CR-10 custom hotend cooling and microswitch bed leveling probe

thingiverse

Here is my minimalistic CR10's hotend cooling mod. It uses the stock part cooling fan and also the original 40mm fan, which I have replaced of course with Noctua's high-performance fans. Airflow has been thoroughly tested and can be seen in one of the accompanying pictures. I have used longer screws to hold the hotend securely in place. The fan shroud can be printed without supports, making it a breeze to assemble. I printed the shroud on its face and the fila cooler on its back with minimal build support required. To make assembly easier, I recommend pre-drilling the holes with a 1.5 mm drill bit and a 2.5 mm drill bit before screwing in the screws. In addition, I have utilized a microswitch from an old PC mouse for "semi-automatic" bed leveling. The switch is wired in series with the z-endstop, requiring the NC pin to be used for it to function correctly. The probe mount fits snugly and requires some filing to ensure smooth movement in and out. I am currently using Octoprint and Bed Level Visualizer: https://plugins.octoprint.org/plugins/bedlevelvisualizer/, which has greatly simplified my bed leveling process. The stock Creality 1.1.2 board is running Marlin 1.1.9, with several key settings uncommented to enable features like FIX_MOUNTED_PROBE and AUTO_BED_LEVELING_BILINEAR. However, SD support needs to be disabled for the bed leveling feature to fit on the stock 1284 chip. In the Bed Level Visualizer, I am using custom code to measure the bed's height: G28 XY; home x- and y-axis G1 X44 Y10 F3000; move to the first corner of the table G28 Z; home z axis G29; perform bed leveling G1 X150 Y150 F6000; move to the center of the plate just for fun M18; disable steppers M500; save the bed leveling data to EEPROM To incorporate this custom code into my slicer, I have added it to the starting code after the G28 command: M420 S1; turn on bed leveling. This is necessary because the G28 command disables auto bed leveling. Alternatively, you can change this behavior in Marlin by uncommenting the line: define RESTORE_LEVELING_AFTER_G28 Before proceeding with the "paper method" to set the front left corner to the correct height, make sure to calibrate your printer's z-axis using a paper thickness of approximately 0.4 mm. Once calibrated, you can measure the bed with the probe and adjust the leveling accordingly.