I was wondering what a good speed is for printing with a Reprap (Prusa i2/Mendel). I have constructed mine a year ago and I have tried to speed it up as much as possible. Now I can print a Marvin (40x40x40 demo order for 3dHubs) in 12 minutes. I have no idea if this speed could be increased more. Does anyone have experience with faster-printing Repraps? I use Cura, .25mm layer height, print speed 50 (if I increase it more the filament starts to hick). I am just wondering if this is an average speed because if not, I will try to speed it up more :-).
What are your times for the demo-model of the Melvin?
50 is a good speed. The fastest I dare to print without sacrificing quality too much is 90. Some printers can go up to 200.
the reason our extruder hicks can be because
-your stepper drivers don’t have enough volts (more means your motors will be stronger, but can overheat more quickly)
-your hot end gets cold quicker than the filament goes through it at that speed, so try increasing your temp
-and/or if you have a bowden set up, for example, your tube might be generating resistance. make sure it doesn’t bend too drastically or generate so much resistance, maybe you can make the tube shorter too.
anyway, increasing the voltage of your steppers will probably do the trick. just don’t overdo it or you’ll get heat problems
I wouldn’t recommend speeding up the print unless you’re confident you can continue to produce high quality prints out of it, which would take a lot of time calibrating, though it would be worthwhile!
I’m currently printing at the slowest speed using curaengine on repetier, at 40. I’d recommend checking out this for some in-depth calibrating tips. http://reprap.org/wiki/Triffid\_Hunter’s\_Calibration\_Guide
