cool video! One small trick, not sure if it is already mentioned here: measure the pin size with calipers, now *zero the caliper*, then measure the outside distance between pins - it'll give you the exact distance between pins.

Good reminder that it's all fun and games when printing big-busted winged figurines - until you need to print something practical.

Just so you guys know if you are using PLA and your parts are slightly to big (or your holes are slightly too small) your issue may be solved by increasing your horizontal expansion offset. Basically the PLA is expanding just a little bit due to the heat of melting it, so your parts will be just a little to big. The horizontal expansion offset can help fix this. You will need to do multiple tests seeing what value works best for you.

For precise features, we usually CAD those features in a very thin, quick, proto print to get them accurate. Then the full size part. This saves lots of iterative printing time and waste material. Also for threads, snap fits, flex fits, and anything that fits something from "the real world" or even another printer.

It would be great if you could do a similar video, showing the full process of calibrating the printer for accurate dimensions and setup of Simplify 3D. Your way of explaining things is really good.

Holy cow. I'm very new to 3d printing, only actually printing about a dozen things. They were always too small, and since all of this is new to me, and there is a plethera of new terminology, I've been scouring the interwebs trying to figure out why. I thought my printer was either broke, or there was some calibration sequence I needed to do. I had basically given up, frustrated that I had to manually model everything larger to compensate, since I had no idea what was wrong. And then youtube dropped this in my lap. Thanks so much for taking the time to make this. No overly complicated terminology and a very simple solution. You saved my sanity! I hope your tester came out well!

Great video. Just pulled my old Tarantulas printer out printed an insulated spacer had almost exact errors you had. Your video confirmed my method I was about to do this morning. I am electronic designer by trade, worked with lots good machinist over the years each taught me real world solutions just like this video series. Big thank you.

Love the “to my calibrated eye” ! I use that all the time. Nice clear and thorough explication of the shrinkage problem and how to fix it. I just bought a FDM printer and learning how to use it and that is an issue I have run up against. Thanks for the great video!

To other viewers: Before you assume that it's your filament material that's shrinking, print some lines that are a known distance apart *but not connected to each other* and check the dimensional accuracy between them. That way you'll factor out the shrinkage and see the true dimensional accuracy of your printer while the parts (the lines) are still stuck to the print bed.

in the beginning i thought, that you didn't calibrate your axis correct, but your solution and description are GREAT... a new aspect to improve my parts. thx ;) hope that the software desire not too much manual changes in settings when changing filament OR temp! automatic part-enlargement should be mandatory for filament-settings ... NOT after importing, but BEFORE PRINTING!

Nice example. Thanks for taking the time to show that. Using Siemens NX, I like to add manufacturing specific features like this at the end of the model history, and place these features in a named feature group. That way I model the part as it should be, and then have a group of features for 3D printing (or other manufacturing process) that can be suppressed or unsuppressed as a group. For example, I might enlarge holes slightly based on inaccuracy of the 3D print. Scaling the final part for shrinkage would be a feature in the feature group.

You can change to a Z up orientation in Fusion 360 by clicking on your name in the upper right and selecting "preferences". In the general tab look for "default modeling orientation" and change it from "Y up" to "Z up"

Thank you for sharing your experience with us and I really enjoyed the video presentation. It showed me how one should go about dealing with shrinkage. Things that I noticed and hope you will continue to do include: You don't assume too much of the experience or knowledge of your audience which I think is great. You disclosed brand names of what you used (filament, 3D program, 3D slicer, spreadsheet, etc.) which I liked. It gives me ideas on how I can use them more effectively or in my environment. Your spreadsheet usage was particular interesting to me. You scripting of your video was well done in that you presented what you wanted to do, demonstrated the problem (with lots of visual close up shots) on what happened, how you identified the problem, the possible solutions and the final solution that you settled on. I thought that a visual inspection of the 3D object would have suggested that the problem was not in the hardware (i.e. 3D printer) but somewhere else since the printed object looked pretty good. But I do commend you for doing your 'due diligence' to make sure that you didn't miss anything as part of your problem analyze segment. As a side note, I thought that if I were looking for the actual shrinkage value due to the equipment & material, I would print the largest diameter rectangle that my printer to produce and measure the resultant print. The deviation between designed & actual dimension would be the most accurate. But back to the video. The pacing was sometimes fast, especially when not familiar with the application or situation but I was able to follow it. The video presentation was professionally done, with great video framing & sound reproduction. Thank you especially for taking the time to do a great presentation. Finally, I do want you to know that I appreciate the time & effort that you put in producing the video and encourage you to continue to do so. Take care and stay safe, Pat Young

