Bed Leveling tip

[JohnnyRobot]

Hey Everybody,

I figured out a pretty neat trick to help with bed leveling.

Once you've adjusted your Z height lock nut, perform a home all. With all motors at home, send the command "M84 X" followed by "M84 Y"

This will disable the X and Y motors (while maintaining the true Z Home) so you can move the bed around freely for leveling.

It helped me out a ton! Good luck.

[JohnnyRobot]

Has this helped anyone?

[Tim]

It does sound like a neat trick. I missed your first posting (maybe too close to Thanksgiving!), so I haven't given it a try. My computer is far enough away from the printer to make it a pain to go back and forth between the two, so releasing the X and Y motors and doing all the adjusting right at the printer makes a lot of sense.

[jimc]

i can certainly see how this would work well but i havent had to level my bed in months

[JohnnyRobot]

Thanks for the reply,

This has been such a game changer for me, I've actually been printing larger parts. I only used a portion of the print bed before...

[mrc93]

I had been playing around with just hitting home z button, but found that the z motor will turn off after a short period of time and the bed will drop. Does this stop that?

[Tim]

the z motor will turn off after a short period of time and the bed will drop. Does this stop that?

No, but you can add a command that will disable the stepper motor timeout:

M84 S0

This can be put in front of or behind the other commands. Since X and Y have already been disabled, the timeout won't affect them. It will just keep the Z motor from cutting out on you while trying to level the bed. If you don't want the motors held indefinitely after the print is done, you can follow up with "M84 S180" (3 minute timeout) after bed leveling, or just issue the command before you do the leveling with enough time (in seconds) for you to do the leveling. Ten minutes should be more than enough ("M84 S600").