3D printing guides: Calibration and why you might be doing it wrong
Why 3D Printing Stack Exchange recommends it
3D Printing Stack Exchange answerers link it when someone is fiddling with steps per mm or worrying about slightly off dimensions, since it explains what is worth calibrating and what isn't.
Recommended by 3 people across 3 different months, 2016 to 2018.
What it is
A 2014 explainer from Thomas Sanladerer of Made with Layers on which parts of a 3D printer you should and shouldn't calibrate. It opens with a short history of early RepRap printers like Darwin and Prusa Mendel, then argues that over-calibrating X/Y steps often makes prints worse.
What people said
Strong rec Greenonline · 2018-08 · 3D Printing Stack Exchange · on “Getting bumps/warts on surface, Cura doesn't want to comb?”
Following on from Toon's answer, here is a run down of Thomas Sanladerer [LINK] 's excellent video: 3D printing guides: Calibration and why you might be doing it wrong [this video] . However, this may not be a definitive answer to the actual question about warts and bumps... 0:08 - A step back [this video] Back in time - when the RepRap project (and the hobby grade 3D printing market) was new territory - it was seen to be a doable technology, with no restrictions imposed by patents. The new printers created and developed included Darwin, Sells Mendel and Prusa Mendel. These often produced unusable parts. However, impromptu solutions, or kludges led to poor quality fixes giving poor quality prints, by
Recommends Gekko09 · 2018-01 · 3D Printing Stack Exchange · on “Anet A8 Calibrated but print sizes are wrong”
There could be a number of issues causing this. Since you just set it up here is a list of questions for you to go through: Are your belts tightened? (With an additional belt tightener) Are your carriages are sliding smoothly? Both might cause some irregular movements explaining the results being off. Having said that, I wouldn't worry too much if you're <0.5 mm off. This is still a cheap DIY printer (I have the same one, by the way). This video actually goes into some details why you shouldn't worry so much about 100% accuracy and what you should actually care for when tuning your printer: [this video] Also Not sure how you measured the cube but callipers are often also not that reliable.
Recommends Toon · 2018-07 · 3D Printing Stack Exchange · on “Getting bumps/warts on surface, Cura doesn't want to comb?”
Have you correctly calibrated your steps per mm a.k.a. esteps? Tom made a great video about it: 3D printing guides: Calibration and why you might be doing it wrong [this video]
Cites Tom van der Zanden · 2016-07 · 3D Printing Stack Exchange · on “Uploading Repetier firmware to Arduino?”
See here [this video] for why you shouldn't calibrate your X/Y-steps. The value of 100 is probably better and will give more accurate prints overall than the value you came up with. When uploading new firmware you generally do not have to press any button. Pressing reset manually is only necessary when your upload method does not provide a reset pulse, but if you upload with USB this is not necessary. What is probably causing your problem is that the E-steps are stored in EEPROM, and uploading new firmware does not override the EEPROM settings. You should run a M502 to restore the default settings from the firmware you uploaded, then M500 to save them to the EEPROM.
Cites Greenonline · 2018-08 · 3D Printing Stack Exchange · on “What printer is this?”
I've been watching this video 3D printing guides: Calibration and why you might be doing it wrong [this video] and at the start (at 0:30 [this video] ) three of the first Reprap printers are mentioned (and shown): Darwin; Prusa Mendel, and; what sounds to be "Cells". Here is a screenshot: [LINK] which, to me, looks like a Mendel. However, after having looked at: RepRapWiki - RepRap project [LINK] , and; All3DP - The Official History of the RepRap Project [LINK] ... I can not see the "Cells" printer listed or mentioned. Am I hearing it correctly? Or is it "Sells", in reference to Edward Sells, one of the four authors of RepRap – the replicating rapid prototyper [LINK] ? However, this paper only mention