Printrbot 2014 I think no zprobe prints at back of bed?

[CharlesC]

I have been working on a printrbot I believe 2014 wood without probe but has metal bed, I’m using Repetierhost and slice3
The board is revD it homes at the front left corner and then says Zprobe out of bounds, it immediately goes to the back of the print bed and gets ready to print as it it is printing it is going outside the bed? I’m at a loss I did a lot of reading and followed the online guides for set up but I’m stumped and out of ideas. Any help would be appreciated.

[RetireeJay]

On a Printrbot with no probe, you have a switch somewhere which tells the printer when the Z axis has reached the home position. It's tedious, but you have to adjust that switch so that the nozzle stops just above the bed, the thickness of a sheet of paper above the bed. Then you have to adjust the bed and/or the X axis so that the nozzle is that same height above the bed anywhere you go in X and Y.

There may be a command built in to your "Startup" G-code in Slic3r that is telling the printer to do a probe-style bed leveling, but if you don't have a probe you can't use that command. Basically, a G28 command is OK; it's a simple "home" command. Commands in the range G29 - G32 all pertain to bed leveling with a probe and you should delete or comment out those lines in the Slic3r startup.

[CharlesC]

Yes that’s what I did and it centered up and will print, in the center of the bed now, thank you..

[Mooselake]

Time to insert the obligatory comment about how probing is best left to aliens. Jay and I have gone for years without a probe and only an occasional Z home adjustment, with the original Kickstarter plywood Printrbots. The newer metal versions should be even more stable. Z probes were added as a manufacturing and support convenience, no need to carefully adjust bots at the factory and no need to instruct users on the fairly simple procedure to properly tram (some call it level but that's a misnomer) printbeds. Probing is a kludge.

We've since moved on, Jay to Prusa MK3 (which I think comes with a probe, alas) and I to a winter moose swamp with my bots still in the great white north awaiting my return in the spring. Too many other things to do in the new (to us) house and yard,not enouth room in the trailer, plus there's that whole learn how to manage a pool/spa thing which seems harder than 3D printing to do right.

They sure have funny looking trees in SW Florida, some of them actually large ferns and not real trees. I get really strange looks when I talk about show shovels and roof snowload capacity, although Mooselake North has never had a hurricane and doesn't need 160mph (whole lotta KPH) rated roofs and storm shutters

Kirk

[novice]

Wait a minute......am I hearing one living within how many minutes of the gulf while cleaning his pool say a Z-probe is an unnecessary add-on?
Probes are like phonics, some live for years without; not realizing what they're missing..

[RetireeJay]

Yes, my Prusa MK3 has a probe. So now, instead of turning a screw to adjust the clearance precisely, I use a knob on the LCD screen to adjust the clearance precisely. Is that any easier? No. On my Plus, I had a knob for adjusting the screw, with about the same ratio of adjustment per revolution.

Oh, and by the way, the Z adjust program that's burned into the stock firmware insists that you must use PLA while calibrating Z; I never use PLA, so I had to learn how to rewrite source code in order to enable calibrating with PETG. And I'm not just talking about settings in a configuration file, I mean real hands-on-the-metal C++ code! (I submitted my mods to the GitHub site, but they have been ignored. ) (Git/GitHub is so convoluted I had to take a paid online course before I could grasp what was going on!)

Oh, and by the way, the machine runs through a probing sequence at the beginning of every print. Not the fine-tuning calibration I mentioned in the previous paragraph, but a 9-point probing sequence that introduces a small but finite probability of an error if the nozzle happens to land on a leftover bit of filament still on the bed from the previous probing sequence. Basically a waste of time; the bed is in the same place as it was before.

So, I use the probing because it's embedded deeply in the whole system and it would be very hard to remove, but I would be perfectly happy with a machine that did not have a probe.

It's true that the MK3 has a removable, magnetically-held print surface and I guess if I was swapping out print surfaces the probe would compensate for any thickness difference. But I don't have a spare; I'm only using one surface.

Congrats to Kirk / Mooselake for getting his snowbird residence; I hope it works out really well for him.

I kinda like upstate South Carolina myself: extremely low probability of hurricane, tornado, or heavy snowfall, but we do have four seasons (albeit Yoopers wouldn't call our winter a real winter).

[Mooselake]

About half a mile from a gulf connected sound, actual gulf on the other side of wall to wall million usd condos on Sanibel, the next island over. Rather have our more affordable acre+ than somebody on the other side of the wall.

Pool chemistry and equipment is definitely harder than bed tramming. If something has pool in the name double the price, too.

29°F at Mooselake North today with over a foot/30cm of snow on the ground, couple of chilly 70°F days here then back to 29°C at Mooselake South. Sand, but no snow, and not a probe in sight

Kirk

[Mooselake]

Real winters require at least 5m of snow

[novice]

You've probably already figured out mail order from a source like Doheny's is the way to go for pool supplies. Am told the red tide stench @ Englewood and Boca Grande is still intolerable, but I digress.