¶ Overview
When you print some parts that need to be assembled, sometimes the size of the parts printed will be incorrect because of factors such as the shrinkage of the material, so the parts can not fit well. The XY hole/contour compensation function in Bambu Studio can properly compensate for the gaps caused by errors. You can enable this feature in Process - Quality:
¶ XY Hole compensation
Hole compensation can add a compensation amount for each hole in each layer of the XY plane. When printing holes, the nozzle may drag some material toward the center of the circle, causing the actual printed hole to be slightly smaller than its intended value. If a hole is measured to be 0.5 mm too small, a suitable size hole can be printed with compensation of +0.25 mm.
To make this more clear, the following three figures are the comparison of the hole compensation of -1mm, +1mm, and the original size. It can be seen that hole compensation only changes the size of the circular hole in the middle, and the size of the outer contour remains unchanged:
¶ XY Contour Compensation
The XY contour compensation function will allow you to adjust the size of the model contour on the XY plane. It essentially increases or decreases the size of the model in the XY plane. Positive values are used to expand the XY dimension of the object, while negative values are used to shrink the XY dimension of the object. For example, if an object has a width (X) of 5 mm and a length of 6 mm (Y), entering 0.1 mm will increase the width and length to 5.2 mm and 6.2 mm, respectively.
To make this more clear, the following three figures are the comparison of the external contour compensation -1mm, +1mm, and the original size. It can be seen that the external contour compensation is to expand the solid part outward or inward, and the size of the middle hole is unchanged.
¶ Definition of holes and contours
The XY compensation function compensates for the holes and contours in each layer. In the single layer, the closed and hollow part is the "Hole", and the other parts are the "Contour". As shown in the figure below, in the 60th layer, the closed square area with no lines in the middle is the "hole", and the area with lines is the contour.
Some models have openings on the side, resulting in an unclosed line within the single layer, so it is not identified as a hole. As shown in the figure below, there are several holes on the side, resulting in some layers in the middle that are not closed, so these layers have no holes (such as layer 74 in the figure on the right), which will not be affected by the XY hole compensation function, and can only be compensated for the XY outer contour.
