EMoney
November 19, 2017, 11:07pm
1
Hi, I’m relatively new to 3d printing, and I have the Monoprice Maker Select V2, using PLA. The build plate seems impossible to level, even with tiny amounts of adjusting. With a small turn to lower the plate, the filament drags. But with a turn to raise it, the extruder digs into the plate and doesn’t print the filament, and marks up the build plate. This limits me to small prints on where I know the plate is level, but still they seem to be affected by the level-ness of the plate. The prints are a bit bubbly, and are really messy near the bottom and top. I linked a few pictures. They are a bit fuzzy, sorry. If somebody could tell me what I’m doing wrong that would be appreciated.
Hi Emoney,
I use a Wanhao i3 and bed leveling has been a major issue with that as well, from the pictures that you have put up it look like there is a lot of warping and also a few layers are missing in between. For bed leveling there are a couple of points
1. Ensure your bed is flat, you need to remove the bed and check if its bent, there have been a few complaints about beds having a convex bend. Use a spirit gauge if you have one or use a scale to check if the bed is flat.
2. In case your bed is flat and the print is not sticking try using adhesive gum on the build plate or use a masking tape which gives some roughness to the build platform. Use a visiting card to check the height at the four corners and also a few points in the middle of the bed, the card should not move easily when under the nozzle.
3. After completing the above points and you still cant get the print to stick, I would suggest that you let the nozzle dig into the bed a bit for the first layer alone, you will see that the first layer will be extremely thin and translucent, but from the second layer onward it should be fine, this is what I have been doing with my wanhao.
Hope this helps !!
Hi Ethan, I bought a power spec wanhao i3, basically a rebranded wanhao, just like the maker select v2, about a month ago. It runs fine, the biggest issue was when it arrived in the box, the z axis was not aligned, due to the dual-z design of the wanhao, the rods can get misaligned. This affects print quality and can make it extremely hard to level. You can check this by torque-ing down the nuts all the way on the bed, and using the paper test to check leveling, if it is extremely unlevel, you should be able to see it by looking at the x-axis carriage. The thing I did to fix this, although not recommended, was unplug a stepper and use the slow z-axis move until they looked perfectly even. Once this is done, it should be easy enough to level the bed. If you still have bad print quality, check that all your screws are tight, and if none of them are, it could be an x-carriage wobble problem that can be fixed by printing out and building a z-axis stabilization brace off of Thingiverse. Just search for it. Luckily not all wanhao v2.1’s, the monoprice maker selectv2’s, need the z-axis upgrade, so you may be okay, mine didn’t. If none of this works then call monoprice tech support and see what they tell you to do, they should be able to fix your problem if these things don’t.
P.S. A lot of the time, your z-axis will get out of alignment after about every 100 hrs of printing, I recommend printing out a pair of z alignment braces, which will help you see if the z-rods are at the same height https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1374915
It is a little hard to tell from the picture, but it appears you may have some temperature issues as well (print looks to be curling up?). For PLA, I would recommend 50 degrees C for the bed and 195 degrees C for the extruder. I had the same issue Danny290 is talking about with the misaligned Z axis rods so definitely look into that. On a final note, I would draw up a 20mmx20mm rectangle and extruder it to .4 mm. With .2mm layer height this will allow you to test just the first two layers. I would go ahead and re-level your bed and start printing the rectangle (aligned in the center). Adjust the screws by 1/8th turns until the first layer goes down evenly.
