Moment of madness!

[neo-ninja 1]

Hi guys,

I am having a real moment of madness. I need to print something pretty thin and very flat.

So I have recently got into printing some gcode I found that basically prints 4 or 5 really slow 1 layer thick big circles which gives you time to tweak the levelling screws on the ultimaker 2. To ultimately calibrate the machine

I haven't used my printer for a few weeks ran the calibration tools on the printer itself, pretty sure it was spot on.

Then ran the gcode to fine tune and I havent touched any of the dials and noticed that as you look at the machine (imagining 6 on a clock is your face at the front opening) 1-3 oclock the filament looks too thick, 3-9 oclock the filament looks about right and 9-12 the filament is really very thin (way too thin).

So I recalibrated made a few tiny adjustments, did it again and same result.

At this point im losing my mind slightly and am unsure why when you use the bed levelling procedure it all seems perfect but when I do the test its clearly not right....

What am I doing wrong

Edited May 14, 2015 by Guest

[Dim3nsioneer 557]

Something is a banana I would say. I remember having read about banana rods, banana pulleys and even banana glass plate of the heated bed here on the forum. You may also want to check if the glass plate of the heated bed sits properly on the heater pcb and is not lifted up by one of the four screw heads at one edge.

A thicker first layer helps to avoid it. I usually use 0.2mm on my UM2.

[neo-ninja 1]

mmm I don't think its that as the machine has printed fine, and after the initial getting used to 3d printing phase I haven't had an issue for a good while. The machine has then just sat on a shelf out of reach where it was first setup and hasn't moved.

[madness 2]

Hey Neo!

I bet your bed is only level to about .2 using the UM2 leveling.   If you change to resolutions higher than that, you will begin to get inconsistent problems.  Try running simple bed level .stl/.gcode at increasing resolutions.  I step-level my bed this way from .25-.06 and, as I print my bed level calibration piece I end up having to adjust only one screw.  I have 5 .gcodes on my SD card of the same calibration test piece at .25, .2, .15, .1, .06 resolutions and with a 5 strand skirt, you can find and adjust the errors, abort, run the next one, etc, in no time. Make sure you run the UM2 bed level 1st, then go with your calibration tests.

Let me know if this works for you.  I have a finished tutorial for this with the .gcodes and instructions, but I should probably have it looked at before I just post it.

Cheers and happy printing!

-MadNess

Edited May 14, 2015 by Guest

[titanoid 4]

Your description sounded very familiar.

In my case the glass plate was the banana. I got a new one from ultimaker support.

Try a steel ruler to check, but some steel rulers are bananas too, so better triple check.

(That really shocked me, bad tools in a craftsman's house!)

[neo-ninja 1]

Will have to get a steel ruler to double check but seems strange, as its something only recently.

Edited May 15, 2015 by Guest