Auto bed levelling is it worth the effort?

I am thinking about adding auto bed levelling to my p3 is it worth the effort? Is it accurate if setup correctly?

Thanks Nikki

Auto tramming/leveling is a band-aid fix for machines that are so poorly designed/built they can't maintain the level and zero positions from one print to the next. If you have one of those machines, it makes sense to try it because fixing what's actually wrong with the machine takes much more time, effort, and money. That's why they build auto tramming into so many kits now, or offer it as an add-on. I have seen printer kits where the bed doesn't even come with levelers and relies entirely on autotramming. That makes it easier for the users who don't always understand the leveling/zeroing process, and eliminates the hardware associated with leveling and zeroing the bed (cheaper still!).

Understand that autotramming only gets the first layer of the print to stick to the bed. It does so by virtually tilting the print so the virtual XY plane corresponds to the physical plane of the bed. It runs the Z axis continually throughout the print instead of just bumping it up/down in discrete steps. It assumes that the bed is a plane (not always a good assumption considering the low cost materials usually used for the bed), that the bed moves in a linear path, and that the plane of the bed remains constant throughout the print. If the bed doesn't maintain a level and zero position from one print to the next, how can you assume that the plane remains constant throughout a print? I don't know the answer to that, but it seems to work for a lot of people.

It isn't always a trouble-free set up process- search the forums here for posts related to auto-leveling to see what sort of problems people are having with it and the fixes they use to get it working.

I was thinking about solid mounting my heated bed instead of using springs and was thinking auto leveling might be good to have to save me with the feeler gage after every time I change my glass

Thanks Nikki

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2015 03:35PM by Nikki81.

If your print bed is level enough and stable enough that your only issue is getting an accurate Z=0 height at the start of a print, especially after changing the glass, then you can use a Z probe to just set where Z=0 is and not to do bed plane compensation as well. This is what I generally do on my Cartesian printer. For large prints I use bed compensation as well, because there is a slight Y axis twist on the printer that I haven't bothered to try to eliminate yet

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].