This is very helpful, gr5. Thank you. I get the need for some squish and did know it as elephant's foot. Good reminders. I am comfortable with the adjustments on the fly and will give that a go. I also find it interesting that you don't do the auto bed leveling. That makes perfect sense! I often wondered what good manual adjustments would do, assuming you are in the ball park, if auto leveling would correct your manual leveling adjustments.
I will also give the initial horizon expansion a try. Is that set in Cura or on the printer? (I could of course Google the answer, but asking here).
Thanks again
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gr5 2,224
Short answer: I usually set "initial horizontal expansion" to around -0.25 to fix this.
The most common name for this is "elephants foot" or I sometimes call it "micro brim". The problem is that "elephants foot" refers to another phenomenon as well.
If you level such that you have no microbrim then your part won't stick as well. This is fine for small parts (less than 3cm in X and Y) but can be a problem for parts >= 10cm in either x or y. And having a part come loose can really cause a major headache and destroy the print head of the UM3 sometimes (that's called a "head flood").
So you can play it safe (recommended) and level the way you are doing now and use "initial horizontal expansion" to correct. Or if you aren't afraid of ruining your print head when the part comes loose you can just level higher up. I never do autolevel and when it's printing the brim or skirt I just adjust on the fly. I turn the 3 leveling screws exactly equal amounts until the brim is .4mm wide (if I want no microbrim) or nicely squished (if I want the part to stick really well).
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