Calibration of Slic3r

Calibration

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Before starting to tweak Slic3r settings, make sure your printer is properly set up.

Prusa has some neat Calculators for setting up a printer.

Make sure that the following steps are fulfilled before trying to tweak Slic3r settings

• everything is properly aligned.
• everything is wired up correctly
• steps/mm are set up correctly (a good source: Triffid hunters calibration guide)
• If possible get an Infrared thermometer and measure hot accurately your hotend will heat up. It should not have much difference
• Same counts for the Heated Bed (if available)
• Make sure the bed is leveled good and the nozzle height set up correctly (very important!) a good tutorial can be found here
• You have installed a Host Software and sucessfully connected your printer
• You have the appropriate tools

Tools:

• Calipher (good manual Caliphers are to be preferred over digital ones)
• Sensor gauge (or credit/business card)
• If possible get an Infrared thermometer and measure hot accurately your hotend will heat up. It should not have much difference

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Set up Slic3r initially

At first startup a Setup Wizard will occur and guide you through the basic settings. The most steps will be self explanatory but we will include them for completeness.

1. Choose your G-code flavour. This should match your firmware. If you have a Smoothieboard for example, choose "Smoothieware"
2. Set up your bed size (in mm)
3. Choose your nozzle diameter - Do not measure around. Just put in the value you bought it with
4. Type in your filament diameter (1.75 or 3mm) again - do not measure around. We will tweak this value later (Finetuning)
5. Choose the temperature for the filament you are using: 190°(PLA) or 220°(ABS) - If provided use the middle of the Suppliers range
6. If you have a bed, set the bed temperature to 60°(PLA) or 110(ABS)

Your Printer is now very roughly set up and you should be able to print

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Basic tuning

Requirements

• You are able to print with your rough setup

• Switch to expert mode

• Download the calibration files:
  Heattower.stl
  20-mm box.stl

• Do this finetuning for every manufacturer/material you want to use for best results You will see why on the "temperature" part

Filamentsettings

Filament Diameter

• Get your caliphers and measure the thickness of your filament
• Move roughly ~20 centimeters further and measure again
• Repeat this step 4 times so you have 5 values and 1m of measured filament. The values could for example be: (1.72mm; 1.74mm; 1.73mm; 1.71mm; 1.77mm)
• Take the average by adding the values together and dividing them by 5:

1.72
1.74
1.73
1.71
1.77 +
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8.67/5 = 1.734 -> 1.73 (2 decimal places)

• Take the result with 2 decimal places (in this Example 1.73) and put it into your filament settings.

First Layer Height

A good tutorial for the first layer height can be found in the Slic3r manual here

Temperature

For temperature settings you should first get the recommended temperature range from your supplyer.

• Get the stl File
• Put it in Slic3r
• Go to Print Settings. Choose the following Settings:

General:
- Layer height: 0.2 mm
- Perimeters: 1
- Solid Layers Top: 0, Bottom: 3

Infill:
- Fill density: 0%

Speed:
- Perimeters: 40 mm/s 

Start printing the object with the max temperature of the supplyer. Whenever you see a indentation (every 5 mm), lower your temperature by 5°C.
Stop the print when your nozzle can't print out enough Filament (as whown in the Example below) or the print quality decreases again Here are two exaples:

The area with the best layer adhesion AND best visuals is your perfect temperature for this particular speed and material. Usually the higher the Temparature the better the adhesion so you can take the highest, good looking Temperature.

If you don't reach your perfect temperature with one heatcube you can print another one starting with the last temperature.

You may also print another heattower, start by 5 degrees over your "perfect" temperature and decrease it by 1° steps. then choose a temperatue 2-3 degrees under the "too hot" temperature

In the examples you can also see why its important to do this with every material/Manufacturer: The filaments tend to have different ideal temperatures which ma even vary by colors from the same manufacturer.

Extrusion Multiplier

Print out the general purpose 20mm Cube with the following Settings:

- vase mode (single outline, no infill, no top or bottom layers)
- extrusion multiplier: 1
- extrusion width = nozzle width

• Measure the thickness of all 4 walls with a calipher and get an average of the 3 smallest values.
• Change your extrusion multiplier: new multiplier = old multiplier x (extrusion width / average measurement)
• Repeat until you are happy

Tips:

• Make sure you measure from the top as the bottom might be flatted out from the Bed.
• if you have big variations it is a good idea to measure the side that is extruded last as the extrusion will have mostly stabilised by then
• Try to measure the smallest number of layers possible from top as the slightest vertical misalignment of your layers will increase the measured value. Ideally a single layer would be best but very difficult with regular calipers.
• Make sure you dont apply to much pressure with your caliphers (Make sure the measuring device is not biting into the filament during measurement.)

Do not forget to save Your calibration settings.

Advanced tuning

Requirements

• You are able to print in reasonable quality after your "Basic Tuning"
• Switch to expert mode
• Download the calibration files:
  Speedpillar.stl

Speed

Once the printer is reliably producing good quality prints it may be desirable to increase the speed. Doing this provides several benefits, the most obvious of which is that the results are produced quicker, but also faster print times can be utilised in producing more layers, i.e. lower layer height, thus improving perceived print quality. An additional benefit is that a faster travel movement, between extrusions, can reduce the effects of oozing.

• For speed it is recommended to first adjust the travelspeed. Increment it slowly up until you can see errors and/or are not comfortable with anymore. Then take a value that is 10-20% lower.
• Always choose a reasonable low homing speed as the printhead will bash into the endstops and might damage them over time!
• It is also important to know that speed is limited by hardware setup, temperature and Data transfer. If the Hardware is capable enough you might switch to printing from a good and fast high class rating SD card as you might print up to 60% faster ;) ( video here )

Perimeters