Howto: Thumbwheel Leveling

Leveling the Bed is a Pain.

With the default leveling procedure, the springs and the screws with the head on top it's not very comfortable to level the bed. You can never level the corners, if the print head is above it, because you can't access the screws. With a full size glass bed you are not even able to reach the screw heads at all.

The springs are nice to have in the beginning, because they sometimes prevent your print head to damage itself or the bed if your offset is not perfect. But the springs tend to compress under the weight of the print which brings additional problems.

Instead of leveling the bed from the top, you level the bed from the bottom.

• a 4 mm drill
• 8 x M3 nut
• thumbwheels
  • printed Thumbwheels like this or this or this or any you can find where you can place a M3-Nut inside
  • OR a manufactured thumbwheel like this

• remove the hotbed from the carrier (remove the wingnuts and take it off)
• drill out the holes at the carrier
• insert the m3 screws that were on the heated bed before again, but dont apply the springs
• apply one m3 nut on each screw, tigthen it against the heated bed
• now apply the thumbwheels
• apply bed to the carrier
• apply wingnuts or even more thumbscrews
• level your bed and tighten your thumbscrews

In the end it should look like this:

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