Calibrate Ender 3 Extrusion: How to Measure and Set Your Filament Diameter Correctly

This included a slight adjustment to the default E-Steps, some options renamed on the menu, etc. The reason I suggested 1mm increments is because the early models would actually power cycle if you went in large increments or scrolled too fast. This was a confirmed problem in the Ender-5 community, and my first one reset nearly a dozen times before the E-steps were finally calibrated. They have obviously fixed and improved some things since then, where I will make a few small updates to reflect that.

HOW TO: Calibrate Ender 3 Extrusion

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Thank you. That really work. I calibrate my Ender 3 this way and now I print really good and I am so happy.The true is default e-step wass 93 mm, and now i change to crazy 230 mm.Now I print with nice quality.

Once you have that disabled, you can start troubleshooting the actual extrusion issue. I would set your e-steps back to the default of 93.0 for the time being. Check the extruder itself as well, the cheap plastic ones they use are prone to all sorts of problems. Cracks in the plastic, low tooth count brass gears that wear out fast, etc. I strongly recommend those $5 aluminum extruders and an upgraded 40T Stainless Steel gear. This costs less than $10 total and will be a massive upgrade.

I had an under extrusion issue when I tried a new filament. To fix the problem, I had to change my originally calibrated esters from 97 to 254. I changed the nozzle and also ran the test without going through the nozzle or PFTE tube. Should I be concerned that the esters is so high now?

To calibrate the extruder steps on Ender 3, extrude a certain amount of filament through the control screen, then measure it to see if it extruded the right amount, or more/less. The difference between the set value and measured value can be used to calculate the correct E-steps value for your Ender 3.

Some people talk about calibrating the E-Steps at the end of the extruder without a nozzle. However, a user said that he likes to calibrate e-steps with the method mentioned above as it includes the nozzle as well.

To calibrate the XYZ steps of an Ender 3 you can 3D print a 20mm XYZ Calibration Cube. Just print the cube and measure it from all axes using digital calipers. If all axes measure exactly 20mm, well and good, but if there is a difference even in fractions, you need to calibrate the XYZ steps.

To calibrate the XYZ steps, you need to download the XYZ Calibration Cube from Thingiverse. The X, Y, and Z letters indicate each specific axis which makes it easy for you to conclude which axis needs calibration and which axis is accurately calibrated.

The Ender 3* can only do a good job if you calibrate it correctly. This includes especially the calibration of the extruder. Extruder calibration is critical to your 3D printer for many reasons. For example, it ensures that your printer extrudes exactly the right amount of plastic through the hot end during printing.

If, on the other hand, too much filament is forced through the nozzle, this leads to overextrusion problems, which in turn can result in blobs or stringing within the print model. Extreme overextrusion can even lead to blockages or complete filament jams at the hot end, which can only be removed with great effort.

To calibrate your extruder, the first step is to heat the nozzle of your Ender 3 to the temperature required for the filament you are using. In case you have already loaded a non flexible filament, heat it up to the appropriate temperature.

To calibrate the extruder, send 100 millimeters of filament through the hot end of your Ender 3. Before doing so, you should use the permanent marker to mark the filament 120 millimeters before it enters the extruder.

After the third step, your 3D printer should have extruded exactly 100 millimeters of filament. To verify this, you can estimate the gap between the extruder and the original mark on the filament. If the measurement is 20 millimeters, your extruder is properly calibrated and you do not need to take any further steps to calibrate it.

To check whether your extruder is now correctly calibrated, you can repeat the first four steps. However, this time you should get a value of exactly 20 millimeters between the extruder and the mark you have made. If not, recalculate the value and save it again.

If unusually large layers or filament jams occur in the nozzle, the extrusion multiplier is usually switched off. The default value of this multiplier is usually 1 or 100 percent. If the printer extrudes too much material, this setting should be reduced by 2.5 percent in stages. If this does not lead to the desired success, the printing temperature should be reduced in the next step. If it is set too high, the filament can melt over and flow out of the 3D printer nozzle in an uncontrolled manner.

The printing temperature is reduced in steps of five degrees Celsius until the perfect temperature is reached for both the device and the selected filament. If there is still the problem of overextrusion, the set filament diameter should be checked. The three standard values are 1.75, 2.85 and 3 millimeters. If the slicer software uses a thinner filament diameter than is actually used, the filament will be discharged through the extruder at a higher speed, which will result in overextrusion and faulty 3D printed models.