I work in a 3d printing lab and we have had this same problem. I haven't thought of this solution so thank you this will save a lot of time and money.

Great engineering level video thank you. “I’m using black because BLACK” 🤣

Very interesting. I suppose the shrinkage changes based on the thickness and shape . . . . . if it were directly proportional, no matter what, printing a set of 12" "rulers with very fine scale marked, then compare to actual ruler and maybe that would tell you whether the shrinkage happens across the scale, or jsut in certain parts?. Love your videos, and the Fusion 360 has been far more useful than what pertain to be F360 tutorials. You make it far clearer than those other guys! Thanks!

What a tremendously presented study of shrinkage and the solutions thereof.

I just wish all KZfaq videos were as clear and concise as this. Great Job....!

I am a photographer. I still use the old 4X5 field cameras. Last year I bought an MPP MK VII technical field camera for landscape photography. It came with one lens board of Copal 1 size. This camera has not been produced since the early 70s so, instead of paying silly prices for battered old lensboards off the Bay, I decided to 3D print them using a CF infused PLA. I ran exactly into the same problem as you just did. Both trial size No 0 and No1 boards came out undersized. I had to adjust the printing sizes in Cura by quite a bit , around 1% mark If my memory serves me right, to get the lens flange to fit the holes and the retaining nut fit in. I am not quite 100% sure if the quoted filament sizes are accurate or not either.

One of the best videos on this problem I’ve seen. Thanks man!

YES, finally someone who is using 3d printing for engineering purposes. Altho I'm looking for DLP tips, this came very handy for those mucked up designs :)

Wow this explains so much. I've ALWAYS had an issue with things being printed a little undersized and I've been 3D printing for 7 years now. I figured it was just my crappy old printer. I've been setting my prints to 101% or 102% for a long time, but great to know the reason now.

To get the maximum precision, you should print a test piece at the largest size possible, that way, the shrinkage will be amplified making it easier to measure.

Husband Richard saw you on wife's phone and I subscribed cuse I love to build and design and create .you video was helpful to me with your concise explaining I could understand perfectly. Now I will remember shrinkage. Every now and than I will reach out to you with 3d print solving for help. Very well done 👏

I've learned about the shrinkage issue purely by experimenting initially, but did some research afterwards. The shrinkage is real and is based on many things, including material, nozzle, heatbed temp, room temp, and so on. ABS, not sure about ABS+, is known to have as much as 7% shrinkage rate in some cases and PLA around 2% and nylon around 1.5%. I've changed my 3D printer once and the rate changed as well. Here is the deal. Print a ruler when you use your 3D printer for the first time or in a new environment and figure out the shrinkage rate, AND try not to change the room temperature and ventilation too much form that reference. You'll be alright.

You can go to preferences in Fusion and change so Z is up :)

As a retired guy it was an excitement to look a t this video. I think I’ll set aside my resin printer just to try your ticks. Thanks. JP.

awesome! I found this as well with fitting a circuit board. You are the only one on the internet with the right fix. I spent a lot of time going down the wrong rabbit holes lol. subscribed!

This may be late, but wouldn't you scale by the reciprocal of the part scale (e.g., to account for a shrinkage of 25% that would result in a part at 75%, you would scale by 1/0.75=1.333...)

Talk about building "fact on fact"; YOU James would make an unbelievable detective. Oh yes you would be indeed. In my 87 yrs on this earth, it would be difficult to find any one that is as brilliant as you are. You are truly a "gifted" man (Praise Jesus) dear sir! We can't wait for each new video you produce. Keep it up.

