Sorry, couldn’t resist the clickbait title, but yes, THOSE should be checked from time to time, too.
But the PSA I want to say is: Check your printer for mechanical problems if you have trouble. It might not be obvious in the first place.
In this case my Ender 3 Pro with sprite was printing a horrible first layer and the z offset was never right - when it looked ok on the left side of the x axis it was off on the right side and vice versa. (Regardless of endless tries of bed tramming and using a bed mesh)
It turned out I had the eccentric nut on the right side of the gantry tightend too much when mounting the sprite, so the right side of the gantry was not moving freely enough.
Now I adjusted the eccentric nut, so I can juuuuust turn the wheel with my finger a bit, maybe a bit looser that what was explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsEdU8ZtI6U
(And people, don’t purchase a single Z axis printer if you can avoid it. When I bought my Ender there was a HUGE price difference to dual Z, but nowadays thigs look much better)
thank you for the advice. i have an eccentric nut as well, so I’m excited to learn that it might help to finger my gantry a little bit. and I’ll definitely make sure my next purchase is a double ender.
Yeah, but don’t forget to level your bed before fingering the gantry, otherwise things might fall of the bed during the procedure.
The Y axis was loose on my printer, loose enough that it kept moving (slightly) to the right while printing. Taking out the 4 screws, re-aligning the axis and tightening the screws fixed this. As well as checking your nuts, check your screws too!
The older you get, it becomes ever more important to check your nuts.
This is super critical for good clean prints. At least once I month I check my belts, bolts, and get out my squares and make sure the frame is properly aligned as well. These things are CNC machines, and they require exact geometry in order to function as expected.
Ender 3 V2 here, and yeah, I’ve done to dual-Z axes (along with a bunch of other mods) and I agree that it does give you more stability. But it also makes the problem you found with the eccentric nuts an even bigger deal, it took me a couple of reassemblies to get all that back to where it needed to be.
Also make sure you get the right firmware on the enders. I have an ender 5 pro and put the wrong firmware on it and the z stepper wouldn’t move for like the first 5 to 7 layers, or so it seemed, leading to a lot of failures. It was confusing for a while but I finally got it figured out.
I’ll also take this opportunity to remind anyone that PLA printed parts will creep under pressure - any part with a screw in it will require occasional re-tightening and anything that has weight or pressure on it will slowly tend towards a permanent position where that load doesn’t exist.
This is especially important to know if you make motor brackets and/or belt tensioners, as they will bend over time.
