Advanced Tuning and Calibrating The Ender 3 Pro
Before you do any of these steps, make sure you have completed tuning the basics:
- Tune your Hot End and Bed Temperature (10-20 minutes & automatic)
- Tune your filament extrusion rate, a.k.a Extruder e-Steps (2 minutes, need a ruler and a pen or piece of tape)
- Ensure your bed is level relative to your hot end - a.k.a. Tramming (5-20 minutes depending on how good you are, need a piece of paper)
If you haven't yet completed these steps, please go to to Ender 3 Pro Tuning and Calibration and complete those steps first. All together they should be less than 30 minutes.
Assuming those are all done here are a few additional calibrations you can do.
Optional - Cura Introduction, Creating GCode for Ender 3
Note: For these calibrations, you need to be able to convert STL files (3D Models) into GCode for your printer, and then print it.
If this is your first time printing *anything* with your 3D Printer, you'll need to learn how to use a slicer program. A full discussion of slicer options etc is another topic in itself - for now, Cura is free and will get the job done for these models and likely any models you use. Cura and Prusa Slicer are the two most popular slicers being used, and both are free
All that said, here is a link to Cura -> Download Page for Ultimaker Cura
And here is a video walkthrough
X/Y/Z E-Steps
In an earlier step, we calibrated the extruder e steps. We can also calibrate the X/Y/Z steps as well.
You can do that with your first print on the ender 3 pro - a calibration cube.
Here is one video I found on it, but its a bit older and there are new features in Marlin that allow you to read and change the esteps from the LCD (as you saw in the extruder e steps directions)
You don't have to use Octoprint/GCode to get and set the stepper values if you are using a newer version of Marlin, like the Shiny Upgrades Ender 3 Pro version.
You can get it and install it here -> Ender 3 Pro, 4.2.2 board firmware
Here is the link to the XYZ Calibration Cube
Benchy for General Issue Calibration
After the XYZ cube, the second item to print and test calibration is a 3DBenchy
What you're looking for is a couple things. First, did it print properly and with all the details you expected. Second, you can also use it to calibrate your XYZ steps based on the size. However, I find it's easier to calibrate XYZ using calipers and the cube because it's so much easier to measure the simple cube shape
Here's a video by Teaching Tech about the Benchy and now to use it for calibration.