Ok, my Tarantula pro just about has me crazy trying to get the bed level across the entire print surface.

I tried the original bed. I tried a PEI sheet. I am now trying a piece of Creality glass. I cannot get the bed to level in all four corners and the center.

I have watched the videos. Take a piece of paper, dial in the center, hit the corners, tweak, look at that!  Perfectly level and a beautiful first layer.

Not me.  I literally just spent 30 minutes going center, corner to corner, and adjusting everything to paper height at least 12 times in each point. Every time I get one corner dialed in, it either screws up another corner or there is a drag on the x between the corners.

So far my only decent first layer prints come from totally compromising and levelling the center. I am trying a larger print today and can't get adhesion at all in some spots.

Am I being too touchy? What's the tolerance here? I move the bed until you can feel the paper on the nozzle. I even tried feeler gauges from the toolbox.  Everyone levels their bed in a 3 minute video (with 2 minutes of talking) so do I have a physical issue here?

Lots of beds have some degree of warp. That's where mesh bed leveling comes in. You even things out best you can with the adjusters, minimizing the differences, then use mesh leveling to get the first layer a uniform thickness. Building the mesh maps the hills and valleys of the bed surface so the head can be positioned  at a consistent distance from the surface. The mesh adjustments get reduced a bit each layer til everything is on the same plane.

My CR10S has a bent bed.

I figured out which corner is the worst and I clipped a piece of mirror tile to the bed on the 3 "good" corners.

I left the other corner unclipped to just let it float in space.

It allows me to get the level to be good enough.

My CR10 does the corners first and then the middle.   Seems like a better way to go about it than trying to do center first.

Just got done with another round. Through constant minor tweaks corner to corner (we're talking like another 12) I am good on all the corners.

Then I go to the middle, and you can fit two pieces of paper under the nozzle.  The corners can be calibrated and the center off, or the center can be calibrated and the corners all smoosh the filament.

I will see if I can get a print to stick, just seems twitchy that a piece of glass can't level across the whole surface and a very minor adjustment on one corner of the bed throws everything else off.

I will check in to that manual mesh bed leveling if my version supports it.

Get yourself a good straight edge and check your bed for flatness.

I check my bed level right on top of the adjusters and that's it.

Straight edge shows no visible gaps. I can even put a small bubble level on it and maintain level across the platform.

Flipped the bed to glass with blue tape on it. Checked the tightness on the eccentric nuts on the y axis/bed. Completely loosened all 4 corners and set them all to half, then leveled the table with a bubble level.  Redid the Z home.

Ran a calibration print multiple times. (It goes to each corner, you set the depth, and then it hits all the corners again to check and finally does a test print.)  This time there as not as much deviation between corners, but the middle is still high.

That was probably the 10th calibration print of the day, and all came out looking like garbage. It is seriously as if the slightest twist in one of the corner dials is made is completely throws the rest of the bed off. I can calibrate the center enough to print a small cube, but that's it. Anything larger will have spacing in the first layer or be squished flat.

Very frustrating after hours of trying to get the bed calibrated to do any sizable print. I'm done. It is even more frustrating seeing the 20th bed calibration video where it is just so dead simple. They're calibrating off the hand feel of the nozzle on paper and getting a level bed, I am using freakin' .001 feeler gauges here and lucky to get one corner right at a time.

Are you leveling and measuring it hot or cold? The bed will move when it heats up. You want to level it when hot, so you can account for that.

Hot every time, which adds to the run since I have to wait for the bed to get to 65c.

Maybe I will try straight glass but I have been trying to get this thing level all weekend.

Four points or three?

Straight edge results sound like the bed is flat.

Next thing I be checking would be the wheels/bearings to make sure you didnt get a funny one in there.

Move to x10 y0 z1, then watch the nozzle gap carefully as you run y all the way back and forth.
Do the same at x310 or so (the other edge, whatever it is).

Can also run x all the way end to end and watch, but not sure if you will be able to see much on this one.

If you see the nozzle gap changing with a repetition of about 1.5in, one (or more) of your wheels/bearings is prob funny and needs to be replaced.

Thanks for the other ideas.

I parked the printer for the week to take a break from it and will do some work this weekend.  I am going to pull the bed and check out the wheels and bearings, and try to get the best operation of the carriage with the eccentric nut adjustment. I think I need to do that anyway, since there is some flaky residue on the Y-rail and wheels. Maybe I had the tension too high?

I will then reinstall the bed and check the level at the four corners and center. If it runs like before, I will be able to calibrate the corners, but the center to right center will be lower.

I can then check the height in many locations in a grid and put a strip of copper tape under the areas I find to be low to see if I can get this sucker flat.

Question: For optimal calibration for a 0.15mm layer height, is the nozzle to be 0.15mm off the bed, 0.1mm, etc?  I have feeler guages and will use those.

0 should be 0, .15 should be .15, etc.

You can level with anything you want.
If you level with a .15 feeler guage, set z to .15 when leveling.
If you use a 10mm gauge block, set z to 10mm when leveling.

