Newbie trying to auto calibrate

Hello all, new to 3d printing but as an aspiring inventor I’m very excited to begin.
Perhaps excited enough to mess up the initial assembly as the nozzle is going low enough to drag the heat bed within the first calibration attempts.

It seems I cannot share pictures as a new member but I’d say it’s just enough off to push or even this last attempt carve into the heat map.
Perhaps I’m wrong but it won’t let me manually raise it until the autocalibrate is done but I don’t need this first heat bed carved up.

I went through and counted the screws used in the initial set up with the 3d printer module and have x2 M4 x 10 flathead screws remaining,
X3 M4 x 8 socket Head Screws remaining
x 23 M4 x 10 socket head screws remaining.
And x3 M4 x 30 head screws remaining.

Anyone have an idea where I goofed?
Gonna look around a bit more before disassembling but figured I’d ask.
Thanks!

You can share pics using an offsite host until you have enough time and satisfy some requirements on the forum.

Either there’s a problem with your assembly or your sensor.
You can verify if sensor is working by holding something metal up to it and a red led on it should go on.
It may need adjusting:

Share pics of your machine and we can verify assembly. (platform nuts down, y rails not hanging off end of base, flathead screws so they’re flush with heated bed, etc.)

Also, there was a problem with 1.8 firmware and before that sometimes caused this.
Make sure your firmware is at least 1.9.

-S

Just wanted to add that the leftover screws is perfectly normal - the SM comes with spares.

My bet would be the proximity sensor as @sdj544 says. Mine was not set correctly when it arrived, and I’m pretty sure it’s not mentioned in the getting-started manual.

Of course, it never hurts to double-check the linear module mounts and the platform the bed mounts to. Those are easy to get wrong, but fortunately easy to check.

I can only get as far as the initial auto cab then it’s doing the the same thing. I did hold the metal screwdriver at the bottom near the nozzle so the bottom had metal in front of all of it but no red light came. Here’s a YouTube link of vids of what I’m experiencing, thank you again for helping a tested knucklehead out! snap maker noob troubleshooting - YouTube

If the light doesn’t come on, you may have a bad proximity sensor.

You can test this without calibrating (unless initial setup won’t move past that? I honestly cannot remember) by going to the Control app on the touchscreen and jogging down in 10mm increments until you are near the bed. Pretty sure the promixity sensor lights up from more than 10mm away. You can always use a credit card or something similar under the nozzle to ensure the nozzle doesn’t hit the bed when you lower it (but once you’re close to 10mm from the bed, switch to 1mm increments or less of course)…

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I had similar problems when setting up my machine and had to invert a cable. One of the most important things they said to me was:

"During homing, the machine should move as the below steps.

  1. tool-head goes up.
  2. tool-head goes to the left of the rail.
  3. the heated bed move to the front."

Your machine looks like the tool head is to the right which would indicate a cable round the wrong way or maybe in the wrong hole…

The measurement with the card is they last thing it does during calibration - it should go to all the other points on the display first - also if the cables are wrong, the light sensor will also not function correctly.

Support were reasonably quick - 8 hours or so and could tell straight away what the issue was…

Hope that helps?

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@Mattuk is right.
Your cabling is wrong.
Because the sensor is hanging off the bed to the right it’s not sensing anything. So it keeps trying to go down waiting for the sensor to go on and tell it to stop, which is never going to happen.
Please fix your cabling before you burn out your stepper motors.

Also, the sensor is not under the nozzle. It’s the plastic piece to the right and back of it.

-S

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