Before we start let´s talk about why we need custom filament profiles!

First there are different printers on the market, different filaments and lot´s of different uses for your prints. For example if you print jewelery or decoration you will need a smooth finish. With Silk filament you will want it to shine bright, which means it should be printed a bit hotter and slower. If you just prototype something you can print way faster and if you print with silk and have overhangs you might want to deactivate the “slow down for overhangs” option to keep the same gloss on your print everywhere.

It doesn´t matter if you use a creality printer, bambu lab, prusa, anycubic or any other system on the market. If you want the best result than you will need to calibrate your filaments for best results and speed. If you print in “generic” profiles all manufacturers slow down prints to maintain convenience and to be sure the most filaments will work fine. But this can cost time, a lot of time. For example: Creality says my K1 can print PETG Filaments at a max. Volume of 9mm3/s. My cheap noname filament from temu was printable at 16mm3/s, that’s nearly double the speed. But how do you know?

Calibration is the key and will come at the cost of some material and time…

Let´s start with a “generic profile” for the correct material, to get a stable base from where we will calibrate our filaments. For ease just select a hypothetic PLA Filament!

At First we should print a temperature tower. In Creality Print you will find the “calibration” options on the creality Logo in the upper left, Orca has an own “calibration” tab in the upper menue and even Bambu Studio has the calibration option nearly at the same position.

The Temp.Tower Option will allow you to generate a model that is printed with different temperatures on different hights. Select here the range that the manufacturer wrote on your spool, for PLA it´s about 185-230 degrees Celsius. You can print hotter if you want to try but you should not go beyond 250 with ordinary PLA I think this will fail.

Starting here is important cause with a higher temperature the filament gets more liquid. If you change the temp later you will practicly change the parameter for all other tests after this one!

(don´t select random positioned seams or your print will look like above)

The printed Temp.Tower shows us 2 different things, the quality of Overhangs and the stringing. We see here that this Filament has way better overhang quality on 210 degrees than at lower temps. The stringing is hard on every temp. but this we will change later! In this case we might have done a second tower from 240 to 210 to check if we could get even better but let´s take the 210 for our example!

We now change the Filament Settings and give the First and every other layer the temperature we calibrated. This Setting will not be changed anymore after this, until we really need to. For example when the first layer needs more adhesion or we print on a glass bed instead of a standard buildplate.

Next thing we nee to calibrate is the Flow ratio. This ratio will change when you change the temperature, so keep your fingers away from the temp. Same thing like before, find the Flow calibration and start the first check!

The printer will now print these 9 plates, that will show you a coarse tune of your flow. Don´t worry if your first layer of some of these will be horrible, that can be normal, just keep an eye on it that you don´t crash your head cause the plates are pulled of the bed. Happened all to me…

If we are done we check these plates for the smoothest surface. Normally it should be between 10 and minus 10, don´t worry if the outcome is 0, that’s not a problem. If you have the zero select 5 when creality print asks, otherwise add 5% to your flow manually. These number are percentages…

For example: your flow is set as standard to 0.94 than you get your calculator and get the following:

0.94 * 105 : 100 or simple: 0.94 * 1.05 and you will get: 0.987 This is the next step for our calibration.

Put this here:

Even if the correct result was 0 select 5, cause the second Check is a fine tune and will only lower the flow. Means the printer will produce again 10 plated from 0 to -9%. Check again and repeat the calculation after the second plate!

Take time! Be patient! Use a magnifier and ask other people if you are not sure. You should select the smoothest surface not that one that feels the smoothest, cause this can be under extruded. This needs some practice the first couple of times.

Next thing we need is the pressure advance test. You are not forced to use pressure advance but it gives a way better finish to your edges and heavily reduced elephant feet and such things. So let´s do this fast test:

To read the result a magnifier can help but it´s really simple to check which line is the smoothest. I should advice you not to print black filaments on black buildplates or to use a structured buildplate for this, than can lead to problems.

