Hello, 3D Printing Friends! It's springtime here on the BV3D Channel, and
what better way to celebrate than with some... well, some springs! Stick around and
I'll show you what I'm talking about. I'm Bryan, and you are watching BV3D!
Hi everyone, welcome back. So, "spring has sprung," as the saying goes,
and my Creality Ender 3 Pro and I are preparing to celebrate the season.
How? With some replacement bedsprings. See, one of the issues that I had when I was
first setting up my Ender 3 Pro had to do with getting that initial bed
leveling done, and part of that issue was due to the somewhat soft springs that
Creality used for the bed. Another part of the issue was due to the Z-axis limit
switch being a little bit too high, even when adjusted to its lowest possible
position, making it difficult to get the nozzle and the bed close enough to each
other. But that's a subject for another video. Today, we're replacing the old
boring springs with some new less boring springs, which I bought on Amazon. They
had a bag of 10 for $7.50, or a bag of 20 for $9.50,
and I figured for the extra two bucks I'd have more than enough springs for
any situation. So that's what I bought. As usual, there's link in the description.
Now, yellow is a color usually associated with spring, right? Well, I think the
makers of these new springs may have taken that a little bit too literally,
because these springs are YELLOW. Well, kind of a darkish school bus yellow. Okay,
they're yellow-ish. Close enough. They're also supposed to be stiffer than the
ones that Creality supplied with the printer, so that should make it easier to
get the bed height adjusted properly, despite the default minimum altitude of
the Z-axis. Once we have these installed, of course, we're going to need to adjust
the bed height again, because installation requires removing the bed
from the Y carriage that it rides on. So let's do a little bit of prep work.
Something that's nice to have, since the Ender 3 Pro doesn't have a bed leveling
assistant in firmware, is a G-code file from my friend Peter Solomon at
Wham Bam Systems. He pointed me to this file a few months ago, and I've got it linked in
the description. The file is named Ender 3 Level.gcode, and it is designed to
assist bed adjustments. It moves the nozzle to each corner in turn, and then
to the center of the bed, with a delay between each move, so you can make
adjustments. It does about five laps around the bed, and the delay between the
adjustment periods is shorter on each lap. So pause the video,
download the g-code file, put it on your printer's microSD card, and then start
play back up again. Okay, now that you're back, let's finish our preparations.
Adjusting the bed's height relative to the nozzle is a lot easier if the nozzle
is clean, so we're gonna heat the nozzle up, remove the filament that's currently
loaded, and carefully clean the outside of the nozzle. Since the printer's menu
system doesn't include a way to move the Z-axis, we'll need to do that by hand,
slowly and carefully. We're going to do this with the printer turned off. You see
this flexible coupler connecting the lead screw to the A-axis stepper motor?
We're gonna turn that by hand in a clockwise direction, until we've got
enough space under the nozzle to work. I recommend moving the Z-axis at least
halfway up its range of travel, so we'll have room to work on the bed too. And
once we have that raised up, we're gonna turn the printer on again. Then, to heat
only the nozzle without heating up the bed, press the control knob once to get
into the printer's menu system. Select Control, then select Temperature. Finally,
select Nozzle. Turn the knob to set the nozzle to the working temperature of
whatever filament you have loaded in the printer at the moment. I'm going to set
mine to 200 degrees. Then press the knob again to begin heating. Once the nozzle
is up to temperature, press the filament loading lever in, then push the
filament into the extruder just a little bit to make sure that there's some
coming out of the nozzle. Then pull the filament entirely out of the extruder.
Secure the end of the filament so it doesn't unwind and get tangled on the
spool. While it's still hot, use a cotton swab to clean the nozzle, and get
stray bits of melted filament and gunk off of it. If you have a wire brush,
you can use that too, but get all the filament off the nozzle. All clean now?
Good. Now, we could get back into the printer's menu system and tell it to cool
down, but it's faster just to turn it off for a second... [Off!] [On!] And we're turning
it on again because when it's on, the hot end cooling fan is on, and that will help
cool the nozzle down faster. And now, we'll wait a few minutes while the
printer cools down. You can watch the nozzle temperature on the LCD screen.
