Bed Leveling for Delta

[Jbc]

Does the Bed Leveling Wizard work on delta printers?
I have been printing with S3D and love it.
I need to calibrate it after a minor mechanical adjustment and thought I would try the wizard.

I've tried both 'Automatic leveling positions" and 'Manually entered leveling positions.'

Are Delta's supported in this wizard?

[TenKOhms]

I don't believe so. The bed leveling wizard brings the extruder to different points along the bed and then you're meant to use your bed's screws to adjust its position to bring it closer or farther away from the nozzle.

At least with my delta printer, I don't have the option of moving my bed up or down.

This is what I normally do to "level my bed" for my delta:

Leveling your new Orion Delta™ 3D (The Easy Way!)
Sometimes the abuse the Orion can experience during shipping can adversely effect the
factory calibration. If that's the case with your printer, you can use this easy to follow guide in
order to re-calibrate your Orion. This procedure was written by the gentleman that built and
calibrated your printer, so there literally is no more authoritative source for the process.

1) Preheat hot-end and bed to the material you use. If you use both, just use the “Preheat ABS”
in the printer settings menu on the LCD.

2) Once the hot-end and bed are up to temp, on the LCD, click the knob to bring up the menu,
go to Advanced Settings (at the bottom of the list). Click the knob.

3) Go to the bottom of the next menu to Calibrate Z Height. Click the knob.

4) Now you are in the calibration menu. Click Home Towers. The machine will go up and hit all
the end-stops.

5) Go down to Z Position and click the knob.

6) Turn the knob Counter-Clockwise to lower the nozzle. Bring the nozzle down till its a couple
millimeters from the glass.

7) Turn the knob counterclockwise SLOWLY and look eye level with the bed, and bring the
nozzle down till it just barely meets the glass (this is easiest with a white wall in the background
so you can watch the reflection of the nozzle – if you don't have a white background to use, you
could tape a sheet of paper between the towers to give you enough contrast). When the nozzle
touches the glass, click the knob.

8) Go down to Set New Z=0.00 and then click the knob.

9) Go to Home Towers. Click the knob. You have now set the z height, and now it is time to
calibrate the towers.

The next steps can be done through a computer or SD card. I find it is easier on a sd card so
you can keep close to the machine to watch the movement.

13) Again with the bed at eye level and looking close, Run Towers.gcode from either your host
software or SD card. Watch closely as the machine will home, then the nozzle will drop to
0.2mm ABOVE the glass.

After it drops to the center like that, it will travel to the X tower. DO NOT pay attention to what
the nozzle does while traveling, what you must pay attention to is when it pauses.
The nozzle will pause at the X corner, then return to the center, and move to the Y tower and
pause. After the pause, it will again move to the center, and move to the Z tower, pause, and
return to the center.

14) What you want to remember is the nozzle when it pauses. You want to compare the
movement to the gap at the center.

– If the nozzle at the tower RAISES (compared to the CENTER), you want to adjust the screw
that hits the end-stop by turning it counterclockwise (moving the screw up).
If the nozzle at the tower LOWERS (compared to the CENTER), you want to adjust the screw
that hits the end-stop by turning it clockwise (moving the screw down).

*** Make small changes to the screw about 1/8 – ¼ turn adjustments***
15) After you have adjusted the screws, You have changed the Z height, so you want to go back
and re-set the Z height the way you did earlier in this guide.

16) Re-run Towers.gcode and watch as you did before, again noting the changes in the nozzle
at each pause. You will run through these steps till the nozzle remains the same height at each
tower when compared to the center.
If the nozzle goes the same direction on all 3 towers (such as you have the gap in the center,
and at every tower the nozzle lowers. Or you have the gap at the center and at all 3 pauses the
nozzle raises), you will adjust the radius in the following way.

17a) If from the center gap, the nozzle goes DOWN toward the glass at ALL 3 TOWERS, load
your host software and bring up the EEPROM information. You will look for Horizontal Radius.
You want to RAISE that number. I suggest raising it by 0.2 and run towers.gcode to see the
change, and keep raising the number till the gap evens out (changing this number will not make
you need to re-set your z height, it will just raise the outer edges where the nozzle pauses).

17b) If from the center gap, the nozzle goes UP toward the glass at ALL 3 TOWERS, load your
host software and bring up the EEPROM information. You will look for Horizontal Radius. You
want to LOWER that number. I suggest raising it by 0.2 and run towers.gcode to see the
change, and keep raising the number till the gap evens out (changing this number will not make
you need to re-set your z height, it will just lower the outer edges where the nozzle pauses).
After doing this, you will see any changes where one tower may be higher than another, if this is
the case, go back to adjusting the end-stop screws as before.

Typically it can take anywhere from 5-10 or so re-runs of the tweaks to get the gap to remain the
same at all 3 pauses compared to the center of the machine. Once the gap is the same at each
tower compared to the center, your machine is calibrated and ready to print!

For pics/more information see page 25 of this document provided by SeeMeCNC:
http://download.seemecnc.com/orion/Orio ... -2ndEd.pdf

[Jbc]

Thanks for the response.

I can do it easily with Repetier but was hoping it was doable with S3D.
Thanks.
jbc

[TenKOhms]

Thanks for the response.

I can do it easily with Repetier but was hoping it was doable with S3D.
Thanks.
jbc

I should have specified earlier, if your printer has bed-leveling screws to adjust it's level, then you can use the bed leveling wizard. Else, if your bed does not have adjustable bed-leveling screws, you cannot.