Bed leveling should be the first on your to-do list once you have assembled and tested your Ender 3 v2 or any 3D printer. This is especially important for Ender 3 v2 printer as it does not have auto bed-leveling function. This is a manual effort in Ender 3 v2.

You will need the following materials to level the bed on Ender 3:

1. A piece of A4 paper- 70 or 80 gsm
2. A bed leveling gcode.
   • You can search for one: plenty is available on www.thingiverse.com
   • I personally use the one created by CHEP. You can use the same as well.

Manually adjusting the bed with a sheet of A4 paper

A good gap between the nozzle and the print bed is when you put a sheet of paper in between, the paper can pass through easily while the nozzle is gently scratching the paper. For easier checking, you should be looking at it with your eye level with the print bed.

Use the four big knobs to make the necessary adjustments. The direction to turn- up or down- is printed on the knob- so just need to turn it accordingly: turn clockwise to move the bed up and anti-clockwise to move the bed down. You should try this at as many points on the print beds as possible by using the control panel to move the print head around.

Ensure the corners and the central part of the bed are covered. At every point, put the sheet in between the nozzle and the bed. This process may get a little frustrating because when you are done adjusting one part, the previous part that you adjusted becomes not level. But fret not- it should still be able to print with slight uneven bed.

Print the bed leveling gcode

Once you are happy with the manual bed leveling efforts, you can now print the bed leveling gcode file. This is really to ensure the bed is as level as possible. Chuck in the SD card in the slot- and start printing. If the bed is already level, it should print with nice line all over, but watch out for these scenario:

• Bed and nozzle is too close: there may be no filament comes out of the nozzle because there’s simply not outlet for it.
• Distance between the bed and nozzle is too far: the filament would just not flow out of the nozzle and not stick to the bed- or ‘stringing’.

To fix that, you can try adjusting the bed by moving the knobs on the fly. This would work if the uneveness is not too bad. But if you find yourself to be constantly having to move the knob everywhere the print head goes, then it is best to stop the printing and go back to manually adjust the bed first. It may take a few iterations until it can print the file successfully- especially if this is first time printing. Here is my print footage.

Once bed ls level, you should be good to finally do your first print!