How to level your bed on ender 3 v2 / other 3d printers - easy process-manual on the fly levelling 

OMG This is the first video I've found that actually explains leveling in a way where I understand why when I turn one screw, it messes up the opposite corner. Thank you so much for this video. Very good information.

Big thanks for this video and the tests. This is by far the best and easiest way to truly dial in the level settings. I used this on my Ender 3 v2 Neo. My print quality is like night and day. Keep up the awesome work.

this video should have >10k likes. The most useful and sensible way of bed leveling. I am a Robotics Control System Engineer, so I know precision and accuracy. This video provides those.

Been printing for a few years now but still learnt a few things from this vid and templates are Brill! Thanks. 👍

I had kinda figured out the effect of one corner on another, but finding your video has visually confirmed what I thought. Therefore, you've saved me a lot of time today running endless tests. Thanks

You are simply the best, I watched Hundreds of videos on how to make 3D printers and especially ones from the experts (supposedly) but nobody explained this most important fundamental in such level of detail. After making 3 printers which don't work I even bought an ender 3 to try and understand better on where I was going wrong but what I received was absolute junk which did not even make one proper print and their customer service is less said the better. I finally found usefull information on why I was not getting the perfect first layer and I had resigned to printing only in the top right corner of the Ender still with minor imperfections. Now I will put everything I learnt and I am sure I will be able to print anywhere on the bed 😀👍 forgot to add, love your sense of humour 😀😀😀

This is no doubt the best video on bed leveling out there.

This is an excellent video. I just leveled the bed on a CR 10 fresh out of the box. I wish I had seen your video before I did that because I could have short cut the learning process. I will say going from a bed mat to a glass bed is a game changer. Thank you for making this video.

Thanks, I am just getting started with my Ender 3 v2, nice to see someone show and explain how the bed interacts with moving a corner.

new to 3D printing, just got donated a friends old ender 3, so glad i found your channel love your sense of humour and video style, new sub

(re: the table demo) This is why they should use 3 leveling wheels in a triangle instead of 4 in a square. 3 points define a plane. 4 points is a pain.

I was convinced to buy a BLTouch with my Ender and never used it. Literally gave it a way to another fellow n00b who still wanted to try it. Like you, I just learned to level better manually.

Thank you so much for this! I have been struggling with printing PETG (which is very unforgiving to bed level and bed height) and the large diagonal pattern was perfect for getting the printer in the ballpark for getting good adhesion followed by the more elaborate main pattern that really helped me fine tune it to perfection. I can now get really challenging prints to stick perfectly to the bed. You deserve way more subscribers!

I really dig your wittiness.

This really helped me out, thanks! Hours of troubleshooting, knowledge gained.

I find it hard to believe you have less than a thousand subscribers. Top notch video, thanks man.

Excelent videos ! I just subscribed when you explained why the diamond shape because i am amazed with your criteria. thanks a lot

Thank you for just stopping and explaining for us noobs!! I've been so frustrated trying to auto level with my chiron but that's trash, and I've just been winging it with the screws. But these templates will be so awesome!! I'll try these on my days off to see where I ended up! I still can't print things that aren't essentially flat 😏 thanks again 🙏