And while you're waiting, get four of these springs ready, and set them next to
the printer. Okay, the printer is cooled down
sufficiently for us to proceed. So turn the printer off. At each corner, turn the
adjustment knob in the clockwise direction to loosen and remove it. Then
set those enormous leveling knobs aside. Now we're going to replace the springs
one of the time at each corner. Lift a corner up high enough so that you can
remove the spring from it. Then, slide on one of those new yellow springs. Replace
the remaining three corners the same way. So, three of these corners are going to
be easy and one will be a little bit of a challenge, because this corner is where
the strain relief is for the wires that power the heated bed. So what we're going
to need to do is remove the cap over the strain relief here. And that should just
snap on, so you can reach in and unsnap it. And there is a zip tie that we'll
need to cut as well, so that we can get the strain relief out of the way because
the spring is situated between the strain relief and the bed. With the new
springs in place let's put the adjustment knobs on again. Get each knob
started on the screw, but stop once there's some tension on it, and it
doesn't spin freely. Once you have all four knobs on, go around again, adjusting
the knobs so that the bed fully compresses the springs. Do a little bit
at a time, so you're adjusting it down evenly. You don't want to put too much
force on any one corner of the bed. Once the bed is all the way down, it'll be
safely out of the way when the nozzle is homed. Which is good, because that's the
next step. So turn the printer on, then press the knob to get into the menu
system. Select Prepare, then select Auto Home. The
printer will home all three axes.
Now if your Ender 3 Pro is anything like mine, there will be a significant
gap between the nozzle and the bed. To save time on the precision part of the
adjustment, you can move the bed and the nozzle to each corner in turn, adjusting
a few turns of the knob at a time to get the bed close to the nozzle. Just get it
within about a millimeter or so at each corner. Once you've got it close, we can
make precision adjustments to the bed. We'll need a sheet of paper, and that
Ender 3 Level G-code file I talked about earlier.
Quick reminder: Adjusting one corner also affects the others. That's why we're
making multiple laps around the bed. And keep your paper positioned under the
nozzle at all times, to prevent the nozzle from dragging across your print
surface. And this process is about getting the nozzle to fly at the same
altitude over the entire bed, but sometimes there may be a hill or a
valley in the middle of the bed and that's nothing to really worry about
since it may only represent a difference of a fraction of a millimeter. Keep in
mind that regular printer paper is about 0.1 millimeters thick. Ready? Good. Let's
"print" that leveling file. Click the knob once to get into the menu system, and
select Print from SD. Then select the Ender 3 Level G-code file. As the
nozzle moves to each corner, adjust the knobs to raise or lower the bed at that
corner. And what you're looking for is some friction between the nozzle and the
paper, but not so much that you can't slide the paper back and forth. You'll
know you're done when you don't have to make adjustments to the knobs anymore,
and the amount of friction is the same at each corner, and at the center of the
bed. All done? Great! You know, at this point where most of the way into what's
fast becoming a "how to level your bed," video so we may as well just own that,
load up some filament, and run a leveling print. Let's use this one from
Thingiverse. It's called Bed Leveling Calibration (Ender 3). There's a link
in the description. It has a series of nine squares, so you can make micro
adjustments to the bed height. Okay, so slice that file (I'm not going to cover
slicer settings at this point in time), and copy that file to your printer's
MicroSD card and then start printing the file. Of the nine squares, each corner
has one, the middle of each side has one, and there's one in the middle of the bed.
So as each corner is being printed, you can see whether you need to make any
adjustments there. And as each side is being printed, if an adjustment is needed,
you'll make small adjustments to the knobs at both ends of that side. Make the
exact same adjustment to each knob on that side. And then for the center square, if
you find you need to make an adjustment, you'll make the exact same adjustment to
all four knobs. And what you're looking for on each square, first and foremost, is
that the filament sticks to the print surface. You want enough "squish" that it
sticks, but not so much that it smears. If the filament is smearing and tearing as
it's being printed, the nozzle and the bed are too close to each other. Adjust
the knob (or knobs) that control the bed height for that square to increase the
distance between them. If the filament isn't sticking well, or isn't sticking at
all, the nozzle and the bed are too far from
each other. Adjust the knob (or knobs) that control the bed height for that square
to decrease the distance between them. If the top surface of a square looks like a
plowed field, the nozzle and the bed are still just a teeny bit too close. The
ideal height gives you a smooth top finish on the squares. And you can print
that as many times as you need, to get your bed perfectly adjusted. But even if
you can't get it perfectly perfect in every way, just remember: "Good enough" is
called good enough for a reason. If you print a lot of things that mostly go in
the center of the bed, then the corners aren't as critical, right? Now you might
need to readjust the bed height from time to time, but it usually will stay
where you put it. All right, you should now have a well-adjusted bed on your
Ender 3 Pro, and with these stiffer springs, it should stay set longer. That
means you won't have to make as many adjustments in the future. And the less
you have to adjust a printer, the more fun it is to print, right? Right!
Well, that's about all the time we have for today's episode. I'm glad you stuck
around all the way to the end. I want to say "Thank you!" to all of you who
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description. Well, now that I've got my Ender 3 Pro's bed re-sprung and
adjusted, I'm gonna go print something cool. You do the same, and
I'll see you next time!