Hello, 3D Printing Friends! Today on the BV3D Channel, we'll learn how to use the
Manual Mesh Leveling feature in the JyersUI firmware for the Creality
Ender-3 V2 3D printer! Stick around and we'll get
into it right after this! I'm Bryan, and YOU... are watching BV3D!
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Okay, so today we're going to learn how to use the Manual Mesh Leveling feature
in JyersUI. If you're new to the JyersUI
firmware, let me tell you a little bit about it, and why you might want to
install it on your Ender-3 V2. JyersUI is a fork of version 2 of the
Marlin 3D printer firmware, and it's specifically for the Ender-3 v2.
The stock printer firmware from Creality is also
Marlin version 2, but for reasons unknown it seems to use only the minimum viable
feature set available. Marlin version 2 actually has a pretty
significant feature set, but you might not know it if you're only using
the version that Creality provides. JyersUI unlocks a whole bunch of
Marlin's functionality, and adds a TON of features
to your Ender-3 V2. In particular, it fixed several little nagging issues
that I had with the stock Creality firmware. Now, I covered some of what it
fixes, and how to install it, in a recent video. It's
linked in the description, and it's also available on this card
right up here. With JyersUI, if you know what you're doing. you can
download the source code and very specifically select which features
that you want to enable. and compile it for your printer. But if you
aren't comfortable compiling firmware from source code, you can also
choose from a bunch of pre-compiled binary firmware images with the most
commonly used features already enabled. Now, the focus of today's
video is bed leveling, so let's talk about that.
In the other video that I mentioned, I said if there was some interest
in seeing how to use the manual mesh leveling feature, I'd make a video about
it. There was some interest.
A lot of interest! Now in that video I installed the basic pre-compiled
JyersUI firmware. And one of the reasons I gave for going to JyersUI in the
first place is that the stock firmware doesn't help you level the bed at all.
Now, the basic version of JyersUI has assisted bed leveling, in which it moves
the nozzle to each corner and to the center of the bed so you can adjust the
bed's distance from the nozzle, and get it level.
But in addition to the basic version, there are also manual mesh versions,
BL-Touch versions, and some UBL, or Unified Bed Leveling versions.
Yes, it looks like there's a confusing pile of files to choose from.
No, it's not nearly as bad as it looks. Really.
The other video explains it all. So, what even
IS manual mesh leveling? Well, it's a way to tell the firmware about the flatness
(or lack of flatness) of the bed. It moves the
nozzle to each point on a grid, and then at each of those points, you use
controls on the screen to adjust the nozzle up or down
so there's a little bit of friction against a sheet of paper that you've
placed between the nozzle and the bed. For this video, I'm using the manual mesh
3x3 binary for the 4.2.2 main board that I've got installed in my printer.
And I followed the procedure from the other video to install it.
So, I chose the 3x3 version because it probes 9 points on the bed.
The 5x5 version probes 25 points on the bed.
The process is exactly the same, there are just more probing points, and so it
takes longer to do. Now, since I'm demonstrating the process,
I wanted to use fewer probing points, so it wouldn't take as long.
So once I had the manual mesh firmware installed, the Info button on the main
screen was replaced by a Level button. All the
mesh leveling stuff lives in there. So now, getting to the info screen with
this version means selecting the last item
in the Control menu. I just wanted you to know where it moved to.
Okay, before we probe the bed to figure out where it's higher and where it's
lower, it's a good idea to actually have it level
first. And, since manual mesh leveling actually uses your printer's nozzle
as the probe, I recommend cleaning it off. I do this by heating it up to working
temperature, about 220 degrees or so. I also preheat the bed to 60 degrees
while i'm cleaning the nozzle, then unloading the filament, and letting
it sit for about five minutes at temperature,
so whatever filament is still in it can kind of ooze out.
After about five minutes, I wipe the nozzle to get the filament off of it.
Now, that way everything is at its usual working temperature,
and has expanded to whatever dimensions it normally expands to.
So with that out of the way, let's perform a regular
manual leveling operation first. From the Main screen,
go to Prepare, then go to Manual Leveling. Your printer may automatically home the
nozzle if it hasn't done it recently. On the Manual Leveling screen, go to each
of the corners and adjust that corner's knob so there's a little
bit of friction against a piece of paper you put between the nozzle and the bed.
