This article is for hotend tuning. For bed tuning see here: P.I.D. Bed Calibration Guide
PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) is the system the printers use for holding a set temperature. This system controls how fast the printer reaches the set temperature and how well it holds that temperature once it gets there. Without it, numerous problems can arise. Fortunately for us, the printer has an automatic way of tuning these values.
Welcome to the TH3D P.I.D. Auto Tuning Guide! This will take you through the steps to P.I.D. Tune your printer's hotend. If you have the new Unified Firmware you can go to Control > Temperature > PID Autotune > Then set to 240 if you have a stock hotend and 250 if you have an all metal.
There are a few ways to do so, we will be using Pronterface that you can get here: GCode Sender – Pronterface
Plug your printer in and make sure ALL other programs are closed. Find the Port droplist and select the Port COM number your printer is using as well as setting the correct Baudrate (115200 for Creality printers, 250000 for Most others) and hit the connect button.
On the right side of Pronterface is the Terminal window. Use the command M303 E0 S225 C10 U to start the P.I.D. Auto Tuning. This will P.I.D tune the printers hotend(E0) to 225c(S225) for 10 cycles (C10).
Your printer will now go through 10 cycles of P.I.D tuning, this will take a few minutes. Pronterface terminal will show a few lines of code for the tuning while running but will show “PID Autotune finished!” when complete.
These are the P.I.D values you need to input (please note that not all machines share the exact values and yours may differ). To input them into your printer use the command M301 P20.22 I1.22 D84.07 then M500 to save the PID to EEPROM and then M503 to verify that it is saved.
Once you have the values the firmware will tell you after the "PID Autotune Finished!" line what to add. These can be placed in the Configuration.h file for your printer firmware. Once entered, recompile, and update/upload to the printer board. The best place to put these is below the printer model line. Just press enter after the printer model line you uncommented and paste in the values from the firmware output.
While this is NOT needed it will ensure the PID values are kept even with an EEPROM reset. If you do not put it in the firmware, then when you reset the EEPROM the PID values you got from the Autotune will be lost.
