SOLVED Leveling the base plate: How do you know when the nozzle is 1mm away?

[t-squareddesign 2]

In the first steps of leveling the baseplate, it asks you to raise the plate until it is 1mm away from the

I have a ruler that is 1mm thick. I used the ruler to get a rough estimation on how close the plate should be to the nozzle. Then I used my calibration card in the second steps. After that, I began printing. To my dismay the printer was printing way too close to the build plate, and I had to abort.

What did I do wrong? There is no step by step video tutorials to help.

[Labern 775]

The 1mm away step is not critical. It's just a visual check on all 3 corners to make sure on the next step the nozzle won't hit the glass of the leveling is way off.

I think there is a video somewhere. Maybe in the phone App or on website somewhere?

But you can quickly adjust it as it's printing the skirt by watching the printed line and adjusting the screws instill you can see it's printing right. @Gr5 has a guide on how to do this.

[gr5 2,229]

it's never too close! just kidding. But there is some truth to that. How do you know it was too close? I like it to squish like crazy.

So 1:09 into this video I have a visual guide to various squishing of filament for bottom layer.

At 3:42 I show how I level live as it prints the bottom layer.

at 4:50 I show you how I recommend you level a UM2 or UM3 - it's identical except for the UM3 has a second nozzle to level.

[rickmjohnston 0]

Thanks great video but still hasn't cured my problem that is pretty similar to this initial post.

First let me say I've printed around 20 different prints since I received my UM3 2 weeks ago and they all turned out really good. But yesterday while printing a piece the print head is either a) knocking into the print or b) scratching the print and "ripping" it off which then drags the piece around oozing filament into a stringy mess!

Also I've watched and stop the print immediately as when the initial "oozing" ball of filament in the from right corner the build plate doe not lower as much as it use to creating a little pyramid and then when that finishes and starts to move the bottom of the fan compartment as it moves away hits the top of the pyramid and sometimes that stick and gets dragged around?

I've manually and auto adjust all the time as a precaution but this is not helping my anymore. I even did a factory reset and still the bed in my opion is too close to the nozzle.

TIA for any additional help.

Cheers!

Rick...

[gr5 2,229]

Knocking/scratching is unrelated to leveling. Unless it's happening on the bottom 2 layers. By the time you get to the 3rd layer (or usually even the second layer) leveling doesn't matter anymore because no matter how wavy/warped/unlevel the bed is, if the first layer stuck down it was smoothed level by the extrusion process.

knocking/scratching of one nozzle into the filament of the *other* nozzle could definitely be leveling related at the end where you calibrate the difference in height between the 2 cores.

But usually this is caused on the leading edges (and especially corners) of overhangs. It's a complicated process but the filament comes out and cools rapidly while still liquie (in milliseconds) and is like snot/mucus - like a liquid rubber band. On overhangs it is pulling inward and there isn't enough material on the layer below to cool and harden it while still being held down by the nozzle so it pulls inward a bit especially on the corners.

This creates a raised lip or raised edge. The nozzle can hit this. This is common. This is normal. More fan helps a bit but you are probably at full fan. The best fix is to make the parts stick like hell or don't do any overhangs, lol). If you can't pick up your whole UM3 by a tiny 2cm part (like the UM robot) then you aren't doing it right and watch the video again as you missed some detail.

Regarding this "oozing" ball of filament - isn't that in the front left corner now (cura 3.*)? You mean before the print starts and it is priming the nozzle? I'm guessing you need to clean the glass there and reapply pva glue. Or you might have messed with settings like glass temp. I don't quite understand this issue - maybe you could post a 10 second video?

[nzo 16]

Good to get your methodology and video gr5. They're very useful.

[t-squareddesign 2]

Thanks very much!

I think I solved my problem.

My 3 baseplate screws were up very high. Too high. I lowered the screws to midway, did some automatic leveling, then did a few proof levels with the leveling card, and it works a lot better now