What's Creality's tollerance for warped beds?

I currently have a 0.695 range for my bed with a notable “taco” shape (corners higher than the center). Would this fall outside what Creality would consider ok? It’s way off from my K1, which has a less than 0.3 range. Just wondering if I should contact them for a replacement under warranty.

Hello @楓_黒い …! :wave:

Welcome to the Creality Forum…! Creality

According to Creality’s Wiki site the tolerance can be up to 3mm. :flushed:

K1 Bed Leveling

I’ve seen people get their bed replaced with a much smaller range than 3mm. But there’s a difference between having a bed that is not flat, and a bed that is flat but not level. The taco- or hill-shaped beds I’ve seen replaced were around 1mm range, iirc. But in each of these cases, they were having demonstrable problems with printing. Are you having issues?

You could do some manual leveling on your bed and it would help it a lot. It’s actually not that bad as far as being warped. Mine is much worse. I have a taco lol. I reached out to Creality and they never responded.

Here we go. Very informative video to improve your K2 bed.

Before

After

My concern is possible dimensional accuracy issue, for example, if I were to print two halves that were to mate together, an unlevel bed will cause an issue with them having a perfect fitment together. I ran a single layer print along most of the bed (300x300), and the “taco” shows. This is after attempting to level the bed manually using the feeler gauge method used back before ABL was a thing, but I cannot get rid of the taco that way. the only possible way would be by somehow shimming the middle with a heat-resistant, ridged material and cranking down the edges as tight as possible. I’ve attached a photo, but if those are too low-res, here is a link to an Imgur album with the full-sized image of the bed with closeups of multiple points.

My concern is possible dimensional accuracy issue, for example, if I were to print two halves that were to mate together, an unlevel bed will cause an issue with them having a perfect fitment together.

Yeah, a reasonable concern.
Given that you are having obvious issues with the first layer, it would be worth reaching out to support. Replacing the bed might be the solution to both the first layer and dimensional accuracy issues.

Incidentally, I am having the same issue as you, but upside-down:


Theoretically, we shouldn’t have an issue with first layers if the bed mesh compensation was working properly, so clearly it does not. I sent in a support ticket a week ago, but I don’t expect any response until next week at the earliest because of CNY.

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I would preheat the bed for 7 minutes before doing another bed mesh and then preheat for the same time before starting a print

In my case, I let it soak at printing temperature for 30+ minutes before calibrating. The result is as pictured.

…you are right and I’m of the opinion that Creality is not being truthful here. You should theoretically have zero first layer issues if condition of bed is within the machines capabilities of compensating for uneven beds which I hear is ± 2mm.

BUT in saying that remember leveling is a moving target, what I mean by that is bed temperature has a massive influence and is always changing during prints. Nothing I know of will be able to compensate for that.

@Anubis132 give the Bed Leveling video a try it helped me a lot. I had very similar first layer results looking at your picture. Not a like for like comparison: first picture ABS, second picture PLA, but gut feeling is it will be a lot better if I had to do first layer test with ABS.

but gut feeling is it will be a lot better if I had to do first layer test with ABS

I recommend testing this theory, because PLA gets a perfect first layer on my printer also. The problem only appears at high temperature, which is 110C bed and 60C chamber, in my case.

It is possible that higher temps are introducing a systematic error in the probing process by warping the axis mechanics. Klipper has a way to account for this, but it is not implemented on the K2.

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Will do this and report findings. As luck would have it that is the exact filament settings I have. I’m assuming you are also using CR-ABS?

On the ABS topic when I brought my first layer issues up with the retailer I bought unit from. they said that in their experience the recommended 60C chamber temp was way to hot. They set at 45-50 max.

Update for everyone: After sending a picture of the bed mesh and waiting for the Lunar New Year break, I got an email back from Creality support, and they are sending a new bed. They were very understanding and willing to warranty it. I assume it was approved more because of the shape of the warp (a single corner may be more serviceable and fixable than a “taco”) despite the variation in height being lower than what most people think their tolerance is (I’ve heard elsewhere that its allegedly above 1mm). Hopefully the next one is flatter than the old one.

Hello 楓_黒い,

That is great to hear. Quite quick really.

Now you may not have trouble printing two halves that need to mate tohether :grinning:

Happy printing.

CS got back to me too about my valley-shaped bed (1.0mm range). They suggested shimming it with paper and said that a range of less than 3mm is acceptable.

I said absolutely not. We’ll see what happens…