I love the explanation of the reasoning that went into the template layer designs here! Also, the brief-but-useful explanation of how the bed leveling adjustment screws affect diagonal corners. When you think about it, it’s very similar to how you need to tighten lug nuts on when you put tires on your cars. I suspect I had some poor adjustments on the wheels on my Y axis of my LotMaxx (Ender 3 or similar clone, has same basic structural design) during manufacturing so now I’ve got a notable amount of slop that causes really bad issues for multiple layers. I strongly suspect my initial leveling put things under too much stress and is a weird sprung balance, with the print head pushing into the bed too much over time causing problems, combined with how things are sprung. What I see from this looseness/slop is what makes the bed appear (via results) to not be level, but the most scary thing is to watch it carefully and pay attention and to see the bed actually act as a teeter-totter as it goes back and forth with the print head applying filament: it suddenly takes a big drop. This causes interesting print defects that aren’t so readily seen and understood with just a single layer. This is a design defect of having the Y axis supported with a single central support extrusion as it moves, combined with the V-groove wheels being made to roll in the grooves on a vertical axis, so especially if things aren’t adjusted perfectly, it’ll speed up wear and thus add slop as it wears, between the combination of being too loose/tight to begin with, and then the long-term repeated stresses. The great thing about your set of templates is it appears pretty efficient for materials usage and time usage for ROI in getting things dialed in, but there are other things that would be of great value, that can be added: 1. Bed/axis skew measurement. Your pattern is already large enough it shouldn’t be much more to add this. If you have good leveling but a skewed axis (or more than one) that limits what you can do. Things don’t fit together as planned when things are too skewed. 2. Z axis issues: the problem I’ve currently got (may need to replace the V-wheels, I haven’t taken it apart yet, these are my first printers I’ve used) may be mistaken as a Z axis issue if you don’t think to carefully watch bed motion. 3. Print speeds for extrusion quality: not all extruders are created equal. Where do you get acceptable tradeoffs for speed and layer heights? Perhaps 2 layers is sufficiently thick for this analysis. 4. Fine details for vertical printing, again, at measured speeds. Unless you have a fixed bed printer or perhaps one where the bed only moves on the Z axis, all those springs and the rest of the printer act as a suspension system for your printed part until it is completed. Each system has a spring constant K for each sprung load. What makes it especially interesting in a bed-flinger is all the springs may be at different tensions due to the imperfections of the bed and carriage materials. As you stated on the video about using sheets of aluminum foil in the center of the bed, well… I can’t think of a better proof things are suboptimal! In this test, I’d want a number of strategically-spaced spires, both small extrusion width ones that are as small as you can make them for that extruder setting, as well as X single-wall, also double-wall, etc. to understand what your printer can do. Why single and double wall, you ask? This is a test that measures space/time/energy all at once. Perhaps some more wall options would be useful. In particular, this would be useful as a torture test to have the tiniest spires go to the limits of the printer’s Z axis at these strategic points, so a user could know what print speeds they can achieve for the spring factors of their printers in all the dimensions, and see how their machines are sprung by how the spires lean in whatever dimensions they do. Tiny narrow spires (and also longer (but still short) lines, along various X, Y orientations, and also overhangs) would reasonably be expected to set up oscillations in the entire printer structure if they’re continued long enough, sort of like the old joke “if you see the car a-rocking, don’t come a-knocking” so I can see a need to do perhaps another template, one printed in isolation of everything else, for all key areas of the bed: we don’t want to let oscillations have a chance to dissipate in the test, because eventually, the user may actually have such a crazy part to print and have a messy failure they didn’t anticipate. Note also that this test should also be designed to measure skew as well, since that can happen in all dimensions. So, with that in mind, that also results in multiple areas in a single printing also being printed across the print bed. This may also show how level the printer itself is, especially with pushing bed and extrusion temperatures higher, which also can be used to judge cooling capacity (clearly, multiple interacting variables here to test and judge). Of course, that’s not an all-inclusive set of things to test, but that’s something I’ve not seen explicitly addressed, thinking about all the videos I’ve watched. My formal training is EET/automation, and I’ve ended up making a living in software development. For that reason (and licensing costs are harder to justify for Fusion360) I’ve been using OoenSCAD for part design. It’s available for Windows/MacOS/Linux for free, so it’d be about as close to perfect to convert your templates into that internal scripting language and parameterize it for the print volumes and characteristics of people’s printers, because I see a number of people with issues of things being too large for their printers according to Cura. What if they have a larger format printer? They have the problem with it not being as useful for the whole bed as it is now. Thanks!

Joking man, it is a very good video, thank you.

Great work!

hey, i love your videos! thank you!

Thank you very much for this great video !!!!!

Will be happy to give it a shot. I do the paper thing first then print squares offset from the corners and check the thickness with calipers. Look at the deviation in thickness from one to the next. So if it's RR= 0.4, RF=0.35, LF= 0.4, RL=0.35... then two opposing corners are just a tad low. Nudge both wheels and reprint. Takes 5 mins, then measure again till they all match. I'm also legally blind, so I can't really tune it on the fly by eyeballing it. So I usually get it by the 2nd pass from measuring and nudging. Been using spring-steel PEI coated plates.

Good Job! Thank you.

It is a masterwork. If it moves we will all be hypnotized and then you can make us bark like chickens.

Thanks dude!!

dude, I just changed my springs and had to relevel everything and was having a hell of a time.. I see this video and BOOM!

Greetings from the States. Great video!

I still tend to clean the bed and use a feeler gauge or a piece of paper for leveling. The problem I see is that after you have printed the patterns you have to scrape them off, applying pressure to do so, which could knock the leveling off before you start to print. That said, it's still a worthwhile video for demonstrating the interactions between the leveling knobs.

What if I don't want to go! Nice video going to try your templates when I get home

Strictly speaking, if the bed was completely rigid then only that part of the bed that is outside of the spring will raise if you lower the opposite corner. That you were able to remedy a dip in the centre of your glass bed by putting a few sheets of foil under it means there is some flex in even a glass bed.

Thanks I will be trying this out....Laurie NZ

Thanks!

