Extrusion multiplier calibration
Good evening everyone,
I am currently working on the topic of “extrusion multiplier calibration.” I printed a 40x40x40 cube and measured the walls with a caliper, which gave me a value of 0.052 mm.
How should I calculate the extrusion multiplier? When I calculate 0.45 / 0.052, I get 8.6538.
I have no idea what value I should enter for the extrusion factor.
Can you please help me with this?
Thanks and best regard
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Best Answer by Jürgen:
I printed a 40x40x40 cube and measured the walls with a caliper, which gave me a value of 0.052 mm.
How should I calculate the extrusion multiplier? When I calculate 0.45 / 0.052, I get 8.6538.
I have no idea what value I should enter for the extrusion factor.
I take it that you followed this guide? https://help.prusa3d.com/article/extrusion-multiplier-calibration_2257
You are on the right track. I think you simply read your calipers wrong. 0.052 mm would be an extremely thin wall, the thickness of a sheet of paper. (And pretty thin paper too!) It's probably 0.52 mm? In which case the multiplier would be 0.45/0.52 = 0,86 = 86%.
Maybe measure again in a few spots. If it's 0.52 instead of the nominal 0.45, that is a pretty significant over-extrusion. But if that's what you measure, try the 86% extrusion factor and see whether that gets you to the target thickness.
RE:
I printed a 40x40x40 cube and measured the walls with a caliper, which gave me a value of 0.052 mm.
How should I calculate the extrusion multiplier? When I calculate 0.45 / 0.052, I get 8.6538.
I have no idea what value I should enter for the extrusion factor.
I take it that you followed this guide? https://help.prusa3d.com/article/extrusion-multiplier-calibration_2257
You are on the right track. I think you simply read your calipers wrong. 0.052 mm would be an extremely thin wall, the thickness of a sheet of paper. (And pretty thin paper too!) It's probably 0.52 mm? In which case the multiplier would be 0.45/0.52 = 0,86 = 86%.
Maybe measure again in a few spots. If it's 0.52 instead of the nominal 0.45, that is a pretty significant over-extrusion. But if that's what you measure, try the 86% extrusion factor and see whether that gets you to the target thickness.
RE: Extrusion multiplier calibration
You are on the right track. I think you simply read your calipers wrong. 0.052 mm would be an extremely thin wall, the thickness of a sheet of paper. (And pretty thin paper too!) It's probably 0.52 mm? In which case the multiplier would be 0.45/0.52 = 0,86 = 86%.
You’re totally right, it’s 0.52mm, my fault !
So I assume that I have to set the extrusion factor of 0.86?
Thank you very much.
Regards
Lukas
RE: Extrusion multiplier calibration
I set the extrusion factor to 0,86 and the cube now has very thin walls and the print looks worse than with an extrusion factor of 1.
Why that?
Regards
Lukas
RE:
You are on the right track. I think you simply read your calipers wrong. 0.052 mm would be an extremely thin wall, the thickness of a sheet of paper. (And pretty thin paper too!) It's probably 0.52 mm? In which case the multiplier would be 0.45/0.52 = 0,86 = 86%.
You’re totally right, it’s 0.52mm, my fault !
So I assume that I have to set the extrusion factor of 0.86?
Thank you very much.
Regards
Lukas
That multiplier is way too low. What type of material (plastic) is it?
In order to get a proper number print the cube in vase mode with top and bottom layers set to 0 and variable layer height turned off. Start with the existing multiplier set to 1. Then use a micrometer (not calipers) to measure wall thickness in the center 3x around the walls of the cube and average it.
RE: Extrusion multiplier calibration
When doing my extrusion multiplier calibration, I only print my vase-mode box 15mm high and measure the top ~2/3 of it. (Don't tell @hyiger but I use my Mitutoyo calipers because I don't own any micrometers of any brand. 😜 ) I measure all 4 sides and average and calculate a new multiplier value in a spreadsheet. I only record 1 value per side, but I measure multiple times and record the most repeated value. I leave the bottom on the vase-mode box and find that all the sample prints that I do make excellent small part boxes around the house.
The only time my method has really failed me was probably due to my measuring on a soft (TPU) filament... I was probably squeezing too much with the narrow tips of the calipers on the deformable plastic. Here the large surface area of micrometer anvils probably would have helped, or a completely different technique.
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RE: Extrusion multiplier calibration
When doing my extrusion multiplier calibration, I only print my vase-mode box 15mm high and measure the top ~2/3 of it. (Don't tell @hyiger but I use my Mitutoyo calipers because I don't own any micrometers of any brand. 😜 ) I measure all 4 sides and average and calculate a new multiplier value in a spreadsheet. I only record 1 value per side, but I measure multiple times and record the most repeated value. I leave the bottom on the vase-mode box and find that all the sample prints that I do make excellent small part boxes around the house.
The only time my method has really failed me was probably due to my measuring on a soft (TPU) filament... I was probably squeezing too much with the narrow tips of the calipers on the deformable plastic. Here the large surface area of micrometer anvils probably would have helped, or a completely different technique.
You can most definitely use a caliper. It's just micrometers give more accurate measurements. And really don't need a lot a precision in the multiplier. For example 1.03 will work as well (and will be indistinguishable) from 1.02577.