Why do some 3D printer beds require turning knobs on the bottom for leveling?

PriorityMotif , 3 months ago

Back in my day you had to level the bed by hand! We had to put a piece of paper between the print nozzle and the bed until the gaps were perfect. If the bed was warped, there was nothing you could do!

EmilieEvans , 3 months ago

BambuLab wants to be the Apple of 3D-printing. So they simplified and decided the factory bed level with auto bed leveling/compensation is good enough for the user.

On high end printers there is just no need to level them. The factory does it and the bed won't move at all due to the excellent mechanical designs.

Everything else? They have it to level the corners of the bed and use automatic bed leveling/correction to get it perfect and adjust for build plate imperfections.

There is one system that does level the bed but doesn't need the knobs as each of the three mounting points is connected to an independent z-axis (kinematic bed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgkK7Fez8VU

nikscha , 3 months ago

Good comparison with Apple (no open source anything)

navi , 3 months ago

WebKit is open source 😅 so maybe Bamboo is a little worse in that regard.

claymore , 3 months ago

WebKit is only open source because they forked KHTML to create it, which is licenced under LGPL

wjrii , 3 months ago

The Bambu will have some sort of auto bed leveling. The simplest method is a limit switch connected to a small plunger style probe mounted next to the nozzle.

Whatever the specific method, the idea is something that lets the printer sample multiple points on the bed and use the Z axis dynamically to adjust for the small irregularities. If you don’t have that, even half a millimeter can ruin print quality, so the leveling screws are there to handle it manually from the bed side.