I wanted to ask how best to position the printer itself horizontally. My problem is that the printer is sitting on a stable and very heavy sideboard, but this piece of furniture itself is leaning.
I would have to raise the printer by about 5mm at the front and back right according to my bubble level. Unfortunately, the printer feet themselves are not height-adjustable.
I have already tried placing cut up pieces of credit card and even paper under the feet - but the printer slides off the surface when in use, with the risk of falling off the table.
I will consider getting rubber mats next and putting them underneath, as it seems to need grip (as the credit card pieces have proven), which is normally provided by the rubber feet.
And unfortunately lifting the solid wood piece of furniture under the printer itself is not an option, or a difficult undertaking (the thing weighs over 100kg) and sits on L-shaped feet with felt.
What do you actually do to align your printers? Is this even necessary?
Do you have any ideas?
Not necessary. The only thing that matters is that the X and Y axes are parallel to the bed. That the printer itself is off-level is not an issue - theoretically one could print upside down.
The table doesn’t have to be perfectly level. But if it has such a big slant that it’s visually noticeable, level it. The print head shouldn’t have to climb up or go down the rod when moving around to print
The fact, that the feet arent height adjustable is bothering me.
I thought about printing some spacers to put between the plastic and rubber - but the rubber feet are super short and the hole isn’t deep enough.
I’ll probably get a 40x40cm (16") anti vibration mat tomorrow and place something underneath the right hand side to prop it up (a printed wedge).
I’ll also explore the possibility of modding the case in order to add threads for regular leveling feet. I mean, there’s a hole in the center one could (ab)use to get metal threads in.
I haven’t tried printing anything with TPU yet, nor have I TPU filament here.
At least the Bambu Filament is almost completely sold out in the EU store (PLA, PETG, TPU, ASA, …) - I’d have to look elsewhere to get my hands on some.
This is also a good excuse to visit the hardware store. Since the feet have a standard diameter of 28mm, I could come up with a modded screw plug that would slide into the housing.
If it were me, I would ask help from a friend or neighbor to level up the table. Adding an adjustable structure onto the printer itself, while convenient in some cases, adds another point of potential unstability.
We indeed tried to level the sideboard, but two people were not enough. It took four delivery men to move that piece of furniture into my appartment when I ordered it.
I did do the height adjustable feet thing, but I wasn’t happy with how they fit. And since it was plastic on plastic, it introduced some rattling.
What I did instead - I ordered overpriced 1cm thick dampening rubber mats (special indoor ones, that don’t smell at all, since they are not made from recycled car tires like the ones you get in the hardware store) and stacked two of them on each other. Between the mats I sandwiched a few larger flat pieces of printed plastic (where around the area where the printer feet would rest on) to level the machine. A bonus feature of that is - the dampening mats reduce vibrations and noise by a lot - and also ringing on my prints (I did not forget to recalibrate).
I do know that leveling the surface might have been overkill, but it helps me to sleep at night when I know that things are level x)
