Modified Bed for Artist-D

Last night this morning, whichever, after being totally frustrated, I broke down and did a minor modification to the bed of my printer. I found the center of the bed and cut an X and then used an allenwrench to tighten the center screw. I thought that it was drawing the two bed together tighter against the spacers. It turned just over a half turn and that was it. It, at first seemed to make a little difference, but not enough. I tried to finish the chess board squares but they just would not lay a good first layer. I had tried everything I knew to do and just became more frustrated. So, at this point I took one spacer out. The screw would not tighten any more that before so I took the screw and spacer out. Then I began to re-level the bed cold. This gave me a rough level and some would say I wasted my time, but at 75 time is all I have. After heating the bed, I fine tuned the level and started another print. It is doing OK, not perfect, but I have an appointment at the VA hospital. Now the center point or point 1 is like moving the limit switch on my other printer. I have plenty of lead-way on the four corners, and at this point I am satisfied. I would not dare suggest someone do what I did, but then again, I do have a new bed coming, if bad comes to worse.

After taking the center (point1) screw out I did about 20 perfect chess squares before I got a bad print. At this point I began to re-level the bed. I started by tightening all 4 corner leveling screws as tight as they would go and then backed off about a fourth of the distance. I took the glass plate and washing the magigoo off. I then placed the glass plate and started leveling. I found out that I could disable the stepper motors after setting the center point. With that I moved the hotend around to the four corners. There was a problem the Z stepper motors seemed to let the extruder/hotend lower by gravity. I then started using the point 1 level button. It did not go to the center but stayed put. Then I could get a better level. I them to my dismay, I found out that there is a bow at the center. I could not overcome that problem, so after cool down I will see if I put the screw back in the center just to keep the plate from rising or bowing at the center.