Calibration Mojo?

Quebec MakerBot operator Nicolas Gravel ponders better ways to calibrate his personal 3D printer. While he's overcome all of the mechanical and technical difficulties in constructing his MakerBot kit, he's stuck getting the calibration just right to permit great printouts. His idea:

 

Why not having a couple of test pattern related to some important settings to help us doing it right? Like with a inkjet printer where you print a sheet and you need to tell the printer which line is the best one. For the 3D printer maybe a couple of simple print with a small guide that tell you if you need to change a couple of values in skeinforge. " If  part #2 look like this, put a smaller value for setting X". Yes that will took Us to print many time the same test pattern to have a fully calibrated printer, but it will help to not loose our head in all the settings.

 

Further, he'd like this function integrated directly into ReplicatorG, the software driver for MakerBot printers. 

 

We think this is a great idea, as the number of possible settings in Skeinforge (where the calibration knobs exist) is simply staggering and well beyond the time limitations of casual printer operators. But would it be possible to do such a thing when every printer is built slightly differently?

 

Via TekBlog