The pitch of the GT2 belt is actually only valid for a particular specified belt tension. If the tension is wrong, the pitch is wrong, because it does stretch by quite a bit! Well then again that's my experience and i use Chinese parts and not Gates belt. But its easy to check, you tape your calipers down under the nozzle when it's close to the bed, jog the head a bit via controls, zero the caliper, and then have the print head walk a known distance and compare. It's probably pretty close, not enough to make up that difference. The claimed 0.8% shrinkage for standard ABS is significantly less than what i've seen myself, i expect closer to 1.2% shrinkage. I think they have a measurement method which is very kind to shrinkage number. But any figure is a rough guideline since shrinkage is non-uniform depending on shape.

I just watched the same type of video on ItsMeaDMaDe and both were informative and I enjoyed watching them both. I really like how in-depth you get in all of your videos. Thanks for sharing

Here is my experience with 3d printers which run on pulleys and belt, the numerical calculation is always not equal to the distance traveled by the component. Yes, parts do shrink but the best way to calibrate the sizing is to manually move the printer a set number of whole steps and measure the distance traveled on the printer. Make sure the belts are tensioned to your liking before this of course. After this calibration has been done to the steps/mm of the printer then you can calibrate shrinkage on a filament by filament basis.

Been 3d printing now for 3 years and still have been doing the scaling manually on simplify3d. Thankw for making my 3d printing life much simpler. I do a lot of mechanical parts so this helps a lot.

Now this is what I love about this channel, you just know that when James does something...he does it right! Yet another great video James, keep it up mate! 👍👍👍

filament temp also matters. I use mostly PLA, and if I run it at 190 vs. 200 for the one I use for instance, it prints more accurately, and part geometry matters so much that each part will have its own unique scaling.

I don't know if someone already pointed it out, but scaling up x% will not make your part come out at the desired size if its shrinking due to the material by x%. The right amount you would need to increase the print should be equals to (100/(1-x/100)-100) % which can be approximated to x% but it is not precisely the same. For example, if your part is shrinking by 0.5% then x = 0.5 and thus you would need to increase the model by (100/(1-0.5/100)-100)% = 0.50251256281%

So that explains that😂 learning as I go along, but was disappointed with why my perfectly designed part was too tight in the real world. And now I know! Thanks for a great lesson!

Thank You! Mind Blown! Once my 3D Skill Level is ready for action, I'm gonna make some super custom sewing machine presser foot attachments (to help glide over stubborn fabrics). Schooling us that the ABS 3D Printer filamint will shrink a bit after it's cooled greatly reduces my shock expectancy of my first printed piece.

My ender 3 has sat for 5 months.... been moved... cats walk across it...i finally started printing again and printed 10mm and 20mm test cube, without leveling my bed, just cleaning the glass, and my parts came out .02mm off. Not too damn bad. Printed a print in place box with attached hinged lid... and i didn't even have BREAK free the hinge, it rotated right away. Love it.

Another outstanding video that explains why I had to keep scaling my parts to fit precisely! By trial and error, the factor for my ABS was 1.1%!

In the metal casting world, a common tool used is a shrink rule, each graduated for a specific material with a known percentage of dimensional increase, so that a casting model made using the correct rule for that material will result in a cast part of that material which is the desired final size.

I got around a lot of these issues by building all my models in metric. I've not had any issues with size or accuracy since. I live in Ohio, but having worked for a few European based companies in my life, I've had to learn metric. Best thing ever, and never thought it would come in handy. But I use this at work and at home for the printers and designing in metric has helped SO much. Give it a shot!!

Nice and succinct explanation. I've run into a similar issue and hadn't considered material shrinkage despite ruling out the same mechanical factors. My error is of the same magnitude hence my new suspicion of material shrinkage. Thanks 👍

There is a parameter called horizontal expansion or similar in the slicers that you may want to check. It should do exactly this and you can configure how much you want for each material you use so you don't have to remember to scale up each piece for each material differently. It doesn't expand z axis though. Good video and very well explained.

