Make Sure Your Belts Are Adjusted!!

Hi Friends,

Building my Prusa i3 MKS3 from the kit has given me a new perspective on how precise these printers are.  I did a bunch of printing and I noticed the prints were starting to get squished on the edges.

Its not the best picture, but you can see the extruder head is definitely hitting the print and if I took a side picture you'd see it was very smooshed.

Time to check the belt tension!!

Sure enough, both my Y and my X belts were loose.

Prusa has a whole page dedicated to this, but here's some quick tips.

For the X-Belt

1.  Loosen these three screws, the bottom right screw acts as a pivot to tighten or loosen the x belt in small increments.

2. Either loosen or tighten this hidden screw, marked with the purple arrow.  My x belt was loose, so I needed to tighten the screw (clockwise).  Righty-Tighty, Lefty-Loosie.  :-)

3. I noticed when I got the right tension and tightened the three screws again, the belt was too tight.  So I loosened the three screws again and loosened the hidden screw just a bit.  Tightened the three screws again and the tension was perfect on X.

For the Y Belt

Note:  I needed to flip my printer on it's side, be very careful!

1.  Loosen the screw on the bottom holding the belt to the bed.

2.  Tighten or loosen the screw shown.  In my case I needed to tighten it.

3. Check the tension with the Prusa app and when it's good, tighten the bed screw again.

After adjusting the belts, no more squishing!

Neil