Calibrating 3d Printer Flow Rate with Cura - The Quick Fix for Under Extrusion 

it would be awesome if you did a series of videos breaking down all the cure settings like you did in this video with the flow rate. it would take you 100 years but I love your videos and you break things down really well so I think it would help a lot of new people like myself

Finally a video that is easy to understand and well explained, if you are a newbie to 3D printing. Thank you!

This is great! I printed one cube single wall .4mm and got a .42 wall thickness. Two walls gave me .84 wall thickness. Dropped flow to 95 and got .81wall thickness and 20.03 overall on a 20mm cube. 0.03mm is only one thousands of an inch on a 20mm cube. Thats damn good tolerance for 10-20 minutes of testing and about 8 grams of material. Thank you so much for this video!

Thanks! Very practical and timely explanation to get Better results and the slicer settings for better line quality. And the rationale behind the %flow in Cura.

Thank you Ricky. Just did the flow rate and it was right on. You along with all the other individuals who make videos to pass on their knowledge is great. You really make this hobby fun and challenging and if someone has problems, you are right there to help. Thanks again.

I don't know if it's a feature that was just added, but in cura you have the ability to change different types of flow those options being: overall flow, overall wall flow, outer wall flow, and inner wall(s) flow. If you set only the inner wall flow to be slightly larger you can increase wall adhesion while not affecting the overall print diameter. Edit: I actually looked a bit deeper and you can change the flow for pretty much everything including top/bottom, infill, skirt/brim, support, etc.

Every single video, always concise and to the point. I've been printing for 3yrs now and your tutorials are the best! Thank you, sir!

One thing i learned the hard way is to also verify the nozzle as well. I had a beer off a time getting one printer for set and it turned out while the nozzle was marked 0.4 it was actually a 0.6. Once I swapped it out with an actual 0.4 my flow was perfect and over extrusion was gone

Got all my calcs set up in excel works a treat with the calculations you mention

Excellent and to the point. Thanks for your videos!

Clear, informative and directly to the point, keep up the great work, Sub'd!

Super helpful and clear thanks!

Thank you! The formula helped immediatelly!

You explained very well thank you so much

You make such good video! Thanks for the help

Your videos are excellent brother. Subbing 👊🏼

Thanks for the video!

Veeery well explained! Thnk you!😊

I wish all my teachers throughout school taught like you.

Not sure if it was commented already, but I'm pretty sure in cura the option to bring the lines closer is to use a line width smaller than the nozzle diameter under quality. Whhat I understand from the setting is if I use a 0.6mm nozzle and set it to 0.5mm, 4 walls will be 2mm of squished together lines instead of 2.4mm of less squished together lines.

Nice Tesa caliper, have the same one. Video really helps =)

Since you've asked: you can separately change perimeter width and spacing in SuperSlicer (maybe PrusaSlicer as well)

If you are consistently experiencing under/over extrusion, it indicates the extruder stepper settings in your firmware may be off. You can calculate the correct settings in much the same way as you did for the slicer settings: Pre-heat the hot end, measure 100mm of filament and ask the printer to extrude 100mm. Measure the difference between measured and extruded filament, then take that to apply to the "rotation_distance" (in printer.cfg in Klipper) setting of your stepper in the firmware: (rotation_distance X extruded/measured)=new stepper rotation_distance. Then re-test. That way you can leave your slicer setting at 100% and only make adjustments if necessary per print. For example, my extruder rotation_distance setting was 32.990, but I changed out the extruder for a better one, which means I also changed out the extruder gear. I did the above calibration and the result was that my extruder was actually extruding 97mm per 100mm measured (under-extruding). (32.99 X 97/100)=32.00 (shorter rotation distance means the extruder has to turn farther per rotation, due to a slightly smaller diameter extruder gear). I suppose you could do the same thing by just observing your prints and taking the setting in Cura (103% flow setting, for instance, translates to under-extrusion of 3% at 100%) that gives the best prints and use that number to calculate the rotation_distance as well - (32.99X97%) = 32.00, then go back to using the normal 100% in Cura.

FYI....This goes along with your video. Since I am using Klipper, had to do a little homework on the process. I am 80 years old so I had to write it down. Ender 3V2 E-Steps Calibration using Klipper I was looking for a procedure to calibrate the E-Steps on the Ender3V2 using Klipper but could not find where to store the new settings. Found videos on how to do the calibration. Using ideas from various videos, I came up with a procedure to do the calibration. In Klipper, is a Printer.cfg file. In there, is a area called [extruder]. In here is a line item called rotation_distance. This is where the settings for E-Steps are stored. Remember this number. The following is the process to calibrate the E-steps. Step 1. Remove the filament from the extractor. Step 2. Remove the tube at the extractor end that goes from the extractor to the hot end. Step 3. Feed filament thru the extractor until it just comes out of the extractor. Step 4. Cut the filament flush with the exit hole on the extractor. Step 5. In the Mainsail interface, set Extruder temperature to 200 C. The following commands will not work until the Extruder is heated. Step 6. Enter the following commands in the Console. M83 (enter), G1 E100 F100 (enter). This will feed 100mm of filament thru the extractor. Step 7. Cut off the filament flush with the extractor and measure its length with a ruler or caliper. If it is 100mm, no further steps are required. Step 8. If the length is less than 100mm, it is under extruding and if it is over 100mm, it is over extruding. Step 9. Take the number that was stored in rotation_distance (times) the length of the filament that was extruded (divided) by 100. Step 10. An example: 34.406 x 96.5 / 100 = 33.298 This will be close to what you need to feed 100mm thru extractor. Step 11. Enter this new number in rotation_distance and "Save & Restart" Step 12. Repeat steps 5 thru steps 11 until 100mm is fed thru the extractor. Step 13. Once E-Steps is correct, reconnect the tubing to the extruder.

