Testing Creality 3D Slicer Calibration: A Mixed Experience with v4.3.6.6200

Recently, the Creality 3D Slicer (V 4.3.6.6200) added calibration features.

Temperature, Flow coarse-tuning, Flow fine-tuning, Pressure Ahead, Maximum volume flow, Vibration test

Thus, six new test items have been added.

This time, they kindly provide tutorial documentation through their own wiki, so if you refer to it, anyone can easily invest time to adjust the appropriate values for the filament they are using.

https://wiki.creality.com/en/Software/creality-print/CalibrationTutorial

Temperature

First, temperature calibration allows you to check which temperature produces the best quality by printing objects at each temperature, as shown in the photo above.

According to the document, checking the character recognition rate for numbers is recommended, but for Hyper PLA, everything comes out well. I thought maybe that's because Hyper PLA itself is a reference filament, but upon checking now, it seems that the speed changes per layer are not being applied correctly. (Needs verification)

When viewed in the slicer, the layer speeds appear the same (which is a problem).

** Added July 26, 2023 **
Based on "elcuero" from the OpenCreators community saying that you can just create and use gcode from the Super Slicer, I have created and shared the file. After testing, it seems to work.

Download File

Temperature calibration for K1

Temperature calibration for K1.gcode

2 MB

It is prepared to allow you to choose from a variety of filament types available on the K1. (The text being misaligned is... hopefully it will be fixed in the future?)

Flow coarse-tuning

Next is the part where flow is adjusted. When the menu is selected, it generates the following Gcode values, and you can check the difference by checking flow.

For my case, since it is Hyper PLA, "0" seemed to be the best, and it seems to be around 16 mm3/s based on flow.

Flow fine-tuning

Once the major category is determined above, fine-tuning is now possible. Selecting the value chosen above generates a detailed classification.

It shows a bit more detail; in my case, -1 to -2 seemed appropriate.

By tuning in this way, the obtained values are used to adjust the flow value using the formulas provided in the official documentation. The official documentation states the following.

Formula: Optimum Flow Ratio = Coarse Optimum Flow Ratio + Fine Tuning Optimal Flow Ratio + 100%Then we know that the calibration result of coarse adjustment is 5%, and the optimal flow ratio of fine adjustment is -3%, so 5% + (-3%) + 100% = 102%

So in my case, since I selected 0 and -2, I entered a value of 0% + (-2%) + 100% = 98%.

It is said that you can go to the Flow section of the filament settings and enter the value in the ratio part as shown below.

Pressure Ahead

Next is PA (Pressure Ahead), the pressure compensation part.

Since it is often introduced as the reason for high-speed printing in the Klipper firmware, I had high expectations for this part. To understand how to use it, I read the official documentation and it made some sense.

The official documentation explains PA as follows. (Translated via translator)

💡

Klipper firmware introduces pressure advance to optimize print quality at corners. The basic principle is to increase nozzle pressure during acceleration to extrude excess filament and decrease nozzle pressure during deceleration to retract filament.
Parameters related to the pressure advance function are pressure_advance (hereafter referred to as PA). If the PA value is too large, overflow occurs, and if the PA value is too small, the consumable is not fully extruded.
Therefore, an optimal PA value exists, and since this parameter is related to the type of consumable, it is recommended to remeasure the most appropriate PA value when changing the consumable type. We provide two test methods called "PA Tower" and "PA Line".
When the "PA Tower" test method is selected, the initial PA value, end PA value, and PA step distance are entered, and the slicing software generates a cylindrical print model with a pentagonal cross-section. During the process of printing the model, the PA value changes linearly with the Z axis. That is, the PA value is the same as the start PA value when printing the first layer, and the PA value is the end PA value when printing the last layer. After printing, observe and find the location where the best print effect is achieved, and measure the layer height according to the following formula.

In other words, to reduce extrusion errors during acceleration and deceleration due to increased speed, the nozzle pressure is adjusted appropriately.

Therefore, since this feature can vary greatly depending on the filament output situation, it seems advisable to tune it when using a new type of filament.

