Hi, I watched a monoprice video on levelling the build-bed, and noticed that the guy moved the bed by hand while the printer is ON. Is this OK? Doesn’t it mess up the positioning of the print-bed? Or break any mechanisms? Most grateful.
berysch
There is no auto bed leveling on monoprices printer. I bought the monoprice select pro mk1. When I first got the printer had an option to Auto level the bed and a manuel level option. When i ran the auto leveling it sould run through the leveling process and you could tell it was attemping to level the bed because the head sould go to a point on the bed and the up and down or z axis would motors would move so you know its tring to adjust to the bed. The thing is you must first level the bed manually because the bed doesnt move. Its actually the adjusting the head so that when it moves to ever spot in the leveling process the head is at the same distance. The thing Monoprice failed to understand is if you adjust at one point it will slightly change the last point. When this printer when go only the one pass on each point I knew it could not be leveled so at that point I checked with the small level i used to level the bed and sure enough it was close but slighly off so I used the manual leveling option to make it level. There fix was to add a firmware update that totally screwed my printer up. First it took away the manual option away. They ignoratly thought that the manuel adjusting was throwing of the auto leveling putting the blame on the user so by taking away the manual leveling the auto level would run though the process and it would be leveled. Little side story, I am a mechanical 3D designer that works for a company that bought monoprice a few years ago. It was my first 3d printer and I got a killer employee discount like 1/2 off on the printer,material, and assessories so I wanted to help these guys get it right. I tried getting tech support and they wouldnt call me back so I went through my I went through a someone in my office to contact someone at monoprice to get to help me. I started to help the tech guy trouble shoot this problem. The printer was now runing through the leveling process and going to 4 points and stopping with no feed back and no movement for adjusting so It was supposed to be leveled. I asked the guy so how do i know its leveled he said because the computer made the adjustments. I told him thats not hiw that work. My level tells me the computer is wrong not to mention the head is 5 inch off the table. The ignorance of monoprices techs, is as amazing as their arrogance that they can pass this off as auto leveling. Now im dealing with their return process. I would get my money back but half off I want them to get it right or Im just going to fix it myself. I think it important for people to know
Yes, moving the bed with the printer on can cause current to flow back to the controller board, and possibly damage it. But… if you move it slowly, very slowly, it shouldn’t cause a problem. I try to avoid doing it much, but sometimes…
There is a bed leveling wizard in Octoprint that works well. It steps you through the process, moving the bed and printhead to four different locations and you can make adjustments with the screws with the machine on.
You don’t need to have the power on for current to flow when moving the bed or print head. The steppers will act as a generator. I noticed this some time back on my CNC when I moved the spindle…the leds on the controller board light up when the stepper motors turn as I’m moving the spindle.
