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Alright friends, I have been relatively decent with technology all my life, but this 3D printer is a whole different world than what I’m used to. I have myself here a Prusa i3, not even sure of the official name other than the LCD monitor displays it as ‘Omni Prusa i3’ on startup. Now, the printer works, all the lights come on and it takes to commands, I’ve checked over the construction and double checked, but my issue would be that:

A: I have no idea what I’m doing and have just barely scraped together some knowledge on the actual printing through the internet.

B: Every time I get everything prepped and ready to go and tell it to print, the nozzle or extruder or whatever it’s called decides to dig itself into the hotbed, leaving some marks, lift itself back up, move off the hotbed, lower itself below it, and try to move back onto the hotbed whilst making an ungodly noise as it tries to force itself through the immoveable work area. This causes me to abort the print and try to reposition it by hand, which I’m not even sure I should be doing. Whenever I try to set it to go to it’s home position, it picks either the corner, below the hotbed (which is screwed down as far as the springs will let me, as per instructions said), or the middle of the hotbed, with the extruder attempting to break its way through said hotbed.

Now again, I couldn’t be more of a novice in the actual operation. I saw building the printer very similar to constructing a computer, which is something I can handle, but this whole operation bit as thrown be through a loop. And I really don’t want to hear I have to replace a part or something after I’ve spent days assembling this. So please, I appreciate any help you can give, and I’ll be as cooperative as I possibly can! Also any simple startup checklists for first time users would also be fantastic, such as steps I should conduct on the physical printer such as ‘preheat PLA’ or whatever, since I know I need to do things such as this, but I don’t know when.

Again, thank you! I’ve been looking forward to 3D printing for a while now, and I don’t want this dream to be a bust.

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Hi I can only suggest you check out Anet A8 documentation it should be fairly close to general for Prusa clones.

http://www.anet3d.com/uploads/soft/160525/Print-Quality-Troubleshooting-Guide-Anet.pdf

And search for bed leveling Tutorials/Video’s , I had the same problem first time I tried, extruder buried itself in the hotbed and ripped up all the tape, I releveled my bed again and all was good.

That is why I went with the Anet A8 because there is so much info available for them

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My issue it seems with leveling is that when I hit for my printer to go to home, it’s home brings the nozzle below the hotbed, and no video/tutorial I’ve found thusfar has had such an issue happen. I’m not sure as to what to do. Attached is an image of the nozzle in its current home location.

09mvhhp.jpg
09mvhhp.jpg4032×3024 1.89 MB

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I did find a video or tutorial on how to set the bed up but I don’t seem to be able to find it, so I will try and explain it to you from memory.

The printer has no knowledge of where its extruder is until it is set up and that is controlled by the limit switches, to set up the extruder and bed, first screw the bed leveling screws well down, then with the steppers disabled, by turning the Z axis threaded rods by hand until the extruder is about 60mm above the bed. then make sure the Z axis is level by measuring from the top of the stepper motors to the top of the carriage supports making sure that both are exactly the same measurement.

Next adjust the Z axis limit switch ( the one just above the left stepper motor) up as high as it will go, then activate the “Home All” function, and the Z axis will stop when it reaches the limit switch.

Now measure the distance from the extruder nozzle to the print bed, then adjust the limit switch down by about 5 mm less than that distance, activate the “Home All” function again and the nozzle should now be several mm above the bed.

Disable the steppers again and now adjust the clearance between the nozzle and the bed by unscrewing the bed leveling screws, and carry out the bed leveling process.

If you find the nozzle is too far above the bed to level it without letting all the tension off the springs, just lower the limit switch by the needed amount.

That is about the best I can explain it from memory, I hope it will get you out of trouble.

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