Remember, the nozzle and the bed are at their working temperatures, so
be careful to avoid getting burned. You don't need to do anything with the
center point of the bed. From experience, I know that on this
printer, the bed is actually a little bit low in the center. Now, normally what I do
is make the corners a little closer to the nozzle,
which also brings the center up, but that means the nozzle can be closer than I
really want for the corners, in order to get the center where I think it should
be. But we only need to get the corners
adjusted, because the manual mesh feature will compensate for that dip.
Okay, at this point we've got the bed manually leveled.
Now it's time to do the manual mesh part. From the Main Screen,
go to Level, then select Create New Mesh. The printer homes, then
goes to the first mesh point, and sets the nozzle at 0.20 millimeters above the
bed. This gives you room to slide your paper
between the nozzle and the bed. With the paper in place, you can use the
microstep up and microstep down items to move the nozzle up or down in
0.01 millimeter increments. Bring the nozzle down until it's putting
a little TOO much friction on the paper, and then raise it up again to back off.
When you've got the Z position set the way you like it for this probe point,
use the Next Point item to go to the next probing point, and
repeat the process of microstepping the nozzle up or down
to get it set the way you like. When you finish the last probing point,
use the Save Mesh item to save your mesh values into EEPROM on the printer.
If you like, you can use the Mesh Viewer to see the shape of the bed.
I like to turn on the Viewer Show Values option, and that shows the Z
position for each of the probing points, along with some color coding.
The colors show where the bed is higher or lower than
Z's zero point. The closer a Z position is to zero, the darker it is.
at exactly zero, it should be black. The more positive a value is, the brighter
green it is. And the more negative a value is, the
brighter red it is. So on my bed, you can see that it's
higher on the left and the right than it is in the center. In an
exaggerated way, my printer's bed is kind of shaped like a letter U.
Okay, we've got the mesh created, but how do we use it?
Well, that's pretty simple. In your slicer, edit the Start G-Code for your printer.
Look for the line that has G28 on it. G28 is the G-Code that tells the printer to
auto-home. So add a new line after G28, and type
M420 S1. That tells the printer to use the mesh
that it's got stored on board. Then, save your changes. To test the mesh
leveling, and also to get my printer's Z offset adjusted correctly, I'm going to
use a one layer high square, that fills a good portion of the bed. You
can make something like this in Tinkercad, but PrusaSlicer lets you add
a basic object to the plater, and adjust its size.
So I'll add a box shape, and set it to 200 millimeters by 200 millimeters, and
0.2 millimeters high. Now I know that not everybody likes using PrusaSlicer, so
for those who don't, there's a link in the description to a
big, flat, square STL file with these same dimensions. And you can use
that in any slicer. So anyway, I'm going to slice that,
and save it to a MicroSD card, and take that over here to the printer
and print it. As the printer is printing the skirt around the square,
i'm going to use the Tune button from the Printing screen,
and adjust my Z offset to get the squish factor set correctly.
This uses the same sort of microstep up and microstep down controls that you
used when creating the mesh. Now, resist the temptation to fiddle with
the adjustment knobs on the bed. If you start making adjustments using
the knobs, the mesh will no longer match the bed, and you'll have to redo it.
Okay, so once you have the Z offset where you want it, you should be pretty much
done. And i'm happy with mine. After your print
is done, remember to go to Control, and Store Settings, so it stays set.
While I was running through this process and writing the script for this video, I
printed a couple of the big one layer squares as tests
after I had the mesh and the z offset done. I was really super impressed with
how they came out. They're very nearly perfect!
Now, when I started working on this video, I thought I was going to want to switch
to the 5x5 mesh, but honestly the 3x3 is so good I don't need to.
So there you go, that's how to set up and use manual mesh leveling with the JyersUI
fork of Marlin 2. And also, just a quick note. JyersUI is
free, and Marlin is free, but the people behind
these projects work really hard on maintaining them,
fixing bugs, and adding features. I support both projects on Patreon, because
I appreciate their work, and I want to encourage them to continue.
If you've got a little bit of discretionary income, and you want to
help support them too, I've got their Patreon pages linked in the description.
Well, 3D Printing Friends, that's about all the time we have for this episode.
And now that we're at the end, let's go print something cool!
Hey, real quick before you go, I wanted to say thanks for being one of the super
awesome people who sticks around all the way to the end,
and thanks for all the likes, comments, and shares. And an ESPECIALLY big thanks
to those who directly support what I do. You are all wonderful for doing that, and
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check the description for ways you can do exactly that. And
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Well, that's it for this one. Thanks again, and i'll see you next time here, on The
BV3D Channel.