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Aussie Sawppy - Coupla 3D printing tips

A project log for Aussie Sawppy

An antipodean sibling

teamsgTeamSG 07/06/2019 at 05:270 Comments

Sharing to perhaps save someone else some frustration...

Firstly, our Cocoon Create Touch (Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus) has manual bed levelling, which is fine. A minor hassle, but no big deal.

We've found that using the preheating function on the machine well BEFORE we kick off with a print is a good move. Levelling the bed when it's at temperature is the go. 

We've found it gives a more reliable start to the print. Previously, we've had random print fails on the first layer a few of times - extruder too close or too far away. I figure the aluminium build plate bends / twists a bit as it goes from ambient to operating temperature. We're only talking heat-related distortions of 0.1mm to affect things.

Preheating for bed levelling may be common knowledge, but I haven't read that tip anywhere.

Secondly, this morning we ran out of adjustment on one of the bed levelling nuts - something was amiss somewhere. A bit of investigating and we found that our x-axis gantry was out of level.  We're not sure if it has been a gradual change or from a single event. Checking the gantry level was a part of the initial set up of the machine, but of zero interest since. It was a long way out of whack.

A quick check with a brickies string bubble level from the shed sorted it. We'll add that to the tool kit.

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