This tool is to help you calibrate the ESteps for your 3D printer. Just follow the steps below to get your new ESteps. The new value can be set by sending the Gcode command below to your printer or you can also put it into your printer firmware.

I'm having issues with extrusion on my ender 3. I go through and do the calibration, measure 120mm of filament, print 100 measure how much is left and adjust accordingly but I can not get the same result twice in a row. as a result, all prints are terrible due to under extrusion. Could the stepper motor be the issue or failing? I've been trying to figure this out for several months, any advice is welcome!

Hi, I usually calibrate the extruder steps by removing the bowden from the stepper (that is just have it extrude through and not into the hot end). Due to cold extrusion protection, the hot end still needs to be heated to at least 170C or it will not extrude. Once that is set up consistently I re-check with the hot end.

My Ender 3 has been having intermittent under extrusion issues. Layers of good density alternate with weak mesh. When printing multiple objects at once, sometimes one will be almost entirely good, while the piece next to it is all meshy; so it's not even consistent within layers, or between sections of the print bed.

To get a good finish and accurate dimensions of your printed parts, the flow rate of the printer needs to be properly calibrated. I put together an easy-to-use flow rate calculator which should help with flow rate calibration.

The flow rate calibration is done in order to fine tune the amount of plastic extruded by the printer. Also known as Extrusion Multiplier, by calibrating the flow rate you can fix issues caused by under-extrusion or over-extrusion. Besides this, flow rate calibration can also improve retraction values a bit and help with bulging corners and layer seam.If the extruder steps are properly calibrated, the flow rate value should be really close to a single digit value (1.00).

If you are looking to calibrate your 3D printer further, then check out the 3D Printer Calibration Guide using IdeaMaker. For printer upgrades, you can also check out my Ultimate 3D Printer Upgrade Purchase Guide article where I go over a lot of hardware which can improve your print quality.

If you have followed that guide, you have extruded the 100 mm through the heated nozzle.This results in your steps/mm value to also be influenced by hot end temperature, speed during the extrusion test, and potentially pressure on the extruder grip gear.

Try recalibrating your extruder, but this time, disconnect the Bowden tube either at the hot end, or at the extruder.Once you have the steps/mm set to something only related to the mechanics of the extruder, you can calibrate your flow rate - which you should usually do per filament type and even spool individually.

The extruder basically is a spinning motor that pushes along filament at some extrusion rate $e_r [\frac\textmm\textstep]$ and it's related factor $s_e [\frac\textstep\textmm]=\frac 1 e_r$ via a hobbed gear - or in the case of this extruder via a pair of synchronous hobbed gears. The motor in an Ender 3 is a typical NEMA17 with $s=1.8\ \frac\textdeg\textstep$ (and up to 16 micostepssee here). It spins a hobbed gear, which has an outer diameter $d_o$, and the teeth are cut to a depth that generates the inner diameter $d_i$. Somewhere between these diameters is the effective diameter $d_e$. So, using basic geometry we get:

Now, that we know the theoretical setting of mm/step or steps/mm ($e_r$ and $s_e$) for the firmware, we need to discuss how the filament impacts this. First of all, the calculation above holds only true for pushing even thickness filament that the teeth bite in evenly. If the filament does change in thickness, the effective diameter of our gear changes, and as a result, the extrusion changes. A thicker diameter filament does not get dug in as deep, the effective diameter goes up, and thus the circumference $C_e$.

The next part we have to look at is the behavior in the hotend and nozzle. In perfect conditions, the heat zone would melt up the filament fully and ensure a stable, laminar flow through the nozzle as it necks down the material from its starting diameter to the extrusion width.

As we established up in the Extruder part, the extrusion rate is somewhat dependent on the effective diameter of the hobbed gear $d_e$. The effective diameter of the hobbed gear also has an effect on the pressure in the nozzle: how deep the teeth cut into the filament determines the force they transmit. The other factor that impacts the force transmitted via the filament is the extrusion speed $v_e$, thus we write $F(d_e,v_e)$. Atop that, the actual filament diameter $A'$ plays another factor, as explored under filament effects. The thermal expansion, which is dependant on the material coefficient $\alpha$ and the Temperature increase $\Delta T$ adds to the pressure in the nozzle, thus we write $P_e(\alpha,\Delta T)$. So the expression for the volumetric flow out of the nozzle is 2ff7e9595c