Bed leveling wedge (cheapman's dial gauge)

thingiverse

# Bed Leveling Wedge Ever wished you could just stick something between the nozzle and the bed to measure the distance? Now you can! I've tried a lot of different manual and automatic bed leveling techniques and solutions over the past weeks, and I realized that each solution comes with its own set of factors or in worst case calibration. Even after properly mounting and calibrating a z-probe, I realized that having a physically level bed helps to avoid the need for any unnecessary software compensation. So instead, I chose a more simple approach to estimate the distance between the bed and the nozzle. The wedge is a primitive mechanical 4.5x magnifier that can be used to accurately measure any coordinate on your bed using a point of reference. ## Materials Needed 2x M2 20mm screws 2x M2 nuts 1x rubber band ## Assembly Instructions Assemble the wedge using two screws to resemble the forms on the image. Thread the rubber band into the ridges around the body to act as a counter-weight. ## Usage Instruction Raise the nozzle about 6-8 mm above the bed, then choose a corner of your bed that will act as your point-of-reference. Raise the dial-arm and wedge the device in under the nozzle and let go. Make sure the nozzle is resting in the small groove on the wedge. Once you have the wedge safely fixed under the nozzle, use the adjustment-screw on your corner to make the dial-arm on the wedge measure up to the long line on the middle of dial. Repeat the procedure for the other corners until all readings line up to the same value as the first. Celebrate and rejoice, your bed is level! Update 10/08/2017 Added a combined printable version with R2 increased to 75mm for 6.2x magnification. My description was off before; the regular 55mm version gives 4.5x magnification. Magnification Update 27/08/2017 Removed obsolete files and cleaned up the description. Update 07/08/2017 Modified the arm for easier reading. I see that many people collected and downloaded this thing, please add a few photos/makes if you did one and liked it. Update 20/06/2017 Parametric V2 design added, source can be found here: https://github.com/telamon/bedwedge