bed is flat and even. You can use a piece of paper or a feeler gauge to check if there is a consistent gap between the nozzle and the bed on all four corners.
  8. Print a test model and check if the print quality has improved. If not, you may need to adjust the D rings again or check for other issues with your printer.

Adjusting the D rings on a 3D printer bed that is loose can help you improve your print quality and prevent your bed from wobbling or shifting during printing. It is a simple and quick fix that you can do yourself with some basic tools. However, if you are not comfortable with tinkering with your printer, you may want to consult a professional or contact your printer manufacturer for assistance.

Has your nozzle ever dragged across the top surface of your 3d printed part and given you those little valleys? This is often due to a simple but common problem: a poorly leveled bed.

By leveling your bed correctly, you will not only save time and money on wasted filament and failed prints, but also improve the quality and accuracy of your prints. You will be able to print smoother surfaces, sharper details, and more complex shapes without any hassle.

To level your bed properly, you will need a sheet of paper, a ruler, and a screwdriver. Follow these simple steps to get started:

  • Turn on your 3D printer and heat up the bed and the nozzle to the temperature you normally use for printing.
  • Place the sheet of paper on one corner of the bed and move the nozzle over it.
  • Adjust the height of the bed using the screwdriver until you feel a slight resistance when you slide the paper under the nozzle. If your bed is leveled with thumbscrews, obviously use those instead.
  • Repeat this process for the other three corners of the bed, making sure that the paper has the same resistance at each point.
  • Check the levelness of the bed by moving the nozzle across the entire surface and sliding the paper under it. If you feel any difference in resistance, adjust the corresponding corner until it is even.
  • Measure the distance between the nozzle and the bed using the ruler. It should be around 0.1 mm for most printers and filaments. If it is too high or too low, adjust the height of the entire bed using the screws on the sides or front of the printer.
  • Once you have leveled your bed properly, you are ready to print. Enjoy your flawless prints!

Level first, then mesh, then Z offset. Or do I set the Z offset first, then level then mesh? Or is it…

I always start with mechanical functions, then move to software compensation. No sense in trying to set a Z offset on a bed that’s tilted 20 degrees. Where would the offset even apply to? The highest point? The lowest point? I’m not sure.

First, set your mechanical level. This is done by turning the screws and making sure that your bed is mechanically aligned to your nozzle. Next, set your mesh to compensate for any variance in the bed flatness. I don’t use Z offset, I haven’t had to. But if you do, this is the point that you should implement it. The machine has a sense of where the bed is so it is able to apply an accurate Z offset.

If you spend any time reading through 3d printer help forums, it won’t be long before you see someone post about a problem that they are experiencing, to which someone else replies “you need to level your bed better.” But how good is good enough?

When it comes to 3d printer beds, I typically run into two variations:

  • 5 point bed level. This is a bed configuration that comes standard with many different firmware packages. It’s simple to set up and will give you pretty good results. The downside is that it doesn’t provide any flexibility in case your bed is warped in between the points. In doing some testing on this version, it seems like I started to have problems if my bed variance exceeded 0.05mm. Increasing my first layer height somewhat mitigated the problem, but didn’t solve it completely.
  • Mesh bed level. For this experiment, I used a 25 point (5×5 grid) mesh bed level. I allowed my bed variance to get close to twice my layer height, so for a 0.1mm layer height my bed variance was nearly 0.2mm. Then I set up my mesh bed level. I was able to see a slight difference in print quality near the base as the bed variance was increased, but it wasn’t significant. However, the differences that I observed were pretty minor and I believe that, in most cases, the resulting print would be considered “fit for use.”

Here is my recommendation. Get your bed as physically flat as you possibly can. See if you can get it to 0.05mm flatness. In most cases, this is possible as long as you have decent springs holding the bed up. Then run a mesh bed level to compensate for the variance that still exists. For most materials, I’m able to run prints without any hairspray, glue, tape, or anything else to hold the print onto the bed by following this methodology.

I saw on a forum someone who was having problems with their mesh bed level. The advice that they were given was to disable the feature and use the screws tilt adjust features in the firmware. Here is what each of those features do.