Ah i put this 100.5 to correct my issue, now i have started to research this and i was right all along, thanks for making me sure.

Great info video, thank you. The only thing I can think of since the slicer allows one setting at a time, is to just print a chart with the shrink rate of each filament material used. When imported into slicer, double click and change parameters accordingly before printing.

Thanks for the great advice, I never considered the shrinkage of the material being used. Makes a lot of sense!

it is awesome to see some real engineetring work on the topic.. thanks bro...

That's cool. I don't use ABS much, mainly because of the warping issues. As such, I wasn't considering, and should have!, that your part shrunk. I thought it was a belt, or estep issue. My thought would be to confirm this using some digital calipers as DRO's on the x and y carriage. My first printer ever was semi-scratch build off of a Shapeoko 2. I was able to use digital calipers to show pretty accurately, and with some precision, X and Y movements, to really tune my esteps. Cool video, as usual! Thank you James!

Very nice. I know that Kira can let you specify the dollar amount of a roll of filament and then perform the calculations to tell you how much your part costs in filament. But I haven't looked at any additional filament just settings. Really enjoyed your video. It's about time that silly algorithm got around to presenting it to me. I was searching for horizontal expansion on KZfaq. What I really want to do is tune the machine. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much. O was looking around to cope with that problem with abs for a very long tiime

Generally, you shouldn't have to scale the z-axis as much for a FDM part as the scale for the X- and Y-axis.

at 22:48 you have the right answer becuase the margin is so small, but the math to find the correction amount I believe should be 1 divided by ratio rather than 1 minus ratio. In this case the answer is the same.. Shinkage also relates to % of infill - so that would be a factor.

Thank you for sharing your solution! Very easy to understand explanation and solution. I've seen a few of your other videos and as always, you do an excellent job of presenting your topics in a clear, well organized fashion. Keep up the great work!

It was clear for me from beginning. But this video us ideal practical explanation.

I just saw this video Shinkage was my first thought. I do a Single Wall Calibration cub as well as an 2mm x 2mm full cal cube to get as close as I can to curate dimensions. You probably have to repeat this process for different types of material.

I use Prusa Slicer but think this may be applicable to it as well and may explain some of the fit problems I have seen. Also have found that the way I set up the walls makes a difference. Printing the outside of wall first or last to compensate for extrusion squish.

I ran into the same thing making a part for my Dad to fix a clock. We needed to drill a pendulum because the rating nut stem broke off. The square rod was 4mm square and his jewelers lathe dead center end was 7.61mm and round. So, being the "smart nerd geek" I printed a 7.61mm cylinder with a 4.1mm square hole in it. It didn't fit! The cylinder turned out to measure 7.43mm and the square cutout...4mm (tight, more like 3.99mm). So back to SolidWorks and this time I would not be robbed! The cylinder was not so critical, so we left that alone, but the square hole, we made 4.23mm and I made relief cutouts (very small circles, .02mm) in each corner. We were VICTORIOUS! the clock lives and my Dad saw that a 3D printer was not just to print "Groot" and other frivolous toys. It had real world applications and in its own right, is a useful tool. But make no mistake, shrinkage is real. If you have parts that must interact or pass through or by, measure and use the shrinkage calculations to determine proper fit before you print everything for a project. Especially for a new project!

First time I've watched one of your videos. _WOW!_ My sample size is a bit small here but I still believe I can confidently say: You make excellent videos! You explained EVERYTHING you did and why you did it (and you knew how to explain it because you really do understand what you're doing rather than just being a talking head!). Now, for me, I understood what you were doing and why. My nine-year-old son, who wants to get into electronics? Not so much. You can bet you're about to get another couple of subscribers. Also, excellent production quality. I've seen a lot of people who really know what they're talking about that, unfortunately, either have very poor communication skills or just cannot seem to put together a video that makes any sense. Eventually those people just quit making videos because they don't get many subscribers. This is, honestly, a real and serious loss to people looking for usable information rather than entertainment.

