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Calibration - Ellis, Stefan and others


mvdveer

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There is a lot of discussion regarding calibration of printers.

Most of us, I would say, follow the Andrew Ellis Tuning guides to the letter. I think it is still the GOLD standard for calibration. A step by step approach and reliable most of the times. I think it has set the benchmark for calibration. And.... no calibration cubes - Voron or other

Stefan from CNC kitchen takes different approach and for me, a more scientific method. The draw back - it is time consuming to say the least.  He also states that Calibration cubes are not really that valuable.

Who am I to go against these great minds?

But....

I have come across a calibration cube that I find quite valuable and has me made printing calibration cubes again. Soon I will have a collection matching the "ducks in a row" from all the BTT gear I bought. 😄

Maybe, just maybe - this may help someone calibrate their printer even more than the above methods. I for one, have found it quite useful

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12 minutes ago, mvdveer said:

There is a lot of discussion regarding calibration of printers.

Most of us, I would say, follow the Andrew Ellis Tuning guides to the letter. I think it is still the GOLD standard for calibration. A step by step approach and reliable most of the times. I think it has set the benchmark for calibration. And.... no calibration cubes - Voron or other

I agree with you about the Ellis guide(s). I usually go through it 3 times in a row, making a note of the deltas as I go. It does lead to more accurate prints and gives you a fair understanding of how the printer works.

15 minutes ago, mvdveer said:

Stefan from CNC kitchen takes different approach and for me, a more scientific method. The draw back - it is time consuming to say the least.  He also states that Calibration cubes are not really that valuable.

I like Stefan's approach even if it does take more time and agree with him with regards the Calibration cubes. A 20-30mm cube is not really going to give you great results when the printer is usually capable of 250mm cubed prints.

 

17 minutes ago, mvdveer said:

Maybe, just maybe - this may help someone calibrate their printer even more than the above methods. I for one, have found it quite useful

I like that cube, not so much for the size but for all the other things that are there to be assessed.

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47 minutes ago, mvdveer said:

There is a lot of discussion regarding calibration of printers.

I think there would be much less, if everyone followed Ellis' guide 🙂

a calibration cube that I find quite valuable

Honestly it has been a while since I printed a cube, mainly because I haven't had to need to, but how can I turn down the suggestion of a great mind like you, especially if it is not as expensive as it usually is...

Let me see what my current settings give...

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1 hour ago, Dirk said:

Let me see what my current settings give.

I remember my first voron cube took me a while... 2 hours.

This one has a lot of holes and overhangs so it slowed down my standard 'voron Ellis pif adjusted ' profile about 35 minutes to print.

Looks good. Many many holes to put things into.

Started with a filament.

IMG_20240521_1414032.thumb.jpg.46c0de88d390ebcd43a3a39cff6aeef2.jpgIMG_20240521_1414142.thumb.jpg.4522798c0a0132d709eb38ffcee7febd.jpg

The magnets and screws I believe.

I also see the nice line if I want to print-in-place

I think my settings are good 🙂

Jokes aside, you are right. This is an ideal cube if I want to test a new filament, before I just start printing parts. Much more informative than the voron cube or any other test designs I tried previously.

Thanks!

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Until encountering Ellis as part of prepping for my V0.2 build, my calibration was really all over the map, just random shotgun approach.  For some reason, the Ellis guide helped me grok that there were real physical reasons for various things, after which I threw out all my slicer profiles and started over.

That said, after not too long I started to work in some different options.  For instance, I find the SuperSlicer first-layer and flow calibrations useful.  The first-layer calibrations turn the infill angle to go along the long direction, which kind of blew my mind, as it makes total sense.  The SS flow calibrations are NOT as well-founded physically as the Ellis squares, but they print so much faster.  So now my approach is SS first-layer and flow to rough things out quick, then a big one-layer square if I feel like the z offset needs dialing, then just a couple Ellis flow squares to verify the SS flow results.

I agree that cubes are dubious, but I do like this 100mm XYZ calibration print.  I usually do the flat crossed XY version.  I have a little spreadsheet with the 20/40/60/80/100 rows so I can verify that my results are off consistently for the different lengths.  The Calilantern from Vector3d also has potential, but I honestly find it a little hard to measure easily, maybe I should circle back and go with the Califlower instead.  The big problem with shrinkage calibration is that so many designs factor in shrinkage, either intentionally or unintentionally.  For some recent prints I ended up just intersecting out some chunks to iterate on to calibrate the settings to the associated hardware (linear rods, etc) directly.

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