15:00 , the figure looks like a crop circle... nice a lot... good video, congrats

Are all the Ender models with the CR touch, suspects when it comes to these springs?

I don't hear much about how wonderful BLTouch is - does it really help? When I do manual bed leveling before I run BLTouch I notice oscillations in what you would think would be the bed surface but what I believe are coming from eccentric runner wheels either in the bed slinger mechanics or the X runner wheels on the cross bar. I suspect the BLTouch mops these imperfections up but I don't know for sure. I mean, it seems I can get my first level uniformly thick after all the leveling.

my hunt for the perfectly level floor with these new cosmic patterns shall continue tomorrow

Great but why not bltouch dense mesh?

Thank you very much for what you do for 3d printing enthusiasts! I sometimes find that manual leveling can achieve better first layer results than CR touch. How accurate do you think the CR touch is?

Hey all, when i print this, i have parts of almost all the squares and middle part and circles that either have bits of filament or no filament and other parts perfectly filled up. Why is this? i have done my e calibration. Still all of sudden having some massive issues with ender 3 max.

ty going to test this on my cr-6 it has some issues with the auto leveling, maybe i can tune in if its the ALS thats faulty or something else ^^

Does this help with printing large scale items that get fairly close to edges of the bed? I can't print things toward the center without too much problem, but when I tried to do something out past the adjustment knobs... disaster.

Another good alternative to the springs is using silicon columns instead of bed springs.

Hello. Very good video, but I have a philosopical/math problem with this kind of bed support : ¿Why the heck does someone has to pick four points to define a plane? Geometrically, a plane is defined by three points, and thus, if you adjust one of this three points, you don't mess with the other two... It is inexplicable to me why build a bed with four support points, complicating and making leveling so difficult

Lets say my bed is level and my z offset is good.smaller prints for first layer come out ok this is when its a larger first layer.If my speed is too slow can the heat from the nozzel influence the pla adhearing to the bed. (It tends to lift a bit on larger parts)

i want to add "j head all metal hot end Bowden type " to my Ender 3 v2. please make a video if possible. and thanks for detailed video.🙏

I have issues finding a place to put the clips that the nozzle or nozzle head body *won't* hit - any advice?

Great video, could you please share your parameters or CURA profile ? thanks

Great video, a small problem with the main levelling test, it will not fit in cura 4.11! E3V2 bed size set to 235x235x250! its fine in crealty 4.20 bed set to 220x220x250. I think its due to some minus figures in the printhead setting? Any suggestions.

You mentioned adding aluminum foil to help level a wrapped bed, I have a wrapped bed but adding foil does not seem to help. Did you happen to do a video about that part of leveling or do you know where I can find a video. I have an Ender 3 v2.

Do you clean the prints before putting in your mouth or is it safe to do it off the print?

Please help. Where can I get the diamond pattern you show I can print??

this process is a giant giant headache i'm going to keep at it but MANNN it's testing my patience lol

I just print a 80mm brim and live adjust as the nozzle goes in big ass circles continuously.

Does the fl-fr-rl-rr print work ok on a delta or can you produce a version for deltas?

For example, it prints half of the square on the left front corner but then it starts skipping the rest of the square. In this case the bed is low or high? How can I fix? I may throw my ender 3v2 soon!

3:34 - LMFAO 😂

Wait please tell me more adhesion!? Why is sometimes times those pla plastic doesn't stick together? (I don't even know what's that called?)

dang ADEERS

What is everyone doing to get the files to slice in Cura? I keep getting the error saying to check and make sure the model fits within the print area, are assigned to an enabled extruder, and not all set as a modifier meshes.

I brought the diagnol line test into cura and it did not fit the Ender 3 volume. I tired a gew tests by scaling each print going down to 85% in scale and each print would hit the bed clips and make my hot end jump. after 3 attempts I decided the potential damage was not worth it. :( Great video though. Really nice stuff.

i bought and installed an official bltouch and it straight doesn't work for my ender 3 pro. Currently I use it solely as a z offset switch while I decided if I'm returning it or not...

Great video but I am unable to slice anything in Cura.

can we get a copy of the bed level print?

so everything prints fine but when it goes to print the lines that connect everything i get a dotty mess. anyone have any idea what could cause that? im not sure if it my retraction or what

I agree that auto leveling gimmicks like BL touch are just bodges for cheap beds that are not flat. But can we please use the right terms and call this tramming, it's not leveling. You can put the whole printer on a 45 degree angle and it will print fine.

Isn't you, Thingiverse hates all of us

90% of the problems I see talked about go back to bed level or traming. I printed for 2 weeks before I fixed that even a little. Lol