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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 20th, 2023

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  • Just to comment a bit:

    I think this is one of the casualties of “the paper method” being so poorly defined (because oldhats gotta gatekeep the hobby). People eventually learn WHAT the paper trick is (lower the nozzle until you can JUST slip a piece of paper between it and the bed) but not the next step which is to then step back “one step”. Which… also can end horribly because different printers have different dZ and people forget that their layer height is generally O(0.1 mm). So if you are doing 0.2 mm layers and your nozzle is 0.05 mm from the bed…

    When I was learning I definitely made that mistake. Had poor bed adhesion and eventually learned about The Paper Method. Did that and thought I was smug and then… no prints worked and I had to clean my nozzle every time. Eventually found the last step and then looked at the number of what dZ was. Was useful because it means I actually understand how first layers work. Was obnoxious for all the obvious reasons.

    Its why I really like that the more newbie friendly outlets and channels are increasingly suggesting using feeler gauges instead. That has other problems (people not realize there are error bars around that 0.3025 mm gauge…) but it provides a much more reproducible method (and can be semi-automated if you have a multimeter and some tape).