Hi! I got a Flashforge Finder this weekend and love the machine so far. Much more reliable than my previous 3D printer experiences. But I have one problem. I try to use painters tape on the print bed, but no matter how many times I recalibrate the bed level, the nozzle just plows deep into the tape resulting in no filament getting extruded. I even tried the “calibrate extruder” function with paper as suggested in the manual, but that didn’t help either.
Is there anyone else who has had this issue and know what the trick is? Thank you!
Have you clicked on “finish” after you calibrated the extruder and afterwads used “bed leveling”? (For me) it is very tempting to press on the green “back” arrow instead of “finish” after the calibration. I still do this sometimes.
You could also try to level manually with a piece of paper. (it is described everywhere how to do this, even in the Finders Manual).
For me, I usually level the bed (with the Finders sensor), and then I print this Bed Level Correction Calibration Squares by makeryo - Thingiverse very slowly and adjust the leveling screws as needed, while it is printing.
OK, thank you for the suggestions! I managed to get an OK level with the help of that test print. But this whole process raised a lot of new questions. Because the assisted calibration tool acts very weird now. The sensor beeped instantly at the most fastened (lowest) level when I ran the calibration and I got instant OK:s on the two front screws. I just had to unscrew the back screw a bit. But the calibration was of still totally off. Got any clues what is going on here?
Before we go any further, one Question: did you also have problems before using blue tape? Since the tape is not that thick I find it odd that it made this whole process so different.
So what I did was:
- I did not tighten the screws all the way before calibrating the extruder. I had the bed like “in the middle”. (so assuming that calibrating the extruder is to “set position Z = zero, right here”, later I can still go both ways, up and down via tightening / loosening the screws, because zero is “in the middle”)
- then calibrated the extruder with a paper sheet (don’t forget to click ‘finished’ at the end)
- tighten up the screws (lower the bed)
- level the bed using the bed leveling wizard. If it starts with a beeeeeep right away, cancel the Leveling Wizard and start it again. For me - when I got the beep right away, canceling and restarting the process worked every time… . Level the bed. (don’t forget to click ‘finished’ at the end).
after leveling, my Finder moves the nozzle to the center of the bed, so I can re-check it with a piece of paper.
There is also something else… the leveling Sensor. Mine was not 90° straight when going down. I found this odd so changed it to be 90°… however that way the nozzle was too high. So after I did everything above, I also changed the angle of my leveling sensor a bit. You can do this in Settings -> “calibrate servo”. There you can set two Values On and Off (like Sensor “out” and Sensor “in”). Be aware that changing the value does not translate to a change of the angle right away. You have to turn it on / off to see the changes.
For Ex: You go to Settings -> calibrate servo -> Value = 196. Change it to 190, click on “servo on”. Look at where your Sensor is now. click on “servo off”. Set Value to 200. Click “servo on” Look at where your sensor is now… it should be in a different position than with 190.
Same the other way around. When you have the “servo on” you can see the Value for “Servo off”. So change of values there will only show after you turned it off. (got it?)
Wow! Thanks a million for this deep-diving answer! Actually, no, I didn’t have the issues before I added the tape. But I also didn’t have them the first times i ran the calibration with the tape added, so I don’t think it’s related. I noticed the servo calibration but as you say nothing happened when I changed the values so i didn’t dare to change them. Or perhaps I did by mistake, which would explain why it acts differently. Anyway, now I know how this works and I will refer to your post next time I re-level. Now that I have a good level I will stick to that until I need to do it again.
My previous printer was a Cube, and the one thing it did well was auto-level. So I am a bit unexperienced in regards to leveling. Thanks again!
Thank you so much for this! I was having so many issues with calibrating the extruder and levelling the bed due to the servo pointing too much to the right. I followed your instructions and I am now getting great prints, thank you again!
