BLTouch : Auto Bed Leveling Sensors for 3D Printers

This product works as advertised, with a few caveats. The connection from the extension cable to the mainboard is generally loose and can cause unexpected behavior if not secured. I wedged some thin cardstock in beside it to hold it tight and that finally did the trick. I won't lower the product rating for that since its a known issue in the community and doesn't reflect the actual performance of this genuine and functional BL Touch unit. Some people have attached the correct style of connector for their specific board in their install tutorials. I would not rate the install as "easy" since I do not have pin tools and opted to strip and solder the wires to connect the extension cable to the factory one. Once that was done, I fed the wires through the braided cable management compression tubes down to the mainboard and plugged it it. Having the 4.2.2 mainboard, I didn't require any additional interface equipment (transfer board). Older boards will, and you may want to look for a complete interface kit if you have an older board. This kit doesn't have a mounting bracket for the BL Touch, so I printed my own. Flashing the new firmware from creality.com/download was easy for this model of mainboard (4.2.2 or the newer 4.2.7), I simply erased an SD card, placed the new .BIN file on the SD, inserted it into the printer, and booted it up. After that finished, I wiped the card, loaded some print files, and returned the card to the printer before configuring the new setup since settings will be saved on the SD card. Overall, I am extremely pleased with the performance of the BL Touch and, having fixed my loose connection to the mainboard, the unit itself works perfectly every time. I have since upgraded to the 4.2.7 mainboard, and the unit also works perfectly with that. I have also added OctoPrint on a Raspberry Pi and the bed visualization plugin that displays the mesh data from the BL Touch in a graphical format makes it even easier to fine-tune a perfect base-level print platform so that the automatic bed leveling system has less work to do.

This was my first attempt at using a self leveling system. Since other leveling systems required a metal bed or using a servo extension arm, I was not really interested until I saw this. I print on glass and it helped me so I didnt need to level so often. But still leveling is always a pain and so I was constantly trying to find ways to minimize its need. I have so far done only a handful of small prints but it is working nicely on my RAMPS setup. You will definitely need to mess with the z axis settings to get this just right though. They say it should be -1.5mm in your firmware but mine was a bit closer so my prints were not coming out right until I adjusted this. After that I started getting perfect prints each time. I found a bracket for this you could print on Thiniverse and just made some mods so it fit my setup. I decided to use the 4 point as I think 9 point leveling is probably overkill. I use a j-head too and it heats up quickly so I found that my head was actually heating up faster than it could level the bed when I used 9 point leveling. I suppose I could place a pause on the heating instructions or something. Like 60 seconds or whatever so it would not start heating until after the leveling completed. But for now the 4 point works fine. Anyway long story short, this thing is very much worth it. I have yet to try a larger print but will update this if something wacky happens when I finally do print something big.

I bought a Creality CR-10s Pro, and it comes with a capacitive auto-leveling sensor. While some people have had great luck with that, many, including myself, have had NO luck with its ability to level the bed. Readings from my capacitive sensor were all over the place, fluctuating as much as 0.4mm in any given direction (randomly). The bed was never level. The Z-offset needed to be dialed in every print, sometimes changing as much as 0.5mm in distance. It meant complete unusability for the Creality. I decided to go ahead and install a BLTouch sensor, as some people had had good luck with them. It's like night and day. The install wasn't super straight-forward on the CR-10s Pro (and the cables supplied here don't have the right connectors for the pro, which requires a JST XH connector for the black and white wires, and individual JST SM connectors for the other three wires), but once I attached things to the proper connectors, all I had to do was uncomment one line of code in the TH3D firmware, flash the new screen firmware, and I immediately have a printer that can reliably print without any tinkering. I am to the point that I was with all my Prusa printers (which use an inductive sensor with much better accuracy than a capacitive sensor), where I can just set the Z offset when I change nozzles or change print bed surfaces, and then forget about it. I now just hit 'print' and walk away. There's no tinkering. There's no coming back to a scratched bed in one corner or a print that didn't stick in another. It's perfect every time. Absolutely well worth the price.

