Even with a good profile, tuning a printer to its environment is often necessary, and this process is called calibration. Flow rate calibration, which tunes how much filament is extruded, is key to dimensional accuracy, while a temperature tower is a test print that varies the extrusion temperature along its height so the user can identify the optimal setting. A retraction tower performs a similar role for retraction distance and speed. The Benchy, a small model boat, has become the de facto benchmark print because its features stress many aspects of printer performance at once. Calibration, like most of 3D printing, rewards documentation: keeping notes on settings that worked for each material builds a personal reference library over time.
At a lower level, the printer's firmware, the software running on its microcontroller, is most commonly Marlin, the dominant open-source option. Klipper is an alternative firmware architecture that runs on a Raspberry Pi alongside the printer, enabling faster computation and features like pressure advance, which improves extrusion behavior at corners. OctoPrint is an open-source web interface that adds remote printer control and monitoring. Auto-bed leveling uses sensors to map the bed and compensate for any irregularities, with the BLTouch being a popular probe for this purpose. Input shaping is a technique that reduces ringing or ghosting, the wave-like artifacts caused by mechanical vibration at high speeds. Multi-material printing extends the basic workflow by switching colors or materials, with Bambu Lab's Automatic Material System (AMS) and Prusa's Multi-Material Upgrade (MMU) being prominent examples, alongside tool changer systems that mount separate hot ends per material and IDEX printers with two independent print heads. Multi-color FDM tends to waste material in purge towers and blobs, so IDEX, painting, and multi-color resin remain attractive alternatives.