Thanks! I didn’t notice the Shrinkage percentage in the material spec! I just edited my drawing to compensate.😅

I think it’s amazing what you can do on the 3D printer! I am proud of you for finding a problem and fixing it! Good stuff James!

CURA slicer now has a feature to adjust, at the least, the horizontal expansion factor. I have only started to play with it but IMO that is the "proper" way to go. It got me dialed in on several press fit applications. Leave your CAD designs alone as they are accurate. Make adjustments in the slicer program as required for the filament because if you change filament types or even sources, you'll need to start all over again with changing a perfectly good CAD drawing and saving it somehow that indicates it's not truly accurate to design specs. And then again make a sliced print file corresponding to that expansion alteration only. That doesn't seem like good practice.

I noticed that your 3D printer X axis is using a belt, use same config as Z axis material but also a solid coupler not the one looking like spring. This should fix it. Your videos are awesome, thanks for sharing.

Changing default behaviors is almost always bad, as it discourages you from thinking critically about important parameters. Better is to develop a procedure or checklist to follow for each major step. This has added benefit of being linkable to data tables, such as material type to shrinkage rate lookup. And it also translates more easily to other software packages, when inevitably your favorite software goes end of life or gets changed so that it's no longer your favorite.

This was a great video to watch. Ive been having an issue of critical cylindrical features being undersized in a part. Ill definitely try your method out.

I also print engineering parts for my designs. After a few dummy runs I ended up using 100.5% scaling factor for PETG. likewise, I use Simplify3D but wasn't aware of the option to auto scale. Thanks for the tip. Some of my projects have moving parts and gears ...etc. so now I'm thinking of getting into SLA for accuracy, detail and maybe strength? Love your channel.

This is an awesome video! Material shrinkage is something I've never thought about or even considered when modelling. But I will be factoring it in when printing dimensionally accurate parts from now on. Great job!

This video inspired me to measure the shrinkage on PETG and PLA. I've got 4 different brands of PETG and I have tested the Amazon Basics/Overture (pretty sure these are same company) and HQA brands so far. The Amazon Basics shrinks about 0.22% and the HQA shrinks 0.20%. This was with 250C and 80C bed. I also tested the Solutec PLA and it appears to be almost unchanged with a shrink factor of 0.004% which is not statistically significant. The PLA was printed on my CR-10 and I got this result in the Y dimension. The X dimension appeard to grow by about 1.23% but I found this is caused by the way the belt is attached to the X gantry. At the left and right the belt angle relative to the motor pulley (left) and the idler pulley (right) cause a tension increases and an increase in X motion. The belt is not attached to the gantry at the right point. The error is not too bad in the middle but it is non-linear across the span of the X. I suspect the Ender 3 has the same issue. I printed my test print with the scaling in the slicer at 100.2% on the HQA PETG and the dimensions are spot on. I will test the ESun and Filastruder (actually Keene Village Plastics) brands sometime soon. The PETG prints were done on my V-King Core XY with a 0.3 mm nozzle. As always, your results may vary!

Thanks for your experience and how you fixed your specific problem. I'm using Cura so I have to explore my options and I also have to verify if I do this whether or not already made .STLs haven't been scaled up for a material if I go this route. But I really like how this would alleviate some of the headaches of issues related to FDM printing for my use case.

Some time ago I made flat square (0.2mm tall and 0.4mm thick) and measured for machine travel accuracy. I also turned it 45 degrees and measured again to test if the machine was properly squared. Didn't bother making a model with both included, like a star of David if you will. And wondered about Z travel, but that might be better tested by counting full turns of the stepper motor and measuring height change, as that would have more to do with the demential accuracy of the lead screw.

Great video! So much knowledge and perfectly explained the issues I was having with ASA. Thank you

WoW. I really enjoyed this video, very well layed out & explained in a logical way. I am just a day away from using my first roll of ABS & now I know how to deal with part inaccuracies. Great timing for me thank you very much, I've subscribed & am eager to see more of what you do. Cheers Di

Thank you. My projects have been coming out a little undersized. Now I know what to do.

