Pressure Advance Calibration for Better Print Quality

What Is Pressure Advance?

When your printer extrudes filament, the melt zone inside the hot end acts like a spring. Pressure builds as the extruder pushes filament in. When the print head decelerates for a corner, the extruder slows — but the pressure in the hot end continues pushing filament out briefly. This causes oozing at corners and over-extrusion at direction changes.

Pressure Advance (Klipper) and Linear Advance (Marlin 2.x) compensate by pre-loading pressure before accelerating and releasing pressure before decelerating. The extruder moves slightly ahead of the head motion rather than exactly in sync.

Result: crisp corners, no blobs at direction changes, less stringing, more consistent extrusion throughout speed changes.

---

Do You Need to Calibrate This?

Signs you might benefit from pressure advance calibration:

• Blobs or bulges at the corners of prints
• Inner perimeters that look different from outer perimeters (different extrusion width)
• Gaps at the start of lines and ooze at the end
• The transition from infill to perimeter looks inconsistent

Signs it's already set well (or not needed):

• Corners are crisp and consistent
• Printed cubes have flat sides, not pillowed or indented

---

Calibration: The Pattern Method (OrcaSlicer)

OrcaSlicer has the best built-in pressure advance calibration tool:

1. Calibration menu → Pressure Advance
2. Set your material and printer profile
3. Optionally adjust the PA start, end, and step values (defaults are good for first time)
4. Generate → this creates a test print with PA values ranging across the columns
5. Print on your target material
6. Inspect the result: find the column where the corners are sharpest without under-extrusion
7. Read the PA value from that column (printed in the model or shown in the calibration legend)
8. Apply: Settings → Filament → Pressure Advance → enter your value

---

Calibration: The Tower Method (Marlin / Klipper Universal)

1. Download a PA tower model (Printables or Teaching Tech calibration)
2. The tower has different PA values printed at different heights (marked on the side)
3. Print it
4. Find the height where corners transition from soft/bulgy to sharp, and identify the printed PA value at that height
5. Enter that value into your slicer's Pressure Advance setting or Klipper config

---

Klipper: Setting Pressure Advance

In Klipper, pressure advance is set in printer.cfg:

[extruder]
pressure_advance: 0.045
pressure_advance_smooth_time: 0.040

Or at runtime (survives until restart, doesn't save):

SET_PRESSURE_ADVANCE ADVANCE=0.045

To make it permanent: add to printer.cfg and save.

---

OrcaSlicer: Per-Filament PA Values

OrcaSlicer stores PA values per filament profile — the best approach:

1. Filament Settings → Pressure advance field
2. Enter your calibrated value for this specific filament
3. Save the profile with the filament name
4. PA is automatically applied whenever you use this filament profile

This means PLA, PETG, and flexible filaments each get their correct PA value automatically — no manual adjustment when switching.

---

Typical PA Values by Material

---

Pressure Advance vs Flow Rate Calibration

These solve different problems and should be done in order:

1. First: Volumetric flow / max flow calibration — makes sure your extruder isn't slipping or stalling at the speeds you print
2. Second: Pressure advance — with correct flow, now fine-tune the timing of extrusion vs head motion
3. Third: Temperature tower — find the right print temp for this filament
4. Fourth: Retraction calibration — reduce stringing

Doing PA before flow calibration wastes time — the pressure behavior is incorrect if your flow is wrong.