And the above sentence is probably copied from something related to Klipper firmware.. It says it provides two methods: "PA Tower" and "PA Line", but Creality Slicer only provides the tower method.

Set the initial and final values, and set the PA Step for the change at each height.

Then, after printing as shown below, measure the height to check at what height PA was applied well, etc.

Then, the PA value is derived by substituting the following formula.

PA=startingPA+Z∗PAstep

Here, Z is the measured height, Starting PA is 0, and PA Step is 0.002, so in my case, since I liked the value at around 20 mm height, substituting it into the above formula gives

0 + 20 * 0.002 = 0.04 ( PA )

PA should be 0.04.

And to use this value, check Enable Pressure Advance in the filament settings and enter the value as shown below.

Maximum volume flow

Next is the test for Volume Flow.

Unfortunately, in the default settings, End Traffic is set to 20, which does not cause a flow deficiency issue with Hyper PLA. So, in my case, I set it to 60 mm3/s, but it seems that setting it to around 40~60 would be sufficient.

Next, a model is generated where the flow and print speed differ by height.

In my case, the results were as follows, and it appears that extrusion defects begin to occur at around 30 mm.

Therefore, the appropriate value is obtained according to the following formula.

30 * 0.5 = 15

And as always, values are entered into the filament settings as shown below.

Vibration test

Finally, the vibration test.

It seems to create vibration changes based on changes in speed.

It prints somewhat oddly shaped objects while varying the speed from approximately 50mm/s to 200mm/s.

Next, we can see the following results; we confirmed that surface patterns caused by vibration are least visible at approximately 150mm/s or higher.

However, the official documentation doesn't explain how to proceed, as version 3.5.2 is missing..

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use the speed settings myself... I don't really know. After searching, it seems the various test data appearing above were created by referencing data used in other slicers, but they seem a bit unfinished.

Results

It feels like the explanation was cut off, so I went to the bathroom and couldn't finish, so there's a lot of regret, but I tried printing with trembling settings.

Hyper PLA is not bad to begin with, so if I had done the detailed calibration too... wouldn't it have turned out even better???

Huh? But something feels off...

The left side shows the result printed with the original values, and the right side shows the corrected values.. Touching it, it feels smoother, but overall it feels like there is more gloss and shine (?), and the surface pattern seems to be more visible.

So, after running a few more prints.. I'm just going back to the original default settings and using them.

Just to pat myself on the back for a moment.. Hyper PLA is a reference filament, so I assume the default values for the K1 and the slicer are already well-tuned.

Please refer to the video below for my struggles and review.

Conclusion..

Although the conclusion ended up being strange because I just used the default settings, compared to when I first used the dedicated slicer two months ago, it seems good that many functions that users can adjust directly have been added.

Creality seems to be working incredibly hard to satisfy consumers despite a fair amount of criticism.

However, software is difficult to improve to a high level of quality in a short period of time. Moreover, at a time when various slicer programs based on Klipper are already in use, comparisons are easy to make. If it is made ambiguous, it will only invite more criticism, so I think support and development will be difficult.

I think both the hardware and software should have taken more time to improve their completeness before release.

It seems Creality was aware of this, as they shared quite surprising news a few days ago..

It was announced that in September, the relevant source code would be open-sourced for the K1 and K1Max. Perhaps then, since it is based on Klipper, various technologies used in existing Klipper firmware might be applied.

If I get the chance, I will talk about it, but.. the appearance of Bambu Lab in the existing open-source based FDM printer market was truly sensational, in my opinion, based on good hardware quality, output results, and its own software.

I don't know the exact details, but following this trend, Creality seems to have wanted to join in, but due to various issues, they couldn't complete it. I suspect they are quickly pivoting back to their original open-source policy rather than that.

Well.. personally, I hope Creality's engineers will put in more effort to provide a service with high completion, even if it's not open source.. but if this can at least solve the problem immediately, it might be good news for users who are already somewhat accustomed to the open-source approach.

I will try to organize this separately later. (Still learning and studying)