YouTuber shows alternatives to calibration cubes for 3D printing

So-called calibration cubes can help when setting up a 3D printer and are therefore often used. Stefan from CNC Kitchen explains in a new video why these cubes can worsen the accuracy of 3D printers instead of improving it.

The basic problem: the dimensions of the printed cubes are checked with calipers or micrometers and the steps per millimetre are adjusted so that the result corresponds exactly to the target size. However, according to Stefan, many factors influence the actual dimensions. These include the quality of the extrusion, the degree of over- or under-extrusion and thermal shrinkage. There are also measurement tolerances.

Particularly with the comparatively small calibration cubes, even small deviations in the measurement can lead to large percentage errors. In addition, they do not take into account the skew of the axes, which can cause problems, especially with functional prints.

As an alternative, the YouTuber presents his version of the “CaliFlower“. A 150 millimeter calibration structure in which both internal and external dimensions are measured and averaged. This minimizes the effects of over/under-extrusion or rounding errors. Diagonal measurements also record torsion. The 3D model is available from Vector 3D for £5.