Have I followed the correct calibration steps?

Snapmaker Artisan
1

Hey everyone. I am brand new to 3d printing, so the past few days have been a bit of a learning curve. After assembling the artisan + enclosure, I went through the normal setup steps.

Initially I had a ton of issues with 13-12 and 13-18 errors which I seem to have resolved by getting the lengths of the bowden tubes corrected, ignoring the manual and setting the filament spools so the filament goes directly towards the bowden tube. I also printed some rollers and added bearings so the spool turns a little more freely based on the wiki.

I kept having a ton of adhesion issues on the textured glass plate (tried skirts, brims, rafts, the prints kept getting knocked over) so I switched over to the smooth glass side + some glue and had much, much more success. But then I doubled back to make sure all the calibration was correct when I switched to a new spool of filament.

So far I have done the following:

  1. Calibrate e-steps. Using the dual extruder, it was accurate to within ~2mm with both extruders, stock. I know ideal is less than 1mm, but I don’t have a flexible machinist rule with metric, so I was trying to gently eyeball against my caliper so I’m assuming a little error. Within 2mm seemed “accurate enough” given my inability to get a really precise measurement.
  2. Level the bed (I switched from the stock 5x5 to 9x9). I did this automatically. I verified this using cura’s autotower plugin with the 200x200 pattern, scaled 175% for x and y axis, but not z to keep it a single layer. The only issue was a tiny, tiny gap at the very beginning of the print of maybe 5mm.
  3. Z offset - I did this calibration automatically at first, then using the sensor. When I used the sensor I had issues because I could feel the card making contact with the nozzle but it wouldn’t wrinkle as described by the guide. Eventually I decided to just go back to the automatically set offsets. I know manual is ideal but without the card behaving as described I wasn’t sure. I know it is a “touch” thing and I haven’t developed the touch yet.
  4. Used cura autotowers temperature tower to set the correct temperature for my filament
  5. Used cura autotowers flow tower to figure out the correct flow rate for my filament
  6. Used cura autotowers retraction distance tower to figure out the correct retraction distance for my filament and extruder
  7. Used cura autotowers retraction speed tower to figure out the correct retraction speed for my filament and extruder
  8. Used cura autotowers speed tower to figure out the best speed for my filament and extruder

Do these steps all make sense and the order make sense? Am I missing anything? Do I need to rerun all of these steps every time I change to a new filament? I assume I also need to do some of these steps when I switch to a different bed?

2

You’ve done more than I did :smiley:

I like to calibrate it, then print a single layer. My bed is small, so it’s a solid piece, others use an X pattern to make the process faster. If the filament has gaps / comes off the bed in strings, it’s too high. If the filament squishes up to give the print some texture, the head is too low. A nice smooth solid sheet is what you want to see. I keep the 3DP head on pretty much all the time, and check that calibration every ~6 months (or when I think it’s not printing right).

I print a temperature tower every time I get new filament, and write the results on the spool. Temps can be different for different colors of the same material from the same manufacturer.