Temperature Tower Reference

Material-specific temperature ranges, recommended tower steps, and tuning tips for common 3D printing filaments.

How It Works

A temperature tower is a calibration print that helps you find the ideal hotend temperature for a specific filament. The tower is printed as a series of stacked sections, each at a different temperature, allowing you to visually compare print quality across the range.

Printing the Tower

• Start high, go low — the bottom section prints at the highest temperature and each subsequent section decreases. This ensures good bed adhesion at the start.
• Set temperature changes in your slicer — use your slicer's "change at height" or post-processing script to adjust the hotend temperature at each step.
• Use consistent settings — keep speed, cooling, and retraction the same for all sections so temperature is the only variable.

Evaluating Results

Examine each section of the printed tower for these quality indicators:

• Too hot — stringing, oozing, blobbing, drooping overhangs, and poor bridging.
• Too cold — weak layer adhesion, under-extrusion, rough surface, and poor detail.
• Optimal — clean surfaces, good bridging, minimal stringing, strong layer bonds, and crisp details.

Tips

• Print a new tower for every brand and color, even if the material type is the same — pigments affect flow and temperature.
• After finding the best section, do a second tower with smaller steps (2–3°C) around that temperature for fine-tuning.
• Bed temperature and enclosure also affect results — test with your normal setup.