Suspected Prusa MK3 Bed Leveling Issue
I've been printing a lot of minis lately, so I decided that I needed to print another mini storage tray to help me cart them around. I've already printed 3 of the things, so I loaded it up in Slic3r and generated some fresh gcode (just to ensure that I had the latest settings), then started the print and went back to modelling, occasionally glancing at the printer to make sure that it hadn't caught fire or something ;)
Partway through the first layer, I noticed that something wasn't quite right. The MK3 has an auto-bed leveling feature and it's worked great for me, so I haven't paid too much attention to the various Reddit threads that discussed the importance of bed leveling... but I have read them. And, judging by the inconsistent thickness of that first layer, I figured that I had somehow come across a bed leveling issue. Well it turned out to be a little yes but mostly no.
If you're not familiar with the model that I'm trying to print, those hexagons and triangles will become gaps in an otherwise solid sheet (well, except for a few long thin rectangles like we see in the North East corner). Next to that long thin rectangle, you can see where the first layer gets suspect, as the extruded plastic from the outlines of a couple hexes and triangles is thin to the point of disappearing.
Looking back on it, that's too specific of an area for it to be a bed leveling problem. All around the impacted zone, the print is fine... but at that one spot, the bed seems to be too high and so the first layer isn't extruding properly. And, it turns out, that's exactly what was going on.
The MK3 has that nice removable spring steel printing bed. Apparently, I managed to get a tiny piece of PLA debris under it at some point. The printer bed was still level (and flat) enough to pass the grid leveling tests, but when I tried to print in that specific area, I obviously ran into some problems. Fortunately, as soon as I removed the printing surface I was able to see the little bit of grey plastic on the bed beneath it.
I had come across a Princess and the Pea situation, except that my printer was the princess and a flake of PLA was the pea and the printer bed was the, uh, bed. After removing that errant bit of plastic, everything worked great. And, best of all, my printer earned a nickname out of it!
Partway through the first layer, I noticed that something wasn't quite right. The MK3 has an auto-bed leveling feature and it's worked great for me, so I haven't paid too much attention to the various Reddit threads that discussed the importance of bed leveling... but I have read them. And, judging by the inconsistent thickness of that first layer, I figured that I had somehow come across a bed leveling issue. Well it turned out to be a little yes but mostly no.If you're not familiar with the model that I'm trying to print, those hexagons and triangles will become gaps in an otherwise solid sheet (well, except for a few long thin rectangles like we see in the North East corner). Next to that long thin rectangle, you can see where the first layer gets suspect, as the extruded plastic from the outlines of a couple hexes and triangles is thin to the point of disappearing.
Looking back on it, that's too specific of an area for it to be a bed leveling problem. All around the impacted zone, the print is fine... but at that one spot, the bed seems to be too high and so the first layer isn't extruding properly. And, it turns out, that's exactly what was going on.
The MK3 has that nice removable spring steel printing bed. Apparently, I managed to get a tiny piece of PLA debris under it at some point. The printer bed was still level (and flat) enough to pass the grid leveling tests, but when I tried to print in that specific area, I obviously ran into some problems. Fortunately, as soon as I removed the printing surface I was able to see the little bit of grey plastic on the bed beneath it.
I had come across a Princess and the Pea situation, except that my printer was the princess and a flake of PLA was the pea and the printer bed was the, uh, bed. After removing that errant bit of plastic, everything worked great. And, best of all, my printer earned a nickname out of it!
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