setting extruder above bed.



  • Hi people,

    I am a newbie to 3d printing and all its dark arts.

    The issue I have is homing and levelling.

    Now, everywhere I look (including instructions, for what they are worth, supplied with my Hictop 3DP17 Prusa clone), everything says to use a sheet of paper to set the gap between extruder and bed.

    Having measured a piece of my standard printing paper at 0.10 mm,. and using a 0.10 mm feeler gauge I am OK with calibrating the head homel and levelling. That is if I use the supplied 0.4 mm extruder.

    My question is as follows if I use an 0.2 mm extruder -

    1. Is that 0.1 mm rule still applicable when homing and levelling?
    2. If not, what is the best setting?
    3. Printer spec. suggests layer height of 0.05 mm can be used (assuming a small extruder (0.2 mm ?))

    I have had it working using 0.2 mm extruder but it was a real pain to set everything up and I can't remember what setting I used. I'm just looking for some tips in setting the extruder, be it 0.2,0.3,0.4 mm.

    Many thanks for your indulgence

    Tom (alway learning, albeit a steep learning curve)




  • Hi Tom, thanks for posting. We can help. First, a couple of terms for clarification:

    The extruder is the component with the hobbed bolt or gear that forces the filament into the hot end.

    The nozzle is the metal piece at the end of the hot end that has a diameter of 0.4mm, 0.2mm, or other size through which the melted filament flows. Nozzle diameter is the term for this hole size.

    That said, the nozzle diameter doesn't have much to do with leveling or homing, and it also depends what method of leveling you're using. Are you using MatterControl's software print leveling or is this a leveling process which takes place on the printer itself through an interaction with the printer's LCD (if present)?

    If you're using MatterControl's Software Print Leveling, all you need to do is run the configuration wizard and leveling is applied to all future prints: http://wiki.mattercontrol.com/OPTIONS/Software_Print_Leveling

    Hopefully this gives you some help in the right direction. Let me know if you have questions.


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