Easiest Way to Calibrate E-Steps on 3D Printer with a Bowden Tube | Extruder Calibration Ender 3 Pro 

Little hint for us newbies. Hit "save settings" or you'll be doing this all over again next time you turn the printer on.

Thank you Chris!!!! You have solved ALL of my printer issues with this video. Short back story, I bought an older Ender 5 pro a couple of weeks ago, second hand but in good condition as far as I could tell. Prior to this I had zero experience with any kind of 3d printing. My printer came with a couple of rolls of filament, I put the first roll onto the printer that I touched in the box, it was PETG. I struggled for many hours to get anything to stick to the build plate at a wide range of temperatures tested. Then I realized that I had PETG on there and changed it for a PLA filament roll. Now I could get it to stick to the build plate, sometimes, but prints were bad, failures invariably started with the nozzle blobbing on the infill and dragging it around. I went down many rabbit holes on RU-vid, briefly explored E step setting but shied away from it because it involved connecting my computer to the printer. Then I saw your video about printing and measuring the wall thickness on the small cube with no infill. I managed to PLA print one which barely held up but it allowed me to measure the wall thickness. I have a 0.4mm nozzle in the machine, the wall thickness was about half of that, just over 0.2mm! That lesson led me to this one and voila! the 100mm test extrusion measured just 40.86mm. In short order I changed the Estep calibration to 227.6, the next 100mm test extrusion came out at 100.35mm. The new hollow cube tested at almost exactly 0.4mm. I am now turning out PETG prints with ease using almost standard Cura settings. Thanks again, SUBSCRIBED!

Don't forget to store settings and make a note. My Ender 5 pro seems to lose it's steps periodically and it is nice to have it written so you don't have to redo.

Awesome video my friend, I've been sturggling for a ful day to figure out why my new extruder wasn't working properly, this simple-to-understand method, well-presented too, made it super easy and now my printer is back up and running! Brilliant work, thanks a million pal! Have a blessed 2024! :D

Holy crap - idk why I've never thought of this, I always extrude it through the hot end like a dolt. Trying to constantly measure from the back end of the machine - you are a wizard harry

This is the best video on how to do this! I was crapping myself over having to do this but now I feel a lot more confident 😌 thank you 😊 🙏

thanks for this video!... it saved me a ton of work. I'm not sure how but I changed to the same set up as you as far as extruders and my e steps were set to just under 400 (massive over extrusion), after a quick lesson thanks to your video I'm now set at a modest 94 and my prints are back on track... thanks again!

Thanks for this, love your content. Easy to follow, especially for a newbie. Keep up the good work.

You definitely made it easier than it sounded like it was going to be. Looking forward to getting my printer and the more of these i watch im feeling more comfortable about all the little things i need to know to keep it running well and getting the best results in my prints Thanks again

... that was so freakin' easy. Learned something new today. I'll be looking into my e steps settings even thought it's been printing fine. You can never finish fine tuning your printer.

When I watch your videos, I start thinking about the reward. This is absolutely unique, easy to understand and applicable help. Thank you. 👍

That was so much easier and smoother then the way i was trying to do it... Thank you so much for this!

Thanks a lot! This is most intuitive and easiest set of steps to do on an Ender 3!

I went from getting 95mm when I asked for 100 to 100. Worked great though not without a frustration when I tried to extrude with the nozzle cold. Realized that the Ender 3 wouldn't take an extrusion command cold. A type of failsafe in the software. In spirit thank you for helping with a process that's uncomplicated.

Thanks for your clear instructions again! got another printer and here we are again :)

Thanks so much ! been having problems printing.

awesome video straight forward and much easier, than the other ones i watched. thank you

This is the truth, thank you for sharing with us!!

A lot more people should be looking at this video, and giving you a thumb's UP.

2 years later im here to say thank you :) it works perfect :D

you make it very easy to understand

Super helpful. Thank you! My E-steps were way off

Thank you 4 the simple guide

That is really really simple. Thanks!

Awesome Demo.... Hopefully this solves my issue 🤞

Installed a BL Touch yesterday, but for some reason, my prints kept digging into the first layer really harshly for some reason. Checked back at this video to see if my calibrations were off only to notice my extruder was set to 400 god dang steps per mm instead of 90. Thing was making a mountain, and I was upset it couldn't find its way around it. Thanks mate!

watching this i was supprise how close your steps were to the ones they list on the product page on amazon, they tell you to update your steps to 139 on the amazon page, which honestly could come down to measuring error, I guess It makes sense, if you know how far a stepper motor will turn each step, and you are the manufacturer of the gears, you know the ratios. ALSO, this was awesome, and i learned quite a bit about calibrating this, thanks for the simple and effective process.

perfect way! got it accurate now

Thank you, thank you very much mate. This video really helped me a lot 👍

Worked great! Appreciate it!

Nice and easy, and gave me an excuse to buy calipers! Thanks

Thanks, helped me out a lot!😄

Great video!!! It helped a lot!!! 🤩

Wow that was easy, other videos make it sound so complicated

Thank you thank you thank you. My ender 3 came new with esteps-424.9!

Thank you!!!🎉

Fantastic! I swapped to metal extruder gears and got clogs. I’ll try this, thanks!

Tha nk.from England, cheers m8

i've had my printer for 3 years, never done this. but sounds easy

Perfect!

A G2. Good man.

I did this exact same method but I enable Cold extrusion (M302 P1) I used a GodHand SPN-120 snipper for a flat cut

Hey man! Just wanted to drop a thanks!!! Something I tried was putting the lock ring on the bowden tube push down thingy (you can tell I'm technical) and then cutting it in the event your ring is soft. any ways thanks for the video and thanks for the help!!!

