I print a lot of my calibration cubes that help me dial in 3d printers
including big ones like the one back here then I can take a caliper and I can
measure dimensions and see how far off everything is and when you have that 3d
print that you need a perfect fit and finish there's actually a setting and
cura that you can adjust and get the perfect dimensions I'll show you what
that setting is and we've got a new filament Friday tool kit which is bigger
than the old one and a lot better I'll show you all this on today's filament
Friday
filament Friday is brought to you by these patreon supporters in a previous
video I made this clamp adapter which allowed me to take two clamps and make
one bigger but occasionally it would split along the layer line so I printed
a second piece to slide over it with layer lines 90 degrees to that and it
made the whole thing stronger but to slide one print over another you need
pretty close exact dimensions and this really didn't print out to the exact
dimensions I wanted I was able to make it work but I thought it's a good
example to show how you can adjust your 3d prints and get those perfect accurate
dimensions turns out the slicer will actually focus
on the center of the print and then the wall thickness will vary depending on
extrusion layer height things like that so if you really need that exact
dimension there's a setting in Cura where you can adjust the horizontal
expansion and dial in exactly the dimension you want so let me show you
how to use that in Cura here's the connector piece that I talked about in a
previous video and here's the piece that slides over the top of it and this is
what we're gonna focus on this little piece I want to get the right size now
it slid over tightly so it worked for the video but the dimensions were still
off even though it worked here what if I wanted exact so here's I designed a
Tinkercad and here's the two pieces but this connector is 14 millimeters by 24
millimeters by 10 millimeters tall so that's what I expect it to be and then
the inside is really where I'm focusing but I brought it into cura and it shows
at 24 by 14 by 10 so it recognizes that's the right size now when I
actually printed look at I got 24.2 in one direction and I'm getting 14.4 14.3
in the other direction but it both cases it's larger than the actual print now if
I go back to Tinkercad and ungroup it here's the insert that cuts the inside
of this thing and I set it to ten point five and twenty point five so that's
what the inside dimension should be I use my magic zero point to a profile in
cure 4.1 that gives me a 0.28 layer height and then I use a wall line count
of three so three outer shells when I measure this look at 20 point two is
what the insight is it should be twenty point five so in this case it's too
small and ten point five becomes ten point two so I'm off this needs to get
bigger that's smaller so I've got twenty point five and I'm measuring 20 point
two so I'm off by zero point three in both directions really if I did the same
thing ten point five minus ten point two but let's think this through before we
say let's just make it bigger because if I made it bigger both inside and outside
would get bigger but that means the inside would get smaller and I want the
inside to get bigger so I've got to do the opposite I've actually got to shrink
this so I need to bring it in at all sides both side left and right and top
and bottom so I want to lose a zero point three but I need to spread it
around so I want 0.15 here 0.15 reduction here 0.15 in the top and
bottom so what I'm going to do is go back to cura and there's a setting
called horizontal expansion and initial layer horizontal expansion I got this
set to a negative 0.15 now if you don't see this you click on the gear go up to
the search box just type horizontal and these two will come up check those boxes
hit close and then it'll be in your cura profile so I'm using the negative number
because I want to shrink this not a positive number and after slicing with
that and printing it i'm 20.5 on the inside
I turn it 90 degrees it should be ten point five and then we have ten point
five now let's check the outer dimensions when I check the outer
dimensions here I get twenty four point zero pretty good and fourteen point Oh
so there I corrected everything both the inside and outside were adjusted by that
horizontal expansion and I didn't just do this once I did multiple prints and
most of them came in right on or within point one millimeters so this horizontal
expansion is a very handy feature in Cura with that setting you should now be
able to get those perfect size prints and check out the toolkit I'll put a
link to it in the description below if you're not familiar this is our second
generation of the filament Friday tool kit this is a caliper used throughout
the video a much better caliper than was with the original kit this is a print
removal tool I got three different brushes stainless steel brass and a
plastic we've got side cutters and got a file for cleaning off your prints needle
nose pliers glue stick that I recommend if you're printing on glass this is a
deburring tool or finishing tool it's great for getting the bottoms off of
print especially rafts or brims and this is another improvement we have a magnet
going across these blades so they don't fall out in the past they would fall out
great tool great exacto tool and a nice thick cutting board with the filament
Friday logo very very handy and then you also get instructions for all the tools
you get a filament Friday sticker how can you beat that and 10% off any future
purchases and then you get a much bigger bag the old bag was a little bit
smaller bigger bag so everything fits all for 39.95 link in the description