Newb's First Mesh & Calibration

Sovol SV06 Plus ACE
, , ,
1

Hello everyone, I was hoping to get some feedback while I test out my first 3D printer. It is a Sovol SV06 Plus Ace. I intended to buy the Bambu A1 but with all the privacy drama happening combined with an interest in open source, I decided to try the Sovol. I like it so far, and it printed wonderfully with the test filament that came in the package. The 13-minute benchy looked very good! Any advice would be very much appreciated! Please keep in mind that I am completely new to this. I updated firmware and managed to get the printer on Mainsail just a half hour ago. I ran a mesh and it looks like this…

image
image937×676 84 KB

Should I be concerned about the 0.7 mm? That seems like quite a large value…

I am having a hard time calibrating it for Darumic PLA+. Before running the mesh, the printer appeared to have an over extrusion issue (I think) on the left side of the bed. I ran the flow calibration test in Orca and the results did appear to suggest best printing between -5 and -20. -20 looks better than -5, but that would put me at a flow ratio of 0.78… I did the temp tower and each layer looked wonderful–no stringing, great adhesion. Then I did the pressure advance tower test in Orca and I have yet to modify any values as a result, but it looks fairly good based on my small amount of experience.

I checked my e-steps by printing 100 mm of filament and it was over extruding by 1.5 mm so I changed my rotation_distance from 4.59 to 4.66 and now it is extruding within a half-mm of 100 mm. I have not tried to print anything after modifying the rotation_distance.

I will upload more pics in another post as I am limited to 1.

2

20250409_103239
20250409_1032391920×1440 676 KB

3

20250409_170213
20250409_1702131920×1440 259 KB

4

20250409_170232
20250409_1702321920×1440 220 KB

5

It looks like the tilt is pretty uniform along the X axis. That can be caused by a skewed gantry. Fortunately, since the ACE has independent stepper motor drivers for the left and right Z lead screw, Klipper can automatically tram the gantry with respect to the bed.

Home the printer, run a Z_TILT_ADJUST command, then home Z again and take a new mesh. If it looks better (or at least not tilted left to right like that), then gantry skew was likely the issue.

Note that Sovol’s first-time calibration does a Z tilt adjust, but the gantry can get a little out of sync every time the stepper motors shut off. It’s quick, so I added a Z_TILT_ADJUST command to my START_PRINT macro. Now it happens automatically before every print. :slight_smile:

6

Thank you for the quick reply, bcat. I will print a small buckle that was pretty rough yesterday, run z-tilt, and reprint it to see if there’s an improvement. I wonder if the struts on the backside of the printer are skewing it a little. Is 0.7 mm quite typical?

I will look for a z-tilt macro :slight_smile: Thanks again!

7

For sure! I hope it’s just a tilted gantry and not some larger issue with the bed.

I can’t say what is normal for the bed variation. I have the smaller ACE, not the Plus. I think my variation is more around 0.2mm (though I haven’t done a full-bed probe in a while), which the bed mesh seems to compensate for… but I want to try the silicone spacer mod that someone else on the forums documented at some point to see if I can get it flatter.

BTW, here is my START_PRINT macro:

[gcode_macro START_PRINT]
gcode:
    CLEAR_PAUSE
    CLEAN_NOZZLE
    Z_TILT_ADJUST
    G0 X110 F3000
    G28 Z
    BED_MESH_CALIBRATE ADAPTIVE=1
8

There was a bit of tilt. It shaved the offset in half or so. I will look into said mod. I imagine 0.27 is workable. Is there a scenario where this size of error would be pivotal?

image
image1676×720 106 KB

Do the G X F values need to change for the Plus Ace? I will look into it.

Thanks :slight_smile:

9

Just a quick follow-up:
The problem was that pressure advance was too low. Bumped it from 0.035 to 0.425 and lowered the flow rate a bit (0.98 to 0.94) and the printer is humming along reliably with Duramic PLA+. It looks like my bed mesh is constant at a range of 0.27 mm, which I am very excited about, but the bed is quite large…
Thanks for reading!