Manual Bed Leveling Guide

The stock Ender 3 has no automatic bed leveling sensor — leveling is done entirely by hand using four adjustment knobs under the bed. It's simple once you've done it a few times, but it does drift and needs periodic rechecking.

The paper-drag method

1. Home all axes, then use the printer menu to move to "Level Bed" (or manually move Z to 0 with the nozzle just above the bed) — this disables motors so the bed and gantry can be moved freely by hand while at the corner test points.
2. Slide a standard sheet of printer paper between the nozzle and the bed at one corner.
3. Adjust that corner's leveling knob until you feel slight friction dragging the paper back and forth — snug, not gripped. Too tight and your first layer will be squished (elephant's foot); too loose and it won't stick.
4. Repeat for all four corners, then check the center — on a stock aluminum bed there is usually a slight, unavoidable dip or bow in the middle. If the center is dramatically off from all four corners, the bed itself may be warped.
5. Recheck each corner again after doing all four — adjusting one knob slightly affects its neighbors' effective height. Two or three full passes is normal.

Tip: Do this leveling check with the bed and nozzle at operating temperature if you can, since both metal and glass expand slightly when heated — cold leveling can be a hair off once printing starts.

Setting Z-offset

Even a perfectly level bed needs the correct Z-offset (how close the nozzle gets to the bed at layer one). After leveling, print a first-layer test pattern and adjust Z-offset in small increments (0.02-0.05mm) until the first line is flattened but not squished paper-thin.

When to consider a BLTouch or CR Touch

If you find yourself releveling before every print, or if your bed has a noticeable warp that manual leveling can't fully compensate for, an auto bed-leveling probe (BLTouch/CR Touch) is the most impactful upgrade available for this printer — see Maintenance & Upgrades. It compensates for a warped bed by mesh-mapping it in software rather than requiring the bed to be physically flat.