Summary

A simple test for testing whether your 3D printer can print parts to fit.

2013-05-07: I have my TOM well calibrated already. Pair#0 always fits now. See http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:52946 .

Instructions

2013-05-07: I have my TOM well calibrated already. Pair#0 always fits now. See http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:52946 .

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My Makerbot is having problem to print parts to fit. I'm wondering whether I am the only one having such problem. So, I designed a simple test to test it.

In this page, there is a .stl file test.stl. test.stl has six pairs of plug and slot. The pairs are labeled with number 0 to 5 with decreasing tolerance. Pair#0 is the ideal case where its plug and its slot are edge to edge touching each other. If you printed Pair#0 and its a tight fit, your 3D printer is perfectly calibrated. With respect to the ideal case, Pair#1 has a plug radius 0.05mm smaller and a slot radius 0.05mm bigger, Pair#2~0.10mm, Pair#3~0.15mm, etc...

Please do me a favour. Print test.stl and reply to this page which pair is the first tight fit. The calibration of my Makerbot is probably way off, the first tight fit is Pair#2.

Thanks a lot.

PS: the six pairs for testing are also available individually, i.e. test00.stl to test05.stl. If you want to save some material, you may want to use them instead. All pairs are drew with Google Sketchup, and the source file is test.skp.

Tolerance test