Open vulgerrity opened 2 years ago
I've had this same thought process. I put the calculated number in the slicer and it seems to work fine, but usually anywhere from 90-100 should be fine if you're measuring around .45mm. Adjust based on looks, I'm not sure what it means either.
The calibration page also confused me. My walls were coming out thicker than 0.4mm, so I used the calculator and lowered my flow rate to around 80%. This caused gaps in the bottom layers of my cube (underextrusion). I increased the flow rate in increments of 5% to see what would fix it.
The gaps closed around 95%. This left my average wall thickness at 0.51mm. I wasn't sure if this was a problem or not so just moved on.
After some time, YouTube suggested another Teaching Tech video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnvj6xCzikM). Michael is discussing a different calibration, but around 4:48 he works with "extrusion width". I think this might be synonymous with "wall thickness" on the calibration page.
For a 0.4mm nozzle, Simplify3D suggests an extrusion width of 0.48mm. Cura suggests a width of 0.4mm, but we may be misinterpreting the setting. Cura is the slicer I use, and with a flow rate that maintained good extrusion my average wall thickness was 0.51mm - closer to Simplify3D's value.
Under flow calibration it says:
"If your measurement is significantly off, the following calculator can then be used to calculate the new flow rate:"
But it does not state what "Significantly off" is. Tenths of a millimeter? Hundredths? How many? I do appreciate that it says your eye is the best judge for this, but my average wall thickness is 0.424, sometimes as thick at 0.45 and as thin as 0.4. I don't think I need to make an adjustment to my flow rate, but it would be helpful for newbies like me to know what "Significantly off" means so we have a better understanding of whether or not we should change this setting.