Help! Here I go again......

[Turbojoe]

I'm using the Big Tree Tech SKR mini 3 V3.0 silent board and love it. Cura 5.0 and Pronterface for slicer and interface.

OK so I had everything 100% sorted after giving up on BL Touch a while back. Got maybe upwards of 75 absolutely perfect prints using a variety of filaments. Everything 100% beautiful. Perfect first layer. All of a sudden yesterday for no reason ZERO bed adhesion regardless of the file or filament. I went through the standard routine. Four corner manual bed level, check. Bed temp, check. Replace nozzle, check. Try three different filaments, check. Installed my spare brand new Creality carborundum glass bed, check. I've done the firmware 9 point level as well. Still no joy. 100% new Creality direct drive extruder package installed about a month ago that made a big difference in print quality over Bowden tube.

One thing I've noticed during print is that at middle bed when I push a .004"/0.10mm feeler gauge between the nozzle and the bed it is WAY loose. Initial purge line is just fine. I'm not sure what happened out of the blue like this.

While I'd love to use the BL Touch that is still disconnected and taking up space on my extruder I simply don't know what firmware to use for my early Ender3 with a few upgrades. I'm not a Linux user so I know virtually nothing about GitHub or even how to find and download the right firmware file from there. Some have suggested compiling my own firmware. Yeah, that ain't gonna happen.

Such a simple problem. Why does it have to be a nightmare undertaking to get the BL Touch to work properly? If there is a better bed level solution I'll gladly throw the BL Touch in the trash and buy it. In this day and age there is no reason for EVERYTHING not to be plug and play. I have things to do other than learning how and writing my own firmware. I'm hoping IF I can get BL Touch to finally work it'll eliminate bed level issues so I can troubleshoot from there. It's so strange that that prints suddenly went from being perfect to being toilet fodder.

After weeks of absolute perfection my Ender 3 is now offline until I can figure out this problem.

Joe

 

[luvmy40]

You can down load the Marlin firmware that supports CR/BL Touch directly from Creality. Just verify which main board you have before down loading and flashing the firmware.

https://www.creality.com/pages/download-ender-3-pro?spm=..page_1934481.products_display_1.1

 

[Turbojoe]

This is not a Creality motherboard or CR Touch.

Joe

 

[Mr NCT]

I'm using the Big Tree Tech SKR mini 3 V3.0 silent board and love it. Cura 5.0 and Pronterface for slicer and interface.

OK so I had everything 100% sorted after giving up on BL Touch a while back. Got maybe upwards of 75 absolutely perfect prints using a variety of filaments. Everything 100% beautiful. Perfect first layer. All of a sudden yesterday for no reason ZERO bed adhesion regardless of the file or filament. I went through the standard routine. Four corner manual bed level, check. Bed temp, check. Replace nozzle, check. Try three different filaments, check. Installed my spare brand new Creality carborundum glass bed, check. I've done the firmware 9 point level as well. Still no joy. 100% new Creality direct drive extruder package installed about a month ago that made a big difference in print quality over Bowden tube.

One thing I've noticed during print is that at middle bed when I push a .004"/0.10mm feeler gauge between the nozzle and the bed it is WAY loose. Initial purge line is just fine. I'm not sure what happened out of the blue like this.

While I'd love to use the BL Touch that is still disconnected and taking up space on my extruder I simply don't know what firmware to use for my early Ender3 with a few upgrades. I'm not a Linux user so I know virtually nothing about GitHub or even how to find and download the right firmware file from there. Some have suggested compiling my own firmware. Yeah, that ain't gonna happen.

Such a simple problem. Why does it have to be a nightmare undertaking to get the BL Touch to work properly? If there is a better bed level solution I'll gladly throw the BL Touch in the trash and buy it. In this day and age there is no reason for EVERYTHING not to be plug and play. I have things to do other than learning how and writing my own firmware. I'm hoping IF I can get BL Touch to finally work it'll eliminate bed level issues so I can troubleshoot from there. It's so strange that that prints suddenly went from being perfect to being toilet fodder.

After weeks of absolute perfection my Ender 3 is now offline until I can figure out this problem.

Joe

I feel your pain, I've run into the same thing with my mostly stock Ender3v2. Phase of the moon? How you're holding your tongue? Who knows.

