Calibration: Calibration is adjusting a quoting model's estimates, such as print or cycle time and material use, so they match what the shop measured on jobs it has actually run.
Every quoting model estimates. It predicts how long a part will take, how much material it will use and how much finishing it will need. Those predictions are only as good as their fit to your machines, your materials and your settings. Calibration closes the gap.
The method is simple in outline. Record the estimate for a set of real jobs, record what actually happened (from the machine log or slicer, or a stopwatch), and fit correction factors so future estimates land closer.
Example: a shop’s model estimates 5 hours for an FDM batch. The printer log shows 5 h 50 min. Across 30 jobs the model is consistently about 15% short. Calibration applies that correction, so the next 5-hour estimate becomes about 5 h 45 min, and the price follows.
The common confusion is with changing prices. Calibration fixes the estimate of cost; it does not change your rates or margins. If the calibrated model makes prices rise, that is because the old prices were below what the work really cost. Before publishing the change, a backtest shows how far each recent quote would move.
Quotometry’s calibration fits the model to jobs the shop has run, so estimates reflect your own machines rather than generic defaults. For the print-time side, read FDM print time estimation.
Go deeper: FDM print time estimation: why volume does not predict it