It’s been three months since I got my Snapmaker original and the Z-extension and I have gone through two other 3D printers, a Prusa and Anycubic, and a lot of failed prints, before I finally got a good understanding of the logic behind 3D printing or CNC in general. LOL, I’m a slow learner.
Prusa i3MK3S being the most tweakable printer that teaches me many things, eg. First Layer Calibration let’s you eyeball how nozzle head distance from the bed affects your adhesion issue and prints in general.
It’s amazing that it’s all very simple once you have a complete set of knowledge of what’s really taking place; it all comes down to Tramming --your axises and bed are parallel & square.
With that in mind I started measuring everything and found out that the X gantry is slightly lower at the far end, by approximately 0.6mm. I used a caliper to measure the height of either ends of the gantry from the base plate.
That 0.6mm is at best, after reassembling the X and Z axis, inspect and clean the seat, and making use of the play on the screws holding the X-gantry to compensate for the unlevelness. I don’t have a square I could trust to check for Z-axis squareness to the base plate. But I thought that should be square by default, and there’s nothing to adjust there anyway. If I had to go as far as adding shims then that would be considered factory defect wouldn’t it?
I can print fine, thanks to mesh leveling I guess. But it just bothers me knowing that my machine is not trammed properly.
I have three questions:
- Is 0.6mm is an acceptable tolerance being a hobbyist CNC machine?
- Is anybody experiencing the same issue?
- Any suggestions how to fix it?
I haven’t tried switching back to the stock Z-axis. I will be posting that when I do.