No joke, I'm planning on rigid mounting my 2nd printer's bed and using a BL touch.  The time savings from those probes is substantial.

Thank you- totally makes sense, but I wasn't sure with the whole "paper feel" thing that seemed more ambiguous. I tried calibrating with various levels of "paper feel" on the nozzle, but the feeler gauges will be more precise for me.

I'll see how it goes when I check the height on many points of the bare bed after I work on the y axis carriage this weekend. I wonder if I screwed up the aluminum bed when I tried to remove the PEI sheet with the 3M adhesive to move to glass.

I will then put the glass bed on, reset Z home and see if I can calibrate out any low spots with tape.

Interesting, I had thought you needed a probe to do this, but that manual procedure looks promising.

My TTP firmware is pretty fresh (it has the EEPROM, save settings, etc. enabled) but no bed leveling under Prepare.

I'll see if I can either uncomment the manual mesh leveling in the current config, or pop the latest firmware on it.  To be honest, I have never even plugged the USB cable in my computer even though it's right next to it, I just print from SD.

I wanted to pop the hood anyway since I have the same issue other Tarantula Pro users do, when X is homed it shows -12 for some reason.

...and I appear to have bricked my printer, all I get is a blank screen after uploading the firmware.

I think I should have stuck with woodworking. I can work a saw.

In the easy to overlook but really easy mistake to make category, make sure your x gantry is level and not sagging. A small but of x axis sag will make your bed so out of level that it will be impossible to compensate.

Got a tip on the forums that the Tarantula firmware on GitHub was set up for the original, and to pull in a config from a different folder for the Tarantula Pro.

Trying to get that to work this morning.

ETA: Ok, thanks to some helpful folks (you need to use Audrino IDE beta 1.9 to handle this code, I had 1.8 installed for my Audrino) I got it installed. Tweaking the config now, have mesh bed leveling enabled so let's give this a spin...

I can send you my fw for Tarantula Pro if you want to compare or run it.
All stock + BLT.

The comparing thing is a very powerful tool to have when playing with fw so you gonna want to learn how if dont already.
I usually use notepad++ with the compare plugin. Lighter, quicker, and easier than ard IDE (I only use IDE to flash).
Another popular options is Sublime Text. Might have the compare tool built in.

What you might be best off doing is installing and playing with Visual Studio Code.
This is what you will use if you upgrade to the the 32bit boards so prob not a bad idea to get a feel for it.
This one has the compare tool built in, but its pretty heavy and slow to load like IDE so I still do most on my heavy work with notepad++.

Love the new firmware. I have a print going now after doing the mesh leveling. Only thing is to be very careful not to push the button after calibration or you get to do it all again.

Now I am getting a feel for just how tight these tolerances are. No way could I have gotten adhesion across the bed using a piece of paper and "feel".  I am using a 0.03mm feeler gauge to set Z, and it seems like 0.02mm is the difference between a nice line and a smooshed or flyway line on the first layer.

How about slicer settings? I have the first layer set to print at 1/2 speed (25mm/s, printing smaller parts at 50mm/s instead of stock 60mm/s in Cura). Normally I print at 1.5mm layers, should I run a different thickness on the first layer(s)?

It's all about that first layer, if I can get that down the my other calibrations seem OK. It's just so twitchy, I can't believe people level with a post-it and it works.

For leveling, I used the paper for a bit, but started just doing it by eye pretty quick. This takes a lil practice, but doesnt take long to get a feel for it.

Basically, when you level everything is going to be up to temp so the fan will be running. You can feel/hear the vibrations when the nozzle touches the bed.
Maybe even better if the bed surface is reflective. You can lower the nozzle until it just kisses its reflection.

Level isnt something you should have to mess with very often though. Like just keep an eye on your 1st layer and maybe tweak it once a month or evey other month thing.
To do this you need good firm assembly, and 1st layer stuff pretty decent so you arent having to jackhammer stuff off the bed. Be as gentle as you can when pulling parts.

More often just a minor nozzle/bed gap tweak was needed to get dialed in. This was prob more of a one/every other week thing.
I always just used an adjustable z stop, but you should have a z offset you can tweak on the lcd with manual mesh leveling that does the same thing.

IMO, 50% speed is a good rule of thumb for 1st layer. You can go faster depending on setup, think Im 40mm/s PLA on blue tape right now.
I dont mess with any height settings here, just running the same as the rest.
.4 layer, .5 line width, .4 nozzle right now. This goes against the typical rule of thumb for nozzle/layer height, but its just a rule of thumb and you can get away with much more after you get a feel for things,

And for sure, 1st layer is absolutely critical.

^^Good call.

I usually turn this on in the fw if running some kind of abl.
Config.h, line 1162 or so in the version I have.
#define RESTORE_LEVELING_AFTER_G28

Thanks for the heads up.  After this print I will upload:



Will it keep mesh settings after power down if I store settings?

You need to do the save to eeprom thing on the lcd after setting your mesh.