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Calibration of Slic3r
#Calibration
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
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
- Choose your G-code Flavour. This should match your Firmware. If you have a Smoothieboard for Ecample, choose "Smoothieware"
- Set up your Bed Size (in mm)
- Choose Your Nozzle Diameter - Do not measure around. Just put in the value you bought it with
- Type in your Filament Diameter (1.75 or 3mm) again - do not measure around. We will tweak this value later
- Choose the temperature for the Filament you are using 190°(PLA) or 220°(ABS) - we will tweak this later
- 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
This part is a Work in progress! no guarantee!
For temperature settings you should first get the recommended temperature range from your supplyer.
In this example we use PLA with a recommended Temperature range of 180-200°
- Get the Heattower 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 A way to calibrate is to print an object as a single wall.
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Measure your filament and enter it (measure across multiple places using -digital- manual calipers and enter the average to 2 sig figs (2.8 or 1.7 respectfully)
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Enter your nozzle diameter (no need to measure, just enter the number you bought it as. Nozzle diameter only affects bridging.
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Set Filament Settings->Extrusion Multiplier = 1.
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Print the 20mm-box.stl file.
- Set Print Settings->Infill->Infill % to 0.
- Set Print Settings->Layers and Perimeters->Number of Perimeters = 1
- Uncheck Print Settings->Layers and Perimeters->Detect Thin Walls
- Set number of top and bottom solid layers = 0
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Using Calipers measure the wall thickness of all 4 sides of the thin wall cube. Throw out the largest value, and average the other 3. (Be sure you measure from the top of the box, not the bottom, the bottom might be flared out because of the 1st layer not being perfectly level. Also 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 (after the Z-move). 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 the measuring device is not biting into the filament during measurement.)
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Now you have the theoretical Slic3r width and the measured width. Divide the Theoretical Value by the Measured value. If You had previously 1 in extrusion multiplier then just enter this value. If You had some other value there before then multiply this value with the just obtained value and enter the Result into Extrusion multiplier.
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Re-slice and Re-Print the file with the new value. Remeasure. It should be spot on. If not You can iterate (repeat the process with the enetered value).
Note: You can interrupt and measure the print as soon as you feel the extrusion has stabilised (is printing consistently).
Do not forget to save Your calibration settings.