A little mod to make bed leveling easier

I got tired of fumbling around with an allen wrench when I needed to level the bed so I came up with this. Basically, rather than wrench on the leveling screws from the top with an allen wrench, you turn a wingnut from the bottom by hand. I took some longish screws and glued them into the corner clamp with some medium thickness ABS cement. I had dremeled some notches around the head to ensure the screw did not turn and let them cure for a few days. I also had to drill out the threaded holes in the aluminum bed plate that the adjustment screws go through. From there I just install the corner clamps with the springs and the wingnut on the bottom. I had looked for some no-slip fiber washers in case the wingnuts wanted to turn while printing, but that wasn’t needed. Here’s a quite lousy picture, but it’s the best one I have.


That’s an interesting and effective approach… especially for the X0Y0 corner where the allen head screw is blocked when the toolhead is homed.

Too bad the springs aren’t strong enough to allow a split lock wash to keep the wingnuts from slipping. Almost need dual wingnuts, or maybe a M3 with printed knurled knob for manual operation… but I like the direction to lock/firm-up and make the adjustments accessible.

You could always replace the springs if this is an issue. But this is a nice touch. I am currently working on getting the probing to work.

Provided the springs are sufficiently compressed, the wingnuts do not slip, even without friction washers, which is still a viable option. The only time they seem to slip is when the springs are nearly relaxed. Considering I have added a 1mm pei sheet and like my Z-stop spring to be fairly compressed, my bed adjustment springs are nearly fully compressed and the wingnuts are surprisingly snug.

The nerve-racking part is drilling the aluminum bed plate. I did price out 3mm threaded rivets in case this didn’t work.

Makes sense that the fully compressed spring would provide enough tension to keep the wingnuts from slipping. Maybe a neoprene washer could help if there wasn’t enough tension.

You wouldn’t catch me near the aluminum plate with a drill. :slight_smile: Though if you had a M4/5 tap it might be a little less hairy.

I’ve been thinking about fixing the home corner to provide a better reference for nozzle height adjustment. With all the springs, a solid feeler could deflect the bed when slid under the nozzle. A solid corner wouldn’t deflect, allowing for a quantifiable nozzle to bed gap via a 1mm or 1.5mm feeler… the metal ruler LB provides in the toolkit seems like a good height.

My solution to bed leveling is a cheap dial indicator and some blue loctite.

I downloaded the extruder mount from devel.lulzbot.com and modified it to mount the dial indicator instead of an extruder.

First step was to remove the bed and level the aluminum plate by manually turning the z-axis screws and making sure they are the exact right height with the dial indicator. Then reinstall the bed (blue loctite is your friend for things you want to stay put but still be able to remove or adjust if needed)

Go to home position and take the reading from the dial. Go to other corners and make the readings match. I repeat a few times, to get it absolutely spot on.

I have blue loctite on my bed screws and pretty much every other screw that should not move during normal printer operation. I haven’t adjusted my bed screws since i did this -> bed is still level, even with installing and removing blue tape several times when changing back and forth between ABS, TPE, Nylon, etc.

I’ve never had a problem with the bed moving, so I never used locktite. I have had to replace my pei twice now, that’s the only time I need to level it. I just hated fumbling around with the allen wrench, I can find the wingnuts just by feel. I made a cool little indicator holder that simply clamps onto the nozzle and it seems to work pretty good.

An easy solution is to simply swap out the existing adjustment screw for a longer fully threaded screw and fit a washer or bottle top to the bottom with a pair of jam nuts. In the attached pic I have used a 30mm x 3mm socket head screw and the knob was created in my CAD program. The bottom jam nut is recessed but this is not necessary. I have found that fine adjustment is easier to achieve using this setup.