Setting the Extruder Speed with Cura

[robmiles 1]

Older versions of Cura used to have this mode where you could get the Ultimaker to feed 10cm of plastic, measure the actual length fed and then use this to calibrate the extruder feed rate.

I can't find this on the later versions. Has the feature been withdrawn, or am I not looking in in the right place?

[Daid 298]

It has been disabled, it was hard to follow and in the wrong place. I do want to add it again, but not in the first setup wizard.

[robmiles 1]

Thanks for the quick reply. I agree that it was hard to follow, the first time I used it I misunderstood what the number meant and managed to get a feed rate which was out by a factor of a100 or so. Fortunately I'd made the feed much slower so no damage done.

I'd love to see it back though, once I'd figured it out I found it very useful.

[robmiles 1]

I've been thinking about the problem, and what I'd love to see is this:

During construction you stick a piece of blue tape on your Bowden Tube, exactly 100mm from the connector at the feeding end.

During calibration you provide a UI that tells the user to put some fibre in and line up the end of the fibre with the connector.

Then let the user press buttons to move the fibre to the 100 mm mark. The program can count how many pulses it uses to move the fibre this far and then the user presses "Confirm" to indicate when they have reached the end.

Job done. The software now knows how many steps per mm.

Software wise it would be easy to create and you could do it as part of the sequence where the bed is levelled during first installation.

You could also add a "change fibre wizard" which could talk the user through changing from one fibre to another and do this measuring procedure if required. It could also provide a UI where the user could say which fibre they were changing too, so that it could ask for a new measurement if required, or just feed 100 mm to confirm.

[joetranter 0]

How would I manually carry out this test? I've just got my printer back after months away and I feel a little rusty

(I'm over extruding at the moment)

[zahry 1]

Hi, first - thanks for the excellent work on cura.

I'm missing the extruder setup as well - since I've upgraded to v12 i had nonstop problems with printing until I discovered that I'm overfeeding. I would be very happy to see the feature back if possible :-).