SuperSLicer has the ability to "move those lopes together" You can adjust the overlap between layers in %.

I could he wrong, I am new at this, at 4:57 regarding the walls moving closer together is the closest setting for that horizontal expansion?

Im wondering how to live adjust the flow rate on my ender 3v2 with cr touch for some reason its not in my tune option

Would you know why my prints are printing fine but my brim lines aren't overlapping and touching each other. It's not my z offset and it's not flow because the prints come out fine. I'm using creality slicer 4.8.2

Great teacher. Thanks. How does Slicing Tolerance Setting affect?

This method gives me consistent over extrusion on top and bottom solid layers.

I did my esteps first. but now after ramping the esteps up to 98. I have to lower the flow back down to 93. It kind of feels like It was allright before. with 2 walls of 0.4 ending on 0.81 and 0.79 . As if what I just calibrated kind of ruled one another out...

I am looking to recalibrate my printers and this is the dilemma I am experiencing. I thought my printers were calibrated pretty darn well, however I am printing some parts that require precision to fit together and this resulted in my going down the flow calibration rabbit hole again. With my flow calibrated per wall thicknesses, I should be using about 92%, however this still leaves some holes too small or some parts too big when trying to fit an axle into a wheel hub for example. If I use horizontal expansion in conjunction with my 92% flow, I witness 1st layer lines that dont quite touch (almost like my nozzle is too far away from the bed), but I also notice gaps in the walls. Am I better off going back to 100% flow and only using horizontal expansion or what other advice can you think of for more accurate parts?

What you actually measure this way is not flow rate but extrusion width, flow rate and squish of filament. You can not measure flow rate which is only 1 out of 3 variables with this method. IF you change your layer heigth from 0,2mm to 0,1mm you will get different thick walls this is because now you will have a little more squish. Also your line width might vary. Some people have it on 0,4mm for 0,4mm nozzle others use 0,5mm for 0,4mm nozzle some slicers have a default value of 0,44mm and so on. So no, measuring flow rate this way does not make sense. You will notice that your flow rate will be always too hight if you measure it this way and you need to adjust it down which then results in perfectly thick walls but everywhere else will be underextruded.

Hello Ricky, What order should I follow? bed level first, e steps, flow rate or e steps bed level flow rate? now, for example, when I print a 40*40 cube, one side is 41 and the other is 40.2.

Have you tried turning all settings on in cura and searching for overlap? Various options come up with wall overlap being the first, maybe this might help?

Quick question. Just bought the flsun v400 and the cura pofile that came with the machine had the flow rate set at 95. Im fairly new to all this but ive been suspecting underextrusion on all of my prints and just discovered its only at 95 for some reason out of box. Does this sound normal? Do most printers profiles come set at 100? I dont know enough to know what normal is

In cura, the line that is set to be 0.4 mm should be 0.44 mm wide because cura approximates line cross section as rectangle. So if your estep is truly calibrated your wall line should be 0.44mm wide at 100% flow.

Hi I need to ask you a question a have a really big seems on one of corner of the print how I can reduce it and thanks

Doing it this way I calculated a value of 81% flow.....that sounds like it will underextrude in an extreme way. I've checked and rechecked and the math is sound....so the only thing incan thing of is that my z offset is too close and creating a wider line than it should be?

So I did mine and all walls are exactly 0.50 so I did what you said which is 0.4 x 100 = 40 divide by 0.50 = 80 surely that's too low of a flow rate? My flowrate is at 100% right now while I do this test

You might get the right 3 wall thing by using for example a 0.4 mm nozzle with 0.2mm nozzle settings..or a 0.6nozzle with 0.4mm settings...so you trick the printer with 😅the ofsett for line center ..you can also use this for more flow, for ex i get perfect rubber printing with a 0.6mm nozzle when using 0.8mm settings and upting temp to 280°c...prints like PLA..

cant resist to scratch that spot on my monitor

1:05 i thought i accidentally opened CURA 😂

Flow rate is not the figure that represents result of many calculations it's just a extrusion multiplier. If you set it to 150% and send a command E10 you will get not 10 mm of extruded plastic but 15.

Dont base line width on what you measure, printer uses an estimate, software input from factory, use hight to determen or finetune your line width, that is based on an actual measurement,z access offset..that will give you more accurate consistancy overall ..

0.44 ok?

wtf i had 1.225 then 0.4 x 100 divided by 1.225....... this would mean 32.65 flow rate?!

Sorry, but this is a bad way of calibrating flow. Line thickness (in real life) will never be consistent with a single line's thickness, because of stuff like viscosity, and the fact that having 2 walls will cause the outer wall to 'flow outwards'. Basically, the best way is honestly just to go by look. Print the cube at 100% flow rate, everything at default, and check top/bottom layers if they look under/overextruded. This does however cause some problems with calibrating e-steps using a printed part.

this technique is rubbish and tbh using it with that kind of caliper from the 70s makes me smile quite a lot