Bed Leveling springs

Just a random thought/question. So the leveling bed is essentially sitting on top of springs. Has anyone played with tightening/loosening the tension on the springs to see if or how much it affects print quality one way or the other? I would assume this was tinkered with through the beta testing but have not seen any info about it. Also what is everyone’s Z offset at? The tension of said springs will affect the overall calibrated number. Would be interesting to see if they were all preset to around a certain number.

Hi! I don’t know if my reply fit to your question. I had trouble on xy calibration. Even just after the calibration, bed adhesion on the front side was worse than the back side.
So firstly, I changed the z-offset. Front side was better than before, but back side was too thin, and line width was too wide.
So I checked the levelness by smartphone’s level measurement function with and without PEI glass plate. And I found the difference, so I calibrated the bed level, while I put smartphone on the front side of the bed. Finally, I can print with proper adhesion.
Normal Calibration result


Original calibration result

I don’t know, if it’s because of the firmware version up, but now I can print my models with proper adhesion.

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Both those prints look good… what am I looking at here?

Sorry, not enough information.

normal calibration


enlarged picture of the backward
IMG_5389_back
enlarged picture of the forward
IMG_5389_front

calibration result of my method


enlarged picture of the backward
IMG_5452_back
enlarged picture of the forward
IMG_5452_front

Can you find the difference?
On the normal calibration, forwared adhesion is not good enough and printed model came off from the PEI glass sheet.

Oh wow, yeah, you can easily see the difference in the second post. Is this a test print I can grab from somewhere?

I think I have been pretty lucky, I haven’t had any issues with printing yet. I haven’t really ‘tested’ the printer though, what I print is pretty basic.

Does rerunning the in-firmware calibration reset all your work though? Even after the latest firmware update – which claims to address bed-leveling precision – my bed is not as level as I would like. Snapmaker really needs to address this as such manual fiddling shouldn’t be necessary for usability out of the box.

Okay, I futzed around with this a bit this morning, and I noticed something that made a difference when z / z-offset calibrating. I was getting a slight amount of ooze out of both nozzles during the touch-point calibration, so I began wiping a piece of paper between the nozzle and the bed between each ‘touch’

After I did this for both the Z and Z-Offset, I was able to get a good print out of the right extruder, which I had previously been having some issues with first layer adhesion and whatnot.

The other thing I did a bit different from the suggested procedure, during the Z-Offset calibration, I tightened the head bolts back while it was checking the nozzle position so I could make sure that tightening them didn’t change the position of the nozzle after calibration.

Welp! Spoke too soon! No sooner was I happy with the first couple of layers, and then this happened

I think I actually got a layer shift, as other have been, especially looking at this picture. There’s another ‘channel’ adjacent to the original channel, and it’s consistent.

While I think the shift might be a result of using the Cura slicer (it’s happened twice now, and only when printing off of Cura sliced parts) another thing I noticed was the back of the bed is not level. The back left corner is higher than the rest of the bed, which is causing the both of the extruders to drag in the back left corner.

Because of the three point mounting for the bed, it seems like I should raise the front right corner using the wheel, which will lower the back left corner, but then that will throw the front right off.

Is there another way to fix this?

I have Prusa Mini+, so I modified this model.
https://www.printables.com/model/30854-bed-level-correction-for-prusa-mini
I want to calibrate manually, but now I can print normally by my method.

Awesome - I’ve got the model downloaded and I’ll print it after calibrating the bed… again. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

When you said you were using your smartphone, were you using it as a level? Or were you using it as a weight?

Bed leveling consistency (noticeable on full bed prints) as well as random layer shifts seem to be pretty common. I am hoping it all can be worked out with a quick firmware update.

I used smart phone for leveling as well as weight. I checked level by the smart phone on the heat bed and PEI glass plate. I found the level difference, so I put smart phone on the front when z-level calibration as to have same level as PEI sheet on the heat bed.

After my method of calibration, there is still level error.
level measurement on the heat bed:


level measurement on the PEI glass plate:

When I actually calibrated, I put the smartphone further forward and used it as a weight. I don’t think the accuracy is not enough for leveling in detail.

Anyway, I want to have manual leveling function.

Man, I have so much to learn - thanks for your patience explaining all this stuff.

After messing with this a bunch today, I agree, a manual leveling function would be great. I also want to know what to do about the bed being non-level in places where there isn’t an adjustment possible (back corners)

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I would like some action on all these things too - IMO this is a major issue with the printer. I simply cannot get a consistently level bed across the print surface. At this stage I have requested a refund but I’m hoping something might be done about it soon, as there are many things I like about the printer.

At this price point, this level of manual fiddling around and compensating should absolutely not be required. It feels like this printer was rushed out the door without enough testing.