I bought the Creality Ender 3 Pro because I had read about the few improvements included in the pro version that were not in the standard version. First is the magnetic bed, I'm not sure if it justifies the $40 price premium, but the 1 year warranty and support and the improved extruder does justify the price premium for me.
After finishing the build I was unable to level the bed. the left side was lower than the right by almost 1/3 of an inch! I took the bed off to see if the bed frame below was that far off from level. It was! Argh!
So I examined the bed frame closely and concluded that it had to be the X-axis bar carrying the printer head that was not level. I was correct.
In my mind, if you have rollers riding a frame and the holes are aligned then the parts must have been created to be square to each other. This is not true. BTW, I'm an electronics and IT guy not a mechanical engineer as should be evidenced by that last statement.
I watched a few setup videos, there's nothing about this issue from Creality BTW, and I learned about the concentric nuts. Concentric nuts on the Creality Ender 3 printers are used to move specific rollers a range of about +- 1/8 of an inch. They function similarly to a cam on a camshaft.
I tried adjusting the concentric nuts on each side of the X-axis. I had to loosen the lock-down nuts a little of course, which I almost forgot to do. I never did get the X-axis square. Every adjustment resulted in either the X-axis being loose or much too snug to move. I finally compromised with being 4 mm from square with the assumption that the bed could be levelled to that.
As I began levelling the bed, I noticed that one corner of the bed was higher than the rest, even completely cranked down. I examined the bed mounting again and noticed that the spring with the bed connector mount was compressed more than the others. That bed connector mount compressed the that corner spring about 1/8 of an inch. No wonder the one corner was higher than the rest and the other 3 corners felt weak and wobbly.
The print for the cat model ran for 5 hours and 43 minutes. The top of his head was cut off just below the ears. The filament that came with the printer, which is not on a spool, had tangled and had not fed through the printer for the last 10% of the print.
I retried the cat model print out after untangling the filament and stringing it out like a telegraph wire - I really did not want to hand my wife another cat with the top of his head cut off. The print went well and the quality is actually impressive.
Some day 3d printing will be as easy as using a toaster and as cheap as an inkjet printer and as maintenance free. It's too bad that we still have years before we reach that point.
