CTC A10S Amazing & Stupidly Overcomplicated Bed Leveling Knob Assembly

thingiverse

My CR-10 knock-off printer, listed as a CTC A10S, are sold with varying levels of malfunction and constructed from a mix of defective and incredibly poor components. I believe my purchased one has the worst build quality among them. That being said, Creality did an exceptional job with the CR-10 that third-party manufacturers can duplicate it using the cheapest, lowest-quality materials available, and still manage to print beautifully with some elbow grease. I say my CTC A10S is the worst I've seen because it's the only one I've encountered that shipped with nylon drive rollers on X & Y stepper motors, and a steel heated bed instead of aluminum. One of the biggest issues I faced with this printer was the bed leveling knobs. People often complain about the small bed leveling knobs that came with original Creality machines, which is understandable. A 300x300mm bed requires significant effort to level and keep leveled. At least Creality used actual nylon knobs with brass inserts that wouldn't disintegrate as soon as you tried to use them. The knobs that came with my A10S were not knobs at all but rather 3mm steel nuts with some plastic melted onto them. These knobs are approximately 2mm thick, and the bit of plastic melted onto these 3mm nuts is in the shape of a flower with eight tiny petals reaching an overall diameter of 17mm. Essentially, it's a 2mm thick 17mm wide disc with eight tiny bulges. As soon as you try to turn one, the plastic falls off the nut. There's a "Precision thumbwheel" design by user "T23lol," thing:3490397, which is for the CTC A10S. Unfortunately, his CTC A10S has better quality than mine. I can see that his A10S has an aluminum bed, and his model is designed to fit a knob measuring 18.3mm with many more spokes than the terrible knobs that came on my printer. If you have a higher-quality CTC A10S, his thumbwheels are probably what you'll need. The thumbwheels I created are in three different pieces. To keep my knobs intact during bed leveling, I had to make my nuts captive. The three parts for my model include the knob itself, which the "knobs" my printer shipped with fit into; then there is the insert that snaps over the nut keeping it captive; and finally, there's a spacer that sandwiches between the assembled captive nut and the frame for the bed. I hope it makes more sense from the photographs than what I just described. I think anyone would struggle to understand what I'm describing without having encountered this themselves. This part has been working flawlessly for me since Christmas, and I see no reason it shouldn't continue to work indefinitely, but I still ordered a set of Creality-style oversized thumbwheels with brass inserts when I ordered my aluminum drive rollers. I'll be getting rid of these terrible knobs as soon as the new ones arrive. I thought I'd post this here because while I'm quite certain I have the worst-quality CR-10 clone sold, I may not be the only one. Perhaps my efforts can benefit others after they've served me no more. This is definitely a niche part, but hopefully, someone will get some use out of it.