I’ve been wondering about something lately: are we actually spending too much time trying to perfectly calibrate our 3D printers?
Sometimes I see people spending hours tuning flow rate, pressure advance, temperature, retraction, input shaping, extrusion multiplier, and dozens of other settings just to get a tiny improvement in surface quality.
But at some point, does the extra 5% of print quality really justify another hour of calibration?
For functional parts, I’m starting to think that “good enough and reliable” might be more valuable than getting every setting perfectly optimized.
Where do you draw the line?
Do you keep calibrating until the print is nearly perfect, or do you stop once the printer is reliable enough for your actual projects?
Welcome to the rabbit hole… I used to get down into the whole perfect print idea, with my Ender3 V2. I even thought I could print exotic filaments if I built an enclosure and heated it… yada yada yada. I’ve spent hours and hours printing cubes and cylinders and calibration shapes…
I even bought a Ender3 S1 to make parts for my enclosed printer, running Mainsail with a BTT board and 1000 watt PTC heater with a fan… Then one day I realized that the ender3 S1 was running, EVERYTIME, without anything but an occasional wipe down of the bed. PLA, ABS, All the easy peasy filament just run through it. NO, I don’t calibrate it. I think I have only printed 1 cali cube…
Which leads me to say: I have an Ende3 V2 customized with linear rails on the Z-axis, dual lead screws on the Z. Sprite extruder with ribbon wiring. Running Mainsail on a BTT E3V3 board within an enclosure, Heated and a noctua 80mm fan flowing through it. I can reach 70c inside the enclosure. It will print Nylon, Poly-carb, ABS PetG … I think I’ll go dust it off tomorrow, Just for old time sake..
I also have a resin printer I picked up for cheap, and had to put a new board in along with a new LCD screen… If you don’t want to calibrate anything get a resin printer, you’ll love it, for about the first five days. The mess and the clean-up takes away from the beauty of the fine detail..
If it ain’t broke… and it does what it is supposed to, Use it, don’t adjust it because some guy in his mothers basement say you can make it better… Make stuff, design stuff, print stuff, be happy with what you’ve got.
I am on the other side of the spectrum. Never calibrated a printer beyond their built in start up calibration. Bambu profiles have been adequate to good for me so have not had a need to do anything beyond a machine basics.
I primarily design for toys and trinket but when I need some functional design requiring some accuracy I just design in some tolerances so things match up.