3D Print Parts that Fit with FREE Conversion Calculator 

for simple part adjustment, use horizontal hole expansion in Cura. It will change the hole and not the rest of the print.

Not a bad explaination of the process. Next up you should try using the horizontal and hole expansion settings. They let you compensate for the issues a little easier. The hole one comes in really handy because it lets you shrink or enlarge just the holes rather than the whole part.

It also helps to add a slight chamfer to the edges of the peg and/or the socket.

"As you can see, it just doesn't fit together. I can force it in...but it just wasn't working out..." Story of my life...

From now on, I will refer to myself as a 3D artist. You just made my day!

Prusa slicer x/y compensation -0.1 works for me. Both parts would be the same size as well. Great video. Keep up the good work.

Just wanted to say, i am new to 3D printing and i have watched a lot of RU-vid trying to get my head around this addictive, hobby but your videos are by far the most helpful. keep it up please.

If you have an stl you could split the model in Tinkercad and then scale just the peg. And some slicers let you split an stl so you don’t even need Tinkercad.

I think it is a better practice to make these changes within the CAD environment because if you need to re-slice the model for some reason, you will need to remember / tweak these values again. Also, once you're familiar with your printer's capabilities, you'll have a second nature guessing the right amount of tolerance.

Very informative, you covered a few things I wouldn't have thought about. Especially only scaling down one part instead of both. Common sense, but that would not have occured to me until I ran the print. Good to have you back, looking forward to see the progress on the shop.

Love your very informative videos. One thing I do to help parts fit is I scale them in Blender on the two axes that need to be changed. I will do a few test prints to see what works. It's super easy to do, press TAB to go into edit mode after you select your object, then just select the part of the object you need to scale, press S for scale, then hold down shift and press either X and Y, or whatever 2 axes you need, X and Z, etc., then type "0.95" for 95% for example I've tried 0.95, 0.90, 0.85 and usually 0.95 works great. Of course this is once your printer is printing accurately.

hey i got a ender 3 in my room and i print PLA is that bad ? i got my door open and a fan

I’m familiar with the horizontal stuff. Just wish I knew about it sooner than when I did.

I’d expect to use a tolerance of about the radius of the nozzle. The filament thickness becomes roughly the diameter of the nozzle, so half of the filament thickness ends up inside the part, the other half outside of the part. Given an exact print, this expansion of the filament will overlap, by exactly the radius of the nozzle. A .4mm nozzle needs .2mm tolerance to fit. So you’d need to move both walls apart by .1mm. Make sure to not accidentally double the tolerance, especially when making screw holes But a 3D print is never perfect and exact so your mileage may vary.

I was experimenting with X-Y hole and contour compensation and it seems to work for nuts and bolts and whatever, so I guess it can work for this as well.

hi, thanks for your videos.. very intersting ! i think there is a different between "tolerance" realted to tools precision and "gap" between pieces witch allow movement.

I actually started out 3D modeling before I ever printed anything, so when I was already pretty familiar with it when I finally got a printer. For a while I just made individual parts (or who's interaction didn't much matter), but when I finally needed something to hold together, I did some tests prints and figured out that 0.2mm offset is good for sliding, and 0.1mm for a fricton fit (at least with larger parts, on ones that are only a few millimeters it seems to need to be bumped up 0.1mm more), at least for my printer, not sure how it would work for others (and don't forget to fillet your vertical corners BlargNaut )

My issue is print in place interlocked models like puzzles. The parts never have enough clearance unless the modeller makes it so. Going to try some of the suggestions here in Orca and Cura.

great vid as always u'r the best when it comes to overcome 3d printing issues so thank you dude

Hi I have just bought a SUNLU s9 plus printer and I’m stumped. My test file printed after setup but now I can’t get anything out of it. The first layers just won’t stick and I get a bowl of spaghetti I know I have watched one of your vids that could help but I can’t find it now. Can you please help

Thank you for the great explanation and all your videos. I printed out the models and everything from on the tighter test that is .25 and lower is basically fused together. I noticed in bambu studio (x1c) it does look fused on some of them. Is this then nozzle/slicer/printer dial in that need to be addressed or is that pretty darn good in terms of accuracy for a home 3d printer.

I did a box with 16x16 outer dimension and another box with 16x16mm inner dimension... it fit perfectly.. I mean perfect!. but I rotated it 90 degrees and it was a bit tight! This was with cura and using PLA+... I wondered if it was the contracting of the plastic when cooling..

Maybe change the wording on the spreadsheet to "add" and "subtract" tolerance with a (Tighter) or (looser), just for clarity. I can tell you now some people that use it are gonna get that mixed up. Also, is there a way to add a primitive as a modifier and scale only that section?

I appreciate and like your videos. I think you meant to say you need some clearance when putting to pieces together and not tolerance.