Pressure advance raises the nozzle flow/pressure when your toolhead starts to speed up and slow down. That will cause blobs and under- or overextruded sections otherwise. Just look which line is the best with the standard settings, just select the correct extruder type. For the most actual printers it should be a direct drive extruder cause the extruder actively pushes the material into the hotend directly in the toolhead.

Some Filaments might need higher Values like petg. The last I calibrated had over 0.14 so I needed to start the test from 0.1 to 0.2 again but you will recognize this if it´s gets better the closer you come to the 0.1 mark but not perfect. Here you can search for perfection!

Activate the “Use pressure advance” option and fill in the correct number!

Next important Test is the rectraction Distance to lower the stringing. You can also calibrate the retraction speed but in my experience it´s handy just to choose the speed wisely after your first print when the length is calibrated. Print this pattern:

It’s the retraction distance test from 0-2mm you can raise this if you need to. PLA will mostly be in this range, PETG can go wide above! My last had 4.7mm retraction to get rid of stinging. Here we get in ranges that can be dangerous for nozzle clogs, so if you do not need to don´t go higher than 3-4mm on a creality K1 Series printer.

To read this test you just look where the stringing ends on the tower. Than you count the rings from below. In the standard settings you should have printed 20 rings each representing 0.1mm. These numbers may look familiar if you already printed the test and you have taken a look on the settings for this. Select the first best ring, raise it, for security about 1 ring and calculate: for example ring: 12 than you should use 1.3mm retraction distance. This setting you find in the override settings of your filament profile:

Maybe you will need to activate the “advanced option” to access this menu. If you still experience some stringing you can also raise the retraction speed. Just by trial and error, don´t push to hard. Normal is around 20mm/s here, I would just raise it to 40 or 50 if you still have problems. In the picture was the PETG we talked about.

Now we are nearly done with our perfect print profile! Only 2 tests to go…

This is the maximum flow test. Before you get to this pattern where the printer checks how much product he can force out of the nozzle you will be asked to make some settings. Select here a minimum amount of your printer manufacturers recommendation and a maximum amount of the most the printer should be capable of. I think you should stay with the printer after 50% of the time so you can stop the print when the printer looses the layer adhesion completely. It would otherwise just be a mess…

We now look for the layer that’s fine, just before things are getting weird. We measure the distance from the bottom of the print up to the last good layer and need again to calculate:

The max flow volume this print gives us is: starting volume + distance measured in mm * steps

For example: we start at 5 cubic millimeters flow and the hight of our last layer is 22mm, the steps were 0.5 so we need to calculate and come to this:

5 + 22 * 0.5 = 13,5 cubic millimeters per second

This is awesome, I got 16 cubic millimeters for my last temu PETG and creality says we should print petg only at a max of 9 cubic millimeters per second. Spoiler: it works perfectly on 14 cubic millimeters per second. Also here: don´t push it to far, just let there be a slight reserve.

This is one of the most important tests, even if it´s nearly the last we do, cause its important for your print speed. The slicer will never be faster than possible. And the maximum volumetric speed says whats possible. This is of course different with different temperatures, we remember… the hotter it gets the higher the viscosity is and the more flow we will have. But even if your printer is capable of printing 600mm/s like my K1, this will not happen if the software knows that the flow won´t be enough, so the print speed is reduced, doesn´t matter how fast you set your printer.

That’s the point where those “generic Material” profiles are limited. The manufacturers don´t want you to have a bad experience, just imagine if there were “unprintable manufacturers” for single printers… which printer would you buy? The 800€ printer that can handle every filament on the market or the slightly faster but way more selective one that could force you to buy more expensive filaments?

Do not forget to save your Settings after each change. Give the profile a good name, so you will find it when you need it! If you use the same manufacturer just with another material you can try this profile you created. For example… I print Copper in the same profile I calibrated for gold.

There are more tests you might need but these are the basic steps to successful printing.

how to calibrate your filament