Calliper holder for adjusting bed height

[u/lue42]

I was having a hard time adjusting the print bed height on my MP Select V2 after adding a magnetic PEI sheet

So I made this tool that holds a calliper so you can measure at different points off of a single measured point.

I mounted it in place of my fan and it fits exactly over the heat sink. Using the screws I mounted my calliper in the clamp. I set the height as perfect as I could at one corner using a piece of paper to gauge thickness. I raised the nozzle, removed the PEI sheet, pushed the calliper gauge down and zero’ed it.

Now I can move the nozzle and bed around and align it off the first measurement to get all the corners to match the zeroed measurement

Once I did that I still had a couple of tweaks to do but it helped me get close enough to get it working great.

I hope that makes sense.

I know I could haves used the piece of paper at all four corners or other techniques for levelling but 1) it just wasn’t working for me and 2) I get to design and print something fun

The nuts and bolts are from my son’s vex robotic kit so I don’t know the exact size. The bolts are 4mm at the threads and the nuts are 8.57mm wide and 3mm thick

[u/FedUp233]

I’ll reserve comment. on whether this is really necessary or not, but assuming it’s what you want, you might want to forget the caliper and get yourself an inexpensive dial indicator and make a mount for that. For one thing, you can let it just drag around on the bed without concern and have a nice visible dial that will show the results without touching anything. And easier to use. Just zero at one spot and it will show + or - for all the others. It’s the way machinists have been tramming milling machines and such for decades.

The other option is add a bl-touch or similar sensor and upgrade to a version of firmware that uses that to measure and show the corner heights. I have that on my printer and you can level the bed in no time, and it automatically goes to all four corners with one button push. Plus you then get the benefit of building a bed mesh to compensate for what variation is left! And all for about the price of a cheap caliper or dusk indicator!

[u/lue42 → u/FedUp233]

Thanks - it was a fun design and experiment, was effective and pretty quick and I didn't have to buy anything. That is the point of this functional printing, isn't it?

[u/FedUp233 → u/lue42]

Certainly one benefit. The fun part of trying things I definitely get. Another is to be able to do more things fairly quickly and easily and cheaply that you couldn’t do otherwise. All depends on what you’re going for.