Printer Calibration
Your factory robot will most likely be more accurate than your printer. This isn't saying anything bad about your printer, it's just that it is rare for a printing use case to require sub-mm accuracy. We, however, do in fact need sub-mm accuracy to calibrate our factory robots.
Most printers are cartesian topology, which means that they will tend to have horizontal and vertical distortion. We will use this to our advantage and measure a firenodejs™ grid printed on your printer. All firenodejs™ grids have 80mm features that you can measure. As you can see from the image, below, this printer prints a wee bit wide:
By taking measurements of a large 80mm feature, we can scale the firenodejs™ grid so that it is printed with full accuracy.
You should calibrate your printer before printing any firenodejs™ grid.
- Open the /mesh accordion and click more...
- Set mm80w and mm80h both to
80 - Print the XY Calibration Grid
- Measure the height and width of the blue rectangle, which is nominally 80x80mm
- Set mm80w and mm80h to your measured values
- Your printer should now be calibrated for printing grids
- Re-print the XY Calibration Grid and verify your printer calibration
IMPORTANT: Mechanical equipment is affected by thermal expansion. This means that you need to calibrate your printer each time you print a grid. The saved printer calibration values may not apply to the current printer configuration!