Thank you. Useful video. But I noticed the gap in the seams and thought, can you get tighter fitting seams? Maybe, could you use variable layer heights (much lower layer height right on the edge) and maybe ironing to get more perfect edges right where the 2 parts join? Just a thought, could be a silly idea, but I'm going to try it.

4:30 - Why you scale both, but not separately? One must be 99%, the other one must be 101% scale (except the hight scaling).

A simple mod.... remove the corners of the peg. Doesn't need more that 0.2 chamfer, just enough to knock off the edges, sides and end

Very informative. But if you could do a tolerance video of collapsible sword using bambu studio that'd be awesome

You can also in Prusa slicer you can just add a box modifier around the peg and put the setting in to do external perimeters first and a lot of times that will give you enough room to be able to slide those parts in easily you can also use the cut tool and isolate just the peg that way you can change just the percentage size on the peg of your X & Y axis that way the main portion of the print doesn't change in size only the peg

whats with Hole expansion? shrinking compensation? firstlayer compensation a.s.o thought that are the parameters for that after calibrating the flow. I recommend to calibrate every printer, than you always have less stress..........

Great video! Any tips for resin prints? Some resins do shrink when you cure them.

I printed the tolerance checker and the whole thing printed as a single piece. I use cura 4.13 and a flsun v400 printer. I have no idea how to fix it.

Great video! Thank you 😊

Would these numbers work the same for threaded 3d prints

I use negative parts to reduce the peg to the size I need... Or a modifier part and scale only a section of the 3D model

Can you use a modifier in Bambu or Orca in order to change the peg size without going back to CAD?

Please can u make review for the V400

I use the caliper to make the square smaller by knowing how over sized it is then deducting that and plugging it in to x or y on scaling icon in cura or studio

it work on resin printer too?

How dimensionally accurate is a delta printer in general. Would be a better representation if you used a bed slinger or core xy printer that the majority of people own.

Hello, really slow person that is bad at math here. If you reduced the entire model by the same amount ( the first time you did it) , how does that change anything? how did it change anything? Was it solving an over extrusion issue?

Maravilloso. Lo he realizado y ok. Ne resulta mejor realizando el diseño con ls tolerancia que a mi también me sale 0,5 mm Gracias

Crazy how lots of people need a program to solve for a delta L 😅 (Cad dimension / actual dimension) x 100% = %error scaling factor

What if you just split that one part,scale the insert and then assemble them after?

How about just check your bed level, offset, flow rate, print outside walls first

thought this link would be to an excel file? its to some site to sign up for web site stuff?

Ahh yes, hiding it behind an email harvester. How scummy

I am not sure whwat time zone for live chat tomorrow morning?

goes in and out easy.thats what she said lol

Please guys it's not hard to just do the simple calculation to know the new scale. Certainly does not need a spreadsheet calculator. If you want an actually good calibration print get the calilantern. Because doing one small cube is not sufficient.

One does not simply scale the models to fit.

i don´t like most things from sharing platforms, they are often designed for their own home printers with a lot of huge tolerances or like you told us, completely without tolerances, so they are pretty loose, or don´t fit. if you calibrate your printer or think just a moment about reality you get what you have designed! i can´t understand why people design things for their particular printers and not to change/calibrate/upgrade the printer(profiles) to the real world dimensions as close as possible!? Can´t even get it. Other manufacuring processes also have tolerances, why do some people designs without any tolerance? really suspicious........maybe they are the staff of the filament industry...to sell more filament because people have to print multiple times 🤔

Nah, if Im not the one modeling, I just sand.

I am a Mead Made Mailer Minion

Being each part printed on an FDM printer is a one off unit, each with its own non repeatable tolerance. This method is just a waste of time. Just design the part with an acceptable gap. You can't control many of the external influences.

Tolerance is not what you think it is. CLEARANCE is what you are calling "tolerance". And a big channel like yours is right now redefining the word for a good portion of the 3D printing public and that will get spread wider and wider as time goes on. Don't do that. Use the correct words and terms and teach the correct terms and words.

At the start of your video there is no reason even try to print that item you have no tolerance design in the cad drawing. There nothing and I mean nothing can at 0 tolerance that will work, exception is a metal item like that is round, the inserted item is placed in dry ice so it can be press fitted. I’ve never seen it done with a square item. You maybe able press fit with a 3d plastic print doing the dry ice, but as a press fit the only way to remove the part is to dry ice both parts than heat the outside. Just so everyone knows that there is no machine that will manufacture any thing perfectly over time it will wear and the part can be larger or smaller, that is why every blue print has a tolerance of +-1 or xxxx. Was a in middle of typing before I saw your tolerance part of the video. Hope that is clearer, see response to is this my second language below.

While a lot of good info, most the beginning is a waste of time and probably confusing to people who don't understand what they are doing. If you having given you part tolerance, that is the problem. That's it. Lesson 1 in mechanical engineering.