Hi fairly new to the K2 here happy with it so far but man it can mess around before a print.
I have realised that after power cycle it will do a remesh and that is fine - I also found that when sending a print from creality print if I deselect the calibrate option then it wont do the remesh and the flow calibration.
I tried installing K2 improvements but that made it even worse - for some reason the developer of that in his infinite wisdom decided that a 19x19 mesh was a great idea as was soaking the bed for 5 minutes on every print!
But what gets to me is that even in its quickest state it still messes around forever. It levels the bed, then heats up the nozzle to 140C - then does a little jiggle a the rear of the bed. Then heats up to 180 and does another jiggle. Then it cools the nozzle down to 170 - another joggle - then cools down to 140 - another jiggle.
What is it doing at all these nozzle temperatures? And is there a way to avoid this?
It’s a fast printer once it has started , but for a small print my old Prusa i3 is done before the K2 has even started.
When you got a cfs you can turn of the fillament position check this wil shorten the upstart after power down.
You can make a bedmesh with fluid and use that for prints , load it in fluid and save it with a name ( dont recommended that when you have removed the print sheet from the bed after a print) you can then load a bedmesh so the printer wont do a bedmesh.
The temps before printing is for z-offset calibration and nozzle cleaning.
When jou dont do the calibration the printer wil only bedmesh the place where you placed the object that you want to print.
Myself power on printer, let the cfs do the check, set the temp of the bed using printer screen for the next print, open slicer set everything, then i select calibration before sending to the printer ( have only turned on bedmesh calibration and no flow calibration you can do that in the menu on the printer with the screen) then 10min later i am printing and most of the time i dont need to look or do anything. Most things i print on the k2 are big projects minimal 8 to 72 Hours. When i am close at the printer when finished , i remove the print set the temp for the bed and start the next one.
Got other printers that need manual bed leveling after 5/10 prints those printers take in the long term more time then the k2 plus.
Thanks Martin but I was not asking about the bed mesh - I have that handled - it is the messing around with 140degrees the 170 then 190 then back to 170 then back to 140 - I honestly dont see what it is doing apart from a little jiggle at the back of the printer every time. The cool down from 190 to 170 then to 140 all take time (way longer than heating up)
I dont buy that this is Z offset as it does it over that part of the bed that has a slot cut in it and it never seems to probe the bed at all.
I am sure there is a reason for this I would just love to know what it is and if I dont want it then how to avoid it.
Is it just the extruder temps, or is it also thr bed & chamber temps
One of the things you can do is create a fluidd thermal preset, so you have an easy way to pre heat everything upto temperature before printing..
If you are noticing that it’s going up/down a lot, this is “usually” due to what you have in CR (or other slicers) values set differently to what the k2 improvements, are trying to run with..
I.e. if you have textured bed set to lower than what k2 uses as defaults & you have not added k2 parameters pass through values in your start gcode settings..
You need to edit your 0.4 nozzle gcode start, to add the recommended line to pass all the CR parameters to K2-improvements..
Have you added that ?
START_PRINT EXTRUDER_TEMP=[nozzle_temperature_initial_layer] BED_TEMP=[bed_temperature_initial_layer_single] CHAMBER_TEMP=[overall_chamber_temperature] MATERIAL={filament_type[initial_tool]}
Is what you need to add to CR nozzle gcode start, so that you pass the parameters from CR to k2-improvements, and not have them using different defaults & fighting each other
I think the nozzle joggle i am seeing with the different temperatures are part of the BOX_NOZZLE_CLEAN macro that is called in START_PRINT. It seems to be a macro that creality has hidden in some way as I cannot find it in any of the cfg files that can be accessed from fluidd.