After a few years of non-use, I’ve dusted off my 350 and bought it a dual extruder. Part of my remembering-all-of-this process turns up the memory of: The thing that the Snapmaker does worst is 3d printing.
Much of my woe comes from the absolute fact that the print bed is really uneven, and the auto-leveling does not seem to compensate for that. I get spots on the same print where the first layer is smashed into the bed, and an inch or two away the layer stands proud and barely adheres.
I have ordered a 1/16th inch garolite sheet, having read that these lay really flat. Should I use this on top of the stock printing mat, or remove the stock magnetic mat and lay the garolite directly on the heated build plate base? I’m planning on attaching the 12” square sheet with binder clips.
Thoughts welcome. I use Cura. I almost never touch Luban.
Keep in mind, the leveling probe is inductive; it reads metal. It cannot compensate for any variation in the garolite. You will have to painstakingly, manually level the entire print bed. The probe can likely read through 1/16” garolite, then you’ll have to manually change and modify each point.
I believe the sensing of the dual extruder module is physical, which I welcome as I never quite believed the results of the induction sensor in the original print head.
Ah, well, there goes my original thought. It is a bit odd as it looks like in the auto leveling the nozzles actually contact the plate, which led to my mistaken assumption.
gotta say garolite is very useful. i took an old sticker sheet (magnetic mat). bought a garolite the size of the mat and a double sided glue paper the same size and put the garolite on top of the mat. it allows for reading the level data. you just need to set the z offset. works great.
the only issue was one version, the stock mat developed an air bubble between plastic and metal sheet making the garolite on top bubble as well. im thinking of going to bare metal next time
The only time I had serious problems with the flatness of the heated bed on the Snapmaker 2.0 was when I once assembled the aluminium space frame casting that goes under the bed the wrong way up! When I subsequently bolted the heated bed down to the space frame, it got bent out of shape to the extent that the bed levelling could not compensate. After several attempts to level it with packers, I gave up and bought a new heated bed from Snapmaker. If you mostly use the CNC or Laser function, maybe you have not stored the heated bed carefully enough and it has got bent like mine was? Since I replaced the bed, auto-levelling has worked fine with the dual extruder.
Also maybe it would be a good idea to print a test print sliced with Luban with default settings to eliminate the Cura settings as a possible problem?