I have been having some issues with printing threaded parts. i recently printed a test where x and y axis are 100 mm and z was 50mm. My x and y were. 50mm low. My understanding is that would normally be an e step adjustment?
I searched the WIKI page and found nothing regarding calibration. Any advise would be greatly appreciated
Your 100 x 100 x 50 print (x,y,z) was off by 50% on the x & y axes? That is not an adjustment.
At any rate, E-steps cannot be set manually on this printer AFAIK. My X1C and P1S are both pretty accurate dimensionally, and I know the e-step adjustment feature has been requested before. You can calibrate the flow rate automatically (for X1) or manually, but this will only tangentially affect the dimensional accuracy.
If you want to check your tolerances (not dimensional accuracy, but closely related) then try the Orca Tolerance Test (use Orca slicer instead of Bambu Studio).
Sorry should have been .5mm
Ahh, I see.
Tuning your filament flow rate is probably your best hope.
Setting the pressure advance could conceivably help if the size issue is partially due to excess filament on the corners. I have seen parts that measured larger than the model because the corners were “swollen.” Not much help otherwise wrt dimensionality.
Might look into preloading for tightening that up, or like Rom mentions, flow factor.
Might inquire with support, could be a bug
0.5mm error on a 100mm span? That’s 0.5%. Thermoplastics shrink as they cool, by much more than 0.5%. There is nothing wrong with your printer… It’s not a CNC milling machine. If you need very high accuracies, you need a milling machine. This is actually what I do - print parts oversized in areas where dimensions are critical, and then run a pass over those surfaces with a milling machine to bring them down to the tolerance level I require…
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“0.5 mm error with a span of 100 mm?”
I print on 220 mm with an accuracy of 0.01 mm to 0.05 mm. With technology like an Ender3. And that’s important, too, if you’re serious about producing reproducible parts that are identical on every printer. The overall dimensions are not correct anywhere in the print object and have a more or less large tollerance. 0.5 mm to 100 mm is about 1.0 mm to 1.25 mm over the entire print area. You can save yourself this 3d printer.
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The accuracy can be nailed down to belt groove size, stepper steps, and type of rail/wheel/xy guide mechanism.
I would be surprised if I ran a print and it came up .5mm short. I might just have to try it.
But to bring up an ender, you could bring up any product that’s more than X years old, because you’ve tuned it. If something is wrong here, you report it to bambu, that simple.
And if you’re debating reproducible parts with some sort of professional scrutiny, if you say you print them, you’ve already lost the game.
You should be using the printer to produce an injection mould, not final parts.
If you use Orca Slicer instead of Bambu Studio there is a Shrinkage setting in the filament profile that comes in quite handy for this problem.
Alot of parts can be printed that cant be injection molded or cnc machined. You can buy $150 printer that lets you tune the e-steps. Bambu is great but they are not perfect. They are like an apple phone. Great for people that couldnt figure out an android. For some people, to many adjustments just rattles them. Need as much stuff as possible cut out, automated and walled up for their protection.
Great business model for the masses but more advanced users will not be so impressed.
If you have a crowd saying they are perfect, need nothing changed…They will have less incentive to change and perfect.
Btw, every single printer ive owned besides bambu is dimensionally accurate because I was able to tune them in a million ways.
Before saying the E-steps are off take a peice of masking tape, put it on the rail next to the head then move the head 100mm and measure then you will know 100% if its off or not. Steps per MM once set shouldn’t ever need reset.
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this is material shrinkage. NOT step adjustments. you need to change X-Y Contour compensation in slicer or tune the flow.
Edit: I’d like to add that the fact that everyone here is calling steps/mm “esteps” is scary.
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You didn’t say what filament you were using what bed temperature. Apart from "cerrobend’, everything shrinks a bit when cooled down. I’ve had a drill jig, 180mm long thin part printed in PETG on an “technological marvel” Ender 3 come out 1mm shorter. If you look at the data sheets, they all have a shrinkage factor.
Thank you for the responses.
Yes, what I was thinking with regards to E-steps was the measurements like tuning an ender or such.
I did find the shrinkage adjustment, however, I was unable to locate any procedure or info on how to calibrate that.
I’ve been using this calibration print plus spreadsheet and it works great on the X1C to calculate the shrinkage factor on ASA. I use the shrinkage factor in the filament settings in Orca Slicer but that is not available in Bambu Studio. That setting will only compensate for the external dimensions so probably won’t help with the threads but you can try the X-Y hole compensation.
In my experience the only fix for that is on the design side by either expanding the female threads or reducing the male. Lowering the layer height can also help to print the tiny thread features better as well.
I mainly print with ABS so I have to adjust every model’s size. I’m not sure whether Orca scales in all axis or just XY when applying the shrinkage factor. From my experience I scale the whole model, xy & z, up by 0.65%. I get pretty accurate parts after that. I used to only do X & Y but tall parts also shrink down in the z axis.
I’m printing mostly in PLA and PETG with an A1 Mini and have found the prints to be pretty consistently small. I scale all of my models to 100.65% in Bambu Studio and dimensions come out nearly perfect.
I discovered this issue when I printed a wall-mountable base for the AMS Lite and discovered that the screw holes didn’t line up, and the whole base didn’t fit neatly.
I also have an older Ender 3 which isn’t nearly as good but can be calibrated to print dimensionally accurate parts at 200mm wide.
Even if it’s an issue of material shrinkage, then the slicer SHOULD have an ability to compensate for that so I don’t have to remember to manually re-scale every model before print.