Screws tilt adjust, in most firmware packages, allows you to set the distance between the bed and the nozzle. It does this in each of the four corners of the bed and in the center of the bed. The benefit of doing it this way is that it’s pretty simple to get started and the results are typically decent. No need to fix it if it ain’t broke. The downside of this method is that it assumes a pretty flat bed in between those points. If it isn’t, the firmware won’t be able to account for the variations simply because they haven’t been compensated. This was my situation. After replacing a warped bed a number of times I decided that it was time to do something different.

Mesh bed level. This method is more work to get set up, but it does account for a warped bed. To set up a mesh bed level, the firmware will allow the user to select a grid, usually 3×3 or 5×5. This grid is used to compensate for any warpage that may be present in the bed.

My typical approach is to mechanically make the bed as flat as possible. By adjusting the clamping pressure on each corner of the bed you can manipulate it to flex more. For now, don’t worry about the orientation, we’ll deal with that later. Once you get a bed that’s pretty flat, let’s go ahead and adjust the bed screws manually. Run the function to adjust the bed screws and make sure that your orientation is as good as you can make it. Next, adjust your mesh bed level. Some people do this before each print, I don’t. My environment is pretty stable so I just leave mine set up and run a mesh bed level from time to time.

I read a user’s help request in an online forum that was interesting because it illustrates what can happen from time to time. The symptom that the user was experiencing was that there was way too much squish in their first layer of printing. It was almost non-existant.

They were stumped for a while as to what the cause was. In reading through their comments and the things that they tried, it turned out that they had a BLTouch. Basically, what had happened was that they had set up a mesh bed level manually, and then they allowed the BLTouch to override that stored level. A misconfigured BLTouch was the culprit, in this case. It was going through the motions, but it was storing an inadequate bed level, which was overriding the valid mesh bed level that they had stored previously.

Every once in a while, someone asks about Z offset within a Klipper configuration. More often than not, I advise people not to use it. But, it’s there for a reason, so what exactly is it?

I often see people do a mesh bed level on their printer, then try to set a Z offset from the bed to the nozzle of their printer, and then start printing. Unless you need a few grooves in your bed, I would not advise this method.

Z offset is used when your printer has some type of probe (BLTouch, for example) that is used to automatically create your mesh bed level. The XYZ distance from your probe tip to your nozzle tip needs to be determined and calibrated against, so that when you use it to create a mesh bed level you end up with a valid map.

If you don’t have a probe, you probably don’t want to do anything with Z offset.

People sometimes complain that their mesh bed level keeps shifting. It may be. It also may not be. There are a few things to look at, then depending on the results of the investigation, there are a few things to adjust.

The two most common things that affect this are pretty simple to fix. As it heats up, your 3d printer bed warps and moves pretty significantly. It’s important that you establish your mesh bed level on a bed that has been thoroughly warmed up. Don’t start measuring just as soon as the temperature reads the right temperature. Your temperature sensor is just in one spot. I usually give it 5-10 minutes to “soak,” longer in the winter. The same goes for when you actually print parts. I know it adds time to the print job, but I have had a lot of success with adding a dwell command at the beginning of my prints to allow the bed to come to temperature.

The other issue that I commonly see is how parts are removed. A lot of people put their hand on the print bed while they scrape the part off of the bed. Your bed springs most likely will not return to exactly the same spot as they were before. By pushing down on them, you are most likely causing the bed to return to a slightly different configuration than it was before.

I saw someone recently who was asking in a forum if they should incorporate BLTouch into their 3d printer. Their logic was that they didn’t know how to bed level.

I know it’s tempting, but don’t do it. In theory, it’s a great idea. Just get the probe to automatically do the bed leveling for you. But, in my experience, it’s never worked like that. The best option has always been to mechanically get everything as close as you can to perfect. Then use the software to fine tune that. The more the software has to compensate for, the more error you are going to have in your bed level, and in your prints.

Just to be clear, I’m not opposed to BLTouch, or any other automatic bed level devices. What I’m opposed to is the idea that you can somehow skip the effort of mechanically setting your bed level.