 

[Turbojoe]

Starting again this morning. I know for certain that there are NO mechanical changes and NO installed firmware changes. I uninstalled and reinstalled Cura 5.0. Did a test print. No Go. Still too far from the bed to adhere. Uninstalled and reinstalled Pronterface. Re-sliced some files in Cura 5.0 and tried printing with the same adhesion failures EVEN using hairspray.

I'm completely lost as to why I went from perfect, gorgeous prints that I couldn't be happier with to within minutes a sudden ZERO bed adhesion because the nozzle is too far from the bed at print start. It makes NO sense at all. Ugh.

Joe

 

[luvmy40]

Obviously your Z Offset is not set. Why it might have changed, I have no idea. My ender 3 Pro refuses to store the Z Offset. I have set it after every power cycle. If I run the bed leveling program and just print, I get the same issue you are having.

 

[Turbojoe]

Obviously your Z Offset is not set. Why it might have changed, I have no idea. My ender 3 Pro refuses to store the Z Offset. I have set it after every power cycle. If I run the bed leveling program and just print, I get the same issue you are having.

After eliminating everything else I went after the Z end stop switch. I made a test cable and used my Fluke 179 DVOM to see exactly what was happening. I turns out as soon as the bracket just barely touched the switch lever the switch would start to change resistance then open circuit WAY before the switch would "click". I spayed out the switch with DeoxIT D5 and exercised it several times and it seems OK now, but I think I'm going to install an optical sensor for more reliable Z stop control. I found the idea and a mounting setup on Thingiverse HERE. The sensors are cheap and easy to integrate so I'm going to order them from Amazon and have them tomorrow.

 

[Turbojoe]

I found some new firmware for the SKR v 3.0 board for stock, w/BL Touch and W/BL Touch Z homing from GitHub. I got finally got BL Touch to work but with no adjustability. "Stock" setting just kept rebooting after trying to adjust Z. I finally deleted all of the BL Touch garbage as the files are 100% worthless for me. I also found an early "stock" firmware that actually works. I STOPPED using YouTube for guidance and did a bed tram and adjusted to my 0.10 feeler gauge. I then made very minor adjustments to Z offset to get prints absolutely perfect again. I'm still using the mechanical Z end stop microswitch. After I print out all the files I need to I'll install the Z optical sensor in place of the mechanical switch. I don't see a need to replace all three to optic but what the hell. I had to buy a package of 5 so might just do it.

To maintain my sanity through learning more and more about understanding 3D printing I have to view every failure as a learning experience.

I have an AMD RX580 graphics card on the way (that I really couldn't afford) to help my Ryzen 5 system run Fusion 360 more effectively. I've downloaded all of the Fusion 360 training videos. Graphics card won't be here until. 7-5-22 though. I plan to go through every video until I can produce more usable files than I can now using TinkerCad.

Joe

 

[Mr NCT]

I found some new firmware for the SKR v 3.0 board for stock, w/BL Touch and W/BL Touch Z homing from GitHub. I got finally got BL Touch to work but with no adjustability. "Stock" setting just kept rebooting after trying to adjust Z. I finally deleted all of the BL Touch garbage as the files are 100% worthless for me. I also found an early "stock" firmware that actually works. I STOPPED using YouTube for guidance and did a bed tram and adjusted to my 0.10 feeler gauge. I then made very minor adjustments to Z offset to get prints absolutely perfect again. I'm still using the mechanical Z end stop microswitch. After I print out all the files I need to I'll install the Z optical sensor in place of the mechanical switch. I don't see a need to replace all three to optic but what the hell. I had to buy a package of 5 so might just do it.

To maintain my sanity through learning more and more about understanding 3D printing I have to view every failure as a learning experience.

I have an AMD RX580 graphics card on the way (that I really couldn't afford) to help my Ryzen 5 system run Fusion 360 more effectively. I've downloaded all of the Fusion 360 training videos. Graphics card won't be here until. 7-5-22 though. I plan to go through every video until I can produce more usable files than I can now using TinkerCad.

Joe

I've really enjoyed Arnold Rowntree's Fusion 360 Basic Tutorials series. Nice bite sized videos that have lots of useful info.
https://www.youtube.com/c/ArnoldRowntreeTeachesFusion360