10 November 2025

Concentrating on calibrating the X5SA, by lunchtime on Sunday I had all four corners of the bed producing clean test patches as described by Michael in First Layer, but the middle patch was a problem and adjustment as not possible. The problem was down to a 0.2mm dome in the bed front to back which I needed to tighten down, but there are no knobs for as standard. I had one aluminium bar which I could use to add adjusting screws to the middle of the sides, and initially I used that with a clamp to try and bend the middle of the bed down a bit, which initially seemed to work, but heating up the bed restored to bow. I had thought about a trim up to B&Q to get some more bar, and then rememebered that I had an assortment of steel bars in the garage which should do a better job. So my walk started with a trip there and return with some more parts for sorting including various pieces of metal such as two packs of key steel, providing two bars of just the right size to add front to back rails to the bed framework. They still need cutting down to fit properly, but for now they are doing the job with only the need of a 3mm hole in the middle of the bar. Although drilling those was fun as well. Finding the hacksaw can wait for another day as I was sure it was in the flat already.

I was very close to getting things perfect when everything went to pot, and I missed that one of the Z motors had obviously had a stall and screwed up the left to right level! Todays exercise is to backpedal and get back to where I was 24 hours ago and see if I can get the same perfect patches at the corners again before fine tuning the middle. That I HAVE been so close is irritating, but now I need to document what is not included in the on-line guide ... X5SA Bed Leaveling