Thank you very much, this information and explanation will solve and make a big difference to those that are trying to get into 3D printing and can't understand why their parts don't finish dimensionally accurate. The information you provided, how you arrived to your problem solving methods and ultimately the end result were great. I just wish i knew more about Excel to do a simple number processing file as you did for averaging numbers(measurements). This will be something i research now as it will help me a lot and speed up my post part analyzing process.

Don't have a 3D printer yet, but this was educational as someday one will be making its way home with me and it's good to have a heads up regarding print issues that one can experience.

You may want to try Slic3r. It has MUCH nicer features for doing things like settings that tie to any variable (printers, filement, extruders, etc). I got used to it after using it for my Prusa. Once I got the hang of it I ditched Simplify 3D and haven't looked back.

there's a feature in Cura where you can compensate for expansion /contraction in the setup .

Great video. I love how you balance tutorial and information. It’s not too basic or too complicated

I learn something useful every time I watch one of your videos. Keep it up!

I would have liked to see all 4 holes checked at the same time, OR at least diagonally opposite holes. Keep up the great video work. I off to check to see if CURA provides those settings for my printer. THANKS

Suggest doing a physical calibration of all the axis of the printer: mark current position, move 10cm, measure, repeat for all axis. Math and real-world often don't match up. Also, filament shrinkage isn't consistent in all directions. Is the height of the frame also correct now or is it a tad higher than expected?

Oh man, that is gonna save me so many test prints to calibrate and scale up whatever parts I need to be dimensionally accurate.

Nicely explained and demonstrated.

Great video But if you design for assembly shrink would not be a concern for hole pitch.

13:51 Normally on KZfaq, I'd say "eh, I'm not so sure about your attention to detail, everybody messes up". After watching both your ELS and VFD lathe additions, where you use 50 different camera angles and still apologize for 'bad' viewing, watching you test your ELS boards, and watching some other videos, I'm pretty sure you've got your printer dialed in to the nanometer.

You can edit your process settings and set a profile for each type of material you want to use. Then on each profile under the Other tab set the Horizontal Size Compensation appropriately for that material

I print the part 4 or 5 layers high and stop print. Check the size and adjust for shrinkage. Saves on material and time on a full print. I also use this method to make templates for drilling holes.

Brilliant as always, James!

This is a fantastic video. Clear explanation of problem with simple workaround. Subscribed!

You normally only compensate in XY, as Z isnt affected in the same way, due to layers building upwards

Nice work James 👍. Sigh, now I have to keep a crib sheet for filaments by brand/type and whack some small frames together and measure.

Great video, thank you for taking the time to go through all the details 🙏🏾

Mr James, you are truly a genius. I love the fact that you not only show/explain how to do things "right"; but you also explain how NOT to do something. Both of these factors are important in the execution of any process. You're also very professional and your video-editing is like few on KZfaq. Thank you for sharing your videos. May Jesus continue to bless you.

Once Again ! Great solutions, for real world problems !!! Love this channel !!!

To solve the biggest issues, stop thinkin' imperial - go metric! :D

did you design and build your 3d printer? great video ...yeah shrinkage is not fun...and it varies with diff brands of abs/pla etc...thanx for sharing

Slight nit in the excel math (negligible in the affect on the actual print adjustment at these percentages). … you should calculate the expansion percentage needed to get to correct vs using the shrinkage percentage…at these percentages, it’s a small difference. If an item is 66.6% small, one doesn’t expand the smaller part by 33.33% to get back ‘whole’ - you would multiply by 1.5 of the printed part size with the math being ( 1/(1-.33). For your specific math, it would be 1/(1-.0058) which works out to be .583…obviously not significant here! Great video, though and super helpful…thanks!

Well done, very helpful! You have given very usable and succinct information...thanks for your time and attention to detail! Thanks and best regards, Dave

You could change your steps in the start G Code of each printing preset. So it would change when using the presst for another filament.