Extruder Steps Per mm Calculator

Hamza Gujjar Reviewed by Hamza Gujjar, Algorithm Architect & Software Developer Last updated: July 27, 2026

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Why calibrate E-steps?

E-steps/mm tells your printer's firmware exactly how many stepper motor steps correspond to one millimeter of filament movement. A wrong value causes consistent under- or over-extrusion across every single print, no matter how well the rest of your slicer profile is tuned.

How to calibrate

  1. Heat the hot end to your normal printing temperature and remove any filament.
  2. Mark the filament 120mm above the extruder's entry point using a permanent marker.
  3. Using your printer's control panel or host software, command it to extrude exactly 100mm.
  4. Measure the remaining distance from the extruder entry to your mark, then subtract from 120mm to get the actual extruded length.
  5. Enter your current firmware steps/mm value along with the expected (100mm) and actual measured length below.
  6. Update the new value in your firmware (M92 E on Marlin, saved with M500).

Worked example

If your current firmware value is 415 steps/mm, and only 95mm actually extruded when 100mm was commanded:

New Steps/mm = 415 x (100 / 95) = 436.84 steps/mm

Send M92 E436.84 followed by M500 to save this permanently to your printer's firmware.