I don't know for sure, but I *think* this is actually inaccurate because you have to take into account the speed in which it melts through the nozzle. Also, instead of using calipers, using a string and ruler would be more accurate since you can rid the variable of bend I could be wrong.

Thanks for this video, it was simplistic and helped me a lot. Does this work with dual extruders? I have the Geeetech a10m and was wondering if I had to do this with both extruders or does this set both.

I'm going to go try this. I have to push the filament for it to come out when doing bed leveling test.

I dunno man just e-steps lol love it.

great help !! Mine was at 97.5mm, now its at about 99.6mm.

Do you have a video on how to do the e-steps (steps/mm) for the x, y and z e-steps (steps/mm)?

I bought an Anicubyc cobra max printer and it did a few prints with a satisfactory level of quality and then it started to have under extrusion the whole object has holes in it. I tried various flow and temperature settings and a lot of other things, but there was no change for the better. Then I wanted to do an e-step calibration with the pronterface and I noticed that the extruder stops three or four times while pushing the 100 mm filament and then continues, regardless of whether it pushes the filament through the hot head or directly from the extruder without a bowden tube. There is no way I can set it to push exactly 100mm, it always has underextrusion, sometimes by 25mm, and it always pushes less than 100mm. The gears in the extruder are good and clean. Could you give me some advice if the problem is in the motor, the motherboard, the voltage that the motor receives or what it is about. Thanks a lot.

@robmcdonald6808 This doesn't account for the speed at which the nozzle can extrude it due to flow though. IE back pressure due to nozzle size and temperature setting. Is that an issue you have experienced?

thanx man that so helpful but i dont have option esteps on screen elegoo neptune 3 so i should connect it to pc ;D

easier to just remove the quick connect fitting and cut flush to the extruder. simply because the quick connect can move in and out. not to mention it's easier that trying to remove the tubing. Also measure the tip to the extruder, if you cut then measure it's going to be off because the top of flush cutters stretches the material as it has a beveled edge on top to cut flush on the bottom.

Now to figure out how to do this with my Neptune 3

10:26 Hi, I am experiencing a ridge or a little hump line along the y-axis face of my prints that happens at about 15mm from the bed, all the time. Could this be due to e-step out of calibration or something else. Appreciate your help or please direct me to your video that has a solution to this.

Please remember tis is for Bowden Cable Printers - Close Coupled need a different way ie Measure amount goi n into the Driver

Your estep is supose to be calculated with the resistance that extruding plastic trough the tip , so to remove the ptfe you will not have a 100 mm when it come outside of the nozzle

Should I be calibrating E steps first then flow rate?

Question.. Why did you heat up the hot end? :)

How do I do this on the anycubic viper?

hi e steps i followed your you tube to make sure it was right , i calibrated it and got it to 99.95 and i redone it to make sure but it was a different size , i tried again and got another different size , now confused ?

Do I just do the same if I'm over extruding when I do it it's extruding about 120 mm for the first step with my printer set to 93?

Cool, easy steps to follow, easy math. What's the point of preheating your hot end though?

I just kinda mentioned this on credit a couple of says ago and pretty much get reamed for it

Unfortunately I don't have the Esteps parameter in my Creality CR-10. I don't think the ability to change that was added until much later (Ender3).

If i recalibrate my esteps Do I need to recalibrate my z-offset since I'm possibly extruding more filament?

My ender 5 plus doesn't have this and it's pushing 65 on my new dual exstruder.

hey I have a ender 3 s1. what do I do if I don't have the same printer as you. can you help me pls thanks

Again Brilliant Why not get some masking Tape and stick them down 100 mm apart

Hi Chris thank you for this video, I’m trying this method on my ender 3 but the filament is not extruding at all. I’m a nooby at this. Would appreciate some input please.

Sadly my bowden tube us stuck i can remove it without breaking the copler thingy i was hiping for a way to calubrate without remiving the tube

I don't see that control option in my Ender 3 pro menu.

I did all this but now I’m getting different lengths of filament when I command it to extrude 100mm. Do you know why?

67.7 isn’t “terrible” it’s just a different extruded with different gearing.

Aren't you suppose to measure from the inlet side of the extruder as the filament goes through the hotend? You heated up your hotend for what exactly?

yeah, that looks dead easy, unfortunatly my anycubic predator seams to not have any of these options in the menu..

i did this, with octoprint, for my elegoo Neptune 2s... stock E steps were 134..... But when extruding 10cm.. it only gave me 9.5cm... So used your calculation, 134 x 100 Divide by 95.03225 = 141.... So sent the command as shown here.....etc And now my prints are terrible quality....

Has anyone have had an E-step calibration that sent you out in left field? I double and triple checked my math but I still get bad results. My measured estep is 66.10mm out of a 100mm. My estep in the machine is 93.0. I ended up with 1.513 with a new estep of 140.7. and ended up with almost 200mm of filament. Needless to say I cant get good results with this methods. Im wondering if I have a bigger issue.

Hey dawg, take that yellow flat spring off and replace it with your weaker stock one. It's too much force, it'll make the gears grind down and self destruct

But wouldn't you want to be extruding through the nozzle, since the added friction of pushing through the tube and the nozzle would throw that number off?

I've had the Jerk Control option checked for the past 3 days and I think I'm doing something wrong, because my brother and his wife are still here.

You don't need calipers to measure length - a ruler would be just fine.

Too bad i can't do this on the cr10

Not all 3d printers can be setup without connecting to a computer. Very important to note that.

I don't understand why you preheated the nozzle.

100mm and getting 95…. 😢 Hope I can follow this vid 😢

67mm jesuschrist xD The importance of calibrating tools.

CURRENT E-STEP * 100/ MESAURMENT