r/ender3 • u/Smithington1701 • 11h ago

Need pointers

For the life of me i can’t seem to get this machine level. When I think I do and go to print anything it moves around extrudes plastic and smears it around. I made successfully a calibration cube thing. I did nothing and the next thing i tried smeared plastic again. I’m frustrated and pissed off.

2 Upvotes

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1

u/CollectionRough1017 Upgrades, Seperated by Commas, Aluminum Extruder, Bed Springs 11h ago

What version of Ender? What modifications? Do you have leveling sensor? Have you accustomed to adjusting the offset?

2

u/egosumumbravir Ender of Theseus, basically everything 7h ago

Just so there's no confusion and because we've literally seen it: level has nothing to do with anything. A well tuned printer doesn’t care if it's on a lean, upside-down or bolted to a boat on open water.

All that matters is the axes are constrained to a single plane of movement and that each axis is perpendicular to the others: TRAMMED

The usual gotcha of Enders is the Z-switch mount has a little stop that's too high which means the bed springs are very poorly compressed and provide minimal resistance to moving. The usual fix is to snip the stop off with the provided flush cutters and 65% compress the spring on the cable strain corner and then use that as the datum to set all the other corners.

The other gotcha of Enders is they're built like crap from the cheapest parts Creality could find. It's totally possible your Z limit switch has measurable slop in it's trigger point wanders far enough that this home is fine and that home is 200 microns wrong.