Question about the hotbed leveling

I'm confusing about the hotbed levelling of my Ender 3 V2.

The step I take to level my hotbed is:

  1. raise the temperature to 65 Celsius degrees (which is also my first layer printing temperature)
  2. wait for 20 minutes to heat the hotbed thoroughly
  3. level the bed by adjusting the springs

It works fine for printing. After the print, I need to cool down the bed to 28 Celsius degrees, which allows me to remove the printing objects easily.

However, due to the expansion and contraction of the hotbed springs and screws (and maybe other stuff), even if I re-heat the hotbed to 65 Celsius degrees, the hotbed will be slightly different from the previous levelling, and I might need to re-level it.

This situation is confusing me. Is this normal for everyone, or is my printer has some qualification flaws? If it is normal, is there a way to mitigate this situation, or the only thing I could do is to keep re-levelling?

If you haven't bought better springs for the bed, I would recommend that first. The springs that the Ender 3's come with don't really give enough tension and so what you are describing is possible.

You can get a set of springs pretty cheaply, but if you are going to order them from something like Amazon, I'd recommend getting a bundle that comes with something else you may want to upgrade, because the springs seem to cost more when purchased separately. This is a good example:

You can also get silicon spacers to replace the springs. They are solid but still allow for some adjustment.

2 Likes

Hi TTalkington,

Thank you for your advice! I'll go upgrade my bed springs first.

I have the Ender 3 Max with the springs that came with it. I manually level the bed with feeler gauges and only do this about once every couple of months, and I print almost every day. If you don't move your printer around you shouldn't need to do it very often.