Finally got the longer screw so I can mount a shim under my metal extruder on my MP10 mini. Also had to put new insulation, Kapton tape, and a new sock on the hot end. Now the home position appears to be far above the build plate. When I try to print, the hot end is driven into the build plate and filament isn’t being extruded. Any ideas how to rectify this situation? Hind sight being 20/20, I should have just picked up another select mini instead of this headache known as the MP10.
Sounds like the inductive sensor is bad or has a loose electrical connection. Does auto leveling work?
The inductive sensor fits under the part-cooling fan assembly. The assembly on mine is loose. I accidentally pushed it up once. Is the top of your part-cooling fan level with the aluminum heat exchanger? Also, did you set your z-offset to zero before leveling?
[ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“small”,“data-attachmentid”:4853}[/ATTACH] Home position AFTER, setting z-offset to 0 and auto-leveling this morning. [ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“small”,“data-attachmentid”:4852}[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“small”,“data-attachmentid”:4851}[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“small”,“data-attachmentid”:4848}[/ATTACH] These pictures show what I was getting yesterday after auto-leveling and printing first layer squares. It appears that when the print head is at the back of the build plate, it stops extruding and is digging into the build plate. I leveled the build plate using a level…it looked level,apparently not
How would I test the sensor? It seems to be tight enough
OK. First things first. The idea for leveling a printer bed isn’t to make it level in a construction sense; it’s to make the distance between the nozzle and the bed identical over the entire surface of the bed. That’s why you’re supposed to move the nozzle to all 4 corners of the bed, and then the center, adjusting the bed leveling wheels so that a piece of paper placed between the nozzle and bed is fairly stiff to remove – not so stiff it tears or gouges the paper, but not so loose the paper simply slides out without resistance.
The issue with what you did is that it’s pretty sure the printer itself (i.e. the frame) is not perfectly level. This leads to a situation where the bed is actually at an angle to the rest of the printer. I’m not sure, but I suspect that using a construction level has led to a situation where the bed is so out of line with the nozzle that it’s outside the range that the BL Touch can handle.
Once you level the bed to the nozzle with a piece of paper, I recommend you do what this guy does: [U]Best method for 3D printer bed levelling - YouTube. I just started doing this myself and I think it’s fantastic. A BL Touch is probably even easier, but this really works.
In the photo, your bed springs look pretty compressed. Have you tried simply unwinding the spring wheels to allow the bed to rise up?
It does look like your Z Axis Limit Switch is triggered, so that’s good.
The part cooling duct on the side fan of your hotend looks, at least from the photo, to be quite low. Is it actually lower than the nozzle. If so, that could be a problem: the duct could run into layers that have just been printed. Is this, by any chance, an aftermarket hotend?
Here is whaty I did. I brought the bed level UP to the print head location in the picture. I then heated the bed to 60 degrees and ran an auto level sequence. The gap between the print head and the bed is still wide enough that a 1 mm thick plastic ruler will still slide underneath the print head with room to spare. Added .20 to the z-offset. Going to try a first layer print. Hope this has fixed the problem.
From my experience anyway, 1 mm is too large a gap. Even reducing it by 0.2 mm I don’t think is enough. A piece of paper is around 0.1 mm, so you would need a Z Offset of 0.9 mm.
Have you done the paper leveling, and did you do it with the bed and nozzle heated?
Here is what my printer looks like. Note the springs are less compressed. Also, the z-endstop might be too high.
Cheers
Got my bed leveled and printing has resumed. My z-offset ended up being -1.80 That seems high or low depending on your POV, but that is the only way I can get the darn thing to print equally across the entire build plate.