We level our bed with a heated bed and extruders. We use a piece of paper and put in under the extruder at different locations on the bed. When the paper and extruders have little friction that spot is leveled. You want to have little friction everywhere on the bed with the extruders. You should still be able to move the paper easily but with little friction. We switch filaments frequently on both extruders. We put any filament in any extruder at any time. We don’t limit one plastic to one extruder. Hope this helps.
I only level my bed about once every two months, and j do a lot of prints. I use a 10x8 picture frame glass with kapton on it. I never touch the bed in normal use except for a very light wipe with rubbing alcohol. I only print in ABS.
I switched to a glass bed early on and level when preheated. Once the leveling is set I generally don’t do it again for a few months or unless I change my set-up. While leveling though, keep in mind that adjusting one screw affects the level at other points on the bed. So just because you get the gap set at one spot, doesn’t mean it will stay when turning one of the others. This is especially true for large set-up changes or differences. So I normally run my leveling routine three times in a row to ensure it’s perfect, then I forget about it.
Hi Everyone, thanks for all the feedback and suggestions. I’m certain this thread will be useful for many beginners. To summarize the top 2 recommendations:
1. Bed leveling should be performed under printing conditions, this is to say a heated bed and heated nozzle. This is important because under heat the gap between bed and nozzle is reduced, (as everything has expanded under heat), so if you level a cold bed, the gap will be different when printing. Use a standard sheet of printing paper (20lbs) as not to melt the provided plastic bed leveling sheet under nozzle heat.
2. To hold the bed level adjustments in place under printing vibrations, its best to replace the bed leveling nuts with Nylock Wing nuts, the nylon locking nut will ensure your settings don’t change.
There have been many other suggestions, but I felt these 2 were the most popular and a great starting point to resolve frequent bed leveling.
My flashforge gets leveled daily as well. I have gone several prints at a time without leveling, but just like you I need to do it again after a long print. No, leveling your bed is not a one time deal, its a necessary part of making sure your print goes well. Usually when I level it though, its not far off, and half the time its still perfect. Leveling the bed takes me about 40 seconds, and it makes me feel better knowing the bed is perfectly level, even if I didnt have to adjust anything.
I use a raft on every print and haven’t had to level mine in 3 months, if u are having to level that often u probably should change the nuts that are on it.
I level every dozen prints or so, or anytime I see issues. I run 4 flash forge creator pro’s full time. I always level after clearing/swapping a nozzle or switching filament. Typically, I find that level stays for quite a long time.
You should have probably included asking about bed material type and adhesion methods in your survey, as that will likely play a huge factor in releveling. For me personally, I got rid of the silly blue sticker long ago and replaced it with a nice, thick (1/4" or 6.35mm) sheet of tempered glass and use PVA for adhesion. The first layer flatness and adhesion is so good, I can literally hit the button to start a print and walk away without having to watch and make sure things will stick and work right. And when it cools after the print, most prints literally pop right off the glass with minimal prying or chiselling on them.
I don’t have an exact number on time between releveling, but generally the only time I have to is after either working on it, such as disassembling the extruders or removing the bed, or if I get a little over zealous on a print and decide to remove it before the glass has cooled and have to pry it off and knock the glass loose. And even those cases is only minimal touch-up for the leveling.
Back when I was still running the blue sticker on there, I did have to level more often and I’ve had some mechanical issues to deal with such as the two extruders to being even.
If I had to throw a ballpark number out for how many print hours between leveling if there are no incidences causing it to be done sooner, I’d guess 40-50 hours, with many of my prints being in the 1-5 hour range each.
