Leveling the Build Plate

Since we didn't get that good results with the Dual Calibration Print, I said I should tweak the printers nozzles better. But before actually doing that I thought when I'm already calibrating and tweaking, I could level the printing plate, as well.

So let's get started...

What we need for leveling the printing plate:

• a normal sheet of paper and/or business card...
• and time... lots of time... (depends, not always but unfortunatly sometimes :/)

To actually initate the process of the leveling, we are going to use a leveling programm which is already on our Wanhao Duplicator 4 3D Printer. To start this leveling program, we need to navigate through the printers Navigation Panel, with the buttons right next to the LCD Display.

To get from the Main Menu to the point "Leveling Printer Plate", you need to use the down button, until you see the point "Utilities", enter it and look for desired point. After confirming "Level Build Plate", the printer head starts moving towards the printing plate and then stepwise to most right, left, front and back positions of it.

Push DOWN Button until you see "Utilities"

Choose "Level Build Plate"

While it is in one of those positons, you need to slide the sheet of paper between the extruders and the printing plate. Now you need to adjust the wing screws underneath the printing plate to get the desired and needed distance. 

2 of the 4 wing screws underneath the printing plate

To find the right gap, you must thighten (or loosen) the 2 wing screws, at the edge where the print head currently is, until you are just able to move the sheet of paper between extruder and printing plate. The best method to do this, is to move the sheet of paper back and forth/left and right, while you tighten/loosen the screws.To assure that you chose the right screws, you can the LCD Display. It will always tells you which 2 wing screws you need to adjust.

Once you checked every location (front, back, left and right of the plate) the printing head moves to the moddle of the plate. You can now, confirm your leveling of the plate, with a hopefully, plane bed with the right distance in the middle.

Congratulations you are done with levling the plate! :) Now you can print a test print or can continue with calibrating the nozzles. 

If the result of your print doesn't is promising and you still have  the problem that the extruders are still to far from the printing plate, you need to level the printing plate again.