Auto Leveling Worked, but now it doesn't

I have had my Snapmaker2 (A350) for about a year and have been running Luban 3.9.0 since then. In the past I have used the 5x5 auto leveling calibration routine and have had good, but not perfect results. Prints in the middle of the work surface were good, but on the periphery were not as good - didn’t get good adhesion on the first layer.

With all that said, recently I was doing some work on the machine and unplugged the 3DP module. But I did not remove the module from the machine. Then I went to print a new object but the object would not print. I realized that I had the 3DP module was unplugged, so I powered down the system and plugged it back in.

When I went to print out the new object I got terrible adhesion results on the first layer - nothing seemed to stick.

Thinking that the machine had lost its calibration, I went to perform the calibration process. This is where things got weird. On the first four points (along the front of the work surface) things seemed to be going fine. But when the machine moved to point 5, I could see that the head moved too far down and didn’t do its normal ‘down’, ‘up’, ‘down’ motion but kept pushing down. Enough that I could see the frame holding the work surface flex down. After several seconds, the head moved up, then away from the front edge - over the work surface but not near the center - and the screen showed the message “manually adjust the final point” even though only 4 points had been calibrated.

I powered off the whole machine and waited for a few minutes, then powered back up and tried the calibration process all over again. Same result. That was yesterday.

Today I noticed that there was a firmware update for the machine - “Snapmaker2_V1.13.1_20210720”. So I updated the firmware to that version and tried to perform the calibration process again.

Similar, but not exactly the same results. The first four points seemed to calibrate ok, but the 5th one did the same thing - flexing the frame. Again, after a few seconds, the head moved up then went to a place away from the front edge and the display now says “please level the reference point manually”. So I did a manual adjustment of the point where the head was (again, not in the center of the work surface) so that the nozzle was 0.1mm above the surface. But when I went to press the “Save” button, nothing happened.

I exited the calibration process and tried to perform the calibration again. Now the head moved to a position in front of the work surface so that the sensor missed the front of the work surface entirely! After a few seconds the head moved up again and went to a spot over the work surface and showed the same “please level the reference point manually”.

So now I have no calibration, and it seems clear that the machine doesn’t know exactly where the front of the work surface is.

At this point I cannot print anything, so I’m stuck. Looking for someone who may have encountered this issue and solved it.

Thanks in advance,

Rick

I contacted Snapmaker Customer Support and they helped me with this issue. It turned out to be simple, but still a bit baffling. I was instructed to just turn over the magnetic work surface and try the calibration again. Much to my amazement, this worked. I am not sure why this did the trick but it has something to do with the sensor and the way it responds to the work surface.

Since having my machine back up and running again, I have printed a number of items and it’s working fine again. I’ve even flipped the work surface over again (to the side that failed calibration before) and it’s still working fine.

Just wanted to close the loop in case someone else sees this post and wonders what to do…

Rick

Glad to hear you got it working again, but heads up you will run into stuff that’s baffling but simple, Snapmaker seems to be good at screwing up the simple things for some reason, almost like they don’t test firmware completely before releasing it.

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