This sensor works great but has little documentation from the supplier. I took away a star due to poor documentation and difficult installation. You should start by googling and searching for people who have done this before on your specific printer. Unless you are comfortable with wiring, soldering, and tweaking firmware you should only attempt this if you find someone who has your exact printer and they provide detailed instructions. It is nice if you can get firmware that just needs to be loaded. I installed it on my GEEETECH I3 Pro B. Fortunately for me, there are discussions in the forums on the GEEETECH website. Someone even had updated the latest Marlin stable build for this sensor so I got a newer less-buggy firmware out of this upgrade too. The wiring described on the GEEETECH site is for a clone called a 3DTouch but it is electrically and physically the same. There is a bracket STL that you can download. I modified the bracket a little to allow me to use the springs that come with the BLTouch. The BLTouch comes with screws and springs that you can use to make an adjustable height installation. This comes in handy because you need to get the relative height correct between your hot end tip and the body of the BLTouch. I have a GT2560 controller and there are instructions for how to get to the right pins on the GEEETECH site. You need to de-solder a connector and replace it with a different connector to get to the I/O pin. My main problem with installation is that I did not notice that the wires should be swapped between the controller and the BLTouch so that the I/O is on the middle pin. I think this is the BLTouch orange wire. In any case, after you get past this, and find the right firmware it works great. This is my first attempt at auto-bed-leveling. The first layer goes down perfectly. I should have done this a long time ago. Physical bed leveling is a pain. The Z axis is constantly going up/down during the print. Not sure how accurate this can be so it's probably good to have a reasonably level bed even with auto-leveling.

Absolutely the best upgrade to my 3D printer in years. Thought I was cool going to an inductive sensor a few years ago, but the BLTouch beats it hands down--I can use my ENTIRE bed surface again (rather than sticking to that 100 mm square "sweet spot" in the middle). Luckily, I already had experience upgrading the stock z-stop (from a simple micro-switch to the inductive sensor), flashing my firmware, and was also familiar with my board's servo connections (thanks to Google) ... so install took about 10 minutes including the Marlin 1.1.9 configuration tweak (9 of those minutes was just swapping the brown and red wires on the connector to match the pins on my controller board). So, I do understand some of the other reviews that state install and configuration can take some time. But it is well worth a little research and getting under the hood on your firmware. After install and firmware flash, it is a simple matter to set the Z offset (and another firmware flash) and Bob's your uncle. You will definitely need at least the 1m extension, depending on your set up (1m was perfect for my 200x200 Prusa clone) ... not sure when the included short cable would ever be useful. Thought about bumping down to 4 starts for that--but the product is just too darn good (and the options with the 1m cable is like the same price anyway). [Also, make sure you get v3.0 of the sensor--it would appear that v3.1 only works with Marlin v2--which is not fully released yet.] I don't know why I avoided the "physical" style probe (i.e. something actually touching the bed) for so long ... but this works beautifully on all bed types, is accurate anywhere on the bed, and is consistent over multiple probings.

I bought my Ender 3 two months ago and have gone through a lot of receipt paper to level my bed. Those days are finally behind me now :) This thing is amazing. When I finally got it working, it worked flawlessly and my printing experiences have been so much better since. That said, the comments about this being an "easy installation" are either full of hubris or ignorance. The HW installation is not challenging for even an intermediate 3D Printer-Hobbyist, like myself. The devil is in the SW/Firmware setup on the Ender 3. As of the Summer of 2019, I strongly recommend The Teaching Tech on YouTube. Also double check your wiring. There are five wires on this device: a black and white pair for the Z-Stop sensor, and a Red-Brown-Yellow set for the filament sensor. Twice now I have helped folks debug their BLTouch and the solution was either a loose Z-Stop wire pair, or the R/B/Y was not plugged in correctly. Because this product does not come with a schematic: Red = 5V, Brown = GND, Yellow = Signal

It is possible to use this feature on the Artillery Sidewinder X1 with some modifications. To do so, you will need to make some changes that might affect the accessibility of the LED. Keep in mind that modifying the printer may void its warranty. If you decide to proceed with the modification, you will need to adjust the firmware settings and install a new sensor. You will also need to calibrate the sensor's sensitivity to ensure accurate results. However, it is important to note that modifying the printer may not be necessary. The traditional method of bed leveling using a piece of paper is a reliable and accurate way to achieve good results. It may take a bit more time and effort, but it is a tried and true method that has been used by many 3D printing enthusiasts for years.

Bought for a Monoprice Maker Select V2 to get around the horribly warped bed, and the terrible leveling screws that never stay where you put them throughout the whole print. I have this on my Gmax 1.5+, and I loved it there. I tried an inductive sensor but it was terribly inaccurate. The BLTouch is incredibly consistent once you get it dialed in. Just make sure your printer has firmware that supports it, or you can change the firmware to something like Marlin. Speaking of Marlin, the newest version made configuring the BLTouch extremely easy. It's just something you comment in and it starts working. Kudos to whoever did the work on Marlin for the BLTouch, it was a dream to configure! I do wish there were more pre-designed mounts for BLTouch on Thingiverse, but there's no blaming the manufacturer for that one. The mount I found for my printer didn't work properly, but a little filing and longer screws fixed that. Sometimes the BLTouch (due to the springs in the mounting system) will get a little crooked which changes the z offset. You just have to add checking for that to your pre-print checklist and just give the BLTouch a little push to get it to pop back into being straight upright before it probes. This happens on both of my printers, and if you don't watch out for it, you could end up with hot end contacting the bed.