So I have combed through a lot of other posts with similar problems, but haven’t found one with results that help my situation. The rolling part of the structure is level, but the cross piece that holds the z motors is not level which makes the x axis bars not level also. The z bars are in the notches, I have loosened and retightened everything a few times. It still slopes downwards toward the x motor. Any other ideas on how to make it level? Reprint the parts? I got mine from Ryan so I figured they should be good. Is there a way to measure or test them to see they are printed correctly? Any ideas help. Thanks.
First pic is the rolling structure level, last pic is the bed level, and the middle pic is across the x bars.
Can you take a few pics of the whole side assemblies from a little further out? I know Ryan will want to see them.
My first guess is that there is some builtin twist in the long pipes and it’s causing the top to not be flat. Can you loosen the holding on those pipes? They don’t need to be tight, AFAIK.
Both sides of the x pipes have about the same amount of sag to the right, so it seems like a slightly off print could be a possibility. I rolled the x pipes when I loosened everything, and they seemed to roll pretty easy without changing any angles.
One idea I had was to waller out the holes for the left wheel, so it could sag to bring the gantry back to level, but I’m concerned it would cause the lower z brackets or something else to drag on the bottom of the 2x4 frame. It’s not off by as much as it was before I lossened and re tightened everything, but I would like to get into some engraving so having a perpendicular gantry will be essential.
Oh totally. I knew what you meant. No worries. Just trying to see what I haven’t considered yet. It seems like it would naturally want to sag to side that has the x stepper. Maybe I can try to loosen everything, and put a corrective pressure on it while tightening the screws. Perhaps that would pull it back to level?
Some of the most common issues. You might want to have a poke around to see how we found and fixed them.
1-The Z rails not under the XZ part’s notch (little tiny notch at the top).
2-The corners or Z brackets tightened incorrectly causing misalignment.
3-T8 nut being too tight and forcing the lead screw the wrong direction.
As Jeffeb3 pointed out it should very easily sit on the YZ rollers. If it does not try loosening the corners, t8 nut, and the Z rail tension bolts.
Just to ease your mind even if the parts were incorrect it should work. There is another post where they were printed way out of line on a janky printer and he is still using it. Came up just the other day.
I think I have been through every post about three times looking for ideas on what to check. I can grab a top down shot after work. The notches are sitting flush on the z tubes, I could have overtightened it, so I will check that, and the lead screw is loose. I can double check the z rail tension bolts and loosen if needed.
I have been using it and making successful through cuts, but want to start engraving so depth will become important.
As far as corner tightness: you suggest only tightening enough so that the z tubes dont fall out?
That was me. My friends printer was off by 1.5 degrees. He reprinted the XZ Mains but that’s it. Everything else is still all a little janky.
As Ryan said, make sure the XZ Main and the XZ Side Belt and XZ pieces aren’t too tight. I had that problem in the beginning. I then loosened everything up until the Z rods fell out, put them back in and tightened everything just enough so they wouldn’t fall out. That definitely helped.
I’m also having an issue where only the “far” side of my gantry goes all the way down when not powered up. I have to gently pull out the bottom of the Y Flat Part to get the near side to go down. When I do that, the gantry goes all the way down and sits on XZ Roller Assembly like it is supposed to. I usually do this before I start a print to “reset” my Z. Also, make sure you lube your leadscrews. I hadn’t done this at first and it wasn’t moving smoothly. I then got some silicone lube and that did the trick.
Even with my printed parts being a little outta whack, the machine cuts great. I cut out some circles out of 1/2" plywood yesterday and they all came out perfectly - from 13" to 40" diameters. I am seeing some weird things happen on the first pass but haven’t posted about it yet. lol.
One of the things I noticed early on, was that the z tubes didn’t stay plumb (parallel to each other) when at the lowest vs the highest gantry height. The bottom of the tubes would actually move closer to each other.
I was an aircraft mechanic for 2 decades, so tightening things down just comes naturally. To me it seems if it’s loose it’s gonna vibrate when cutting. I will loosen stuff and see what happens.
Before we make any guesses lets just wait until you can try the first suggestions. We can guess all day but that just leads to a horribly confusing thread full of mostly wrong assumptions.
So I spent about 3 hours loosening and adjusting and I think the original problem was from tightening the screws unevenly on the corners, thus making the outer piece of the z support “crooked”. By letting the gantry fall all the way down and bottoming out with the screws loose, gently tightening the upper screws and then raising it about 20mm to snug the bottom ones, and then snugging all the screws down very slowly and evenly, I got it all aligned pretty well. Thanks for the suggestions, Ryan you were right, it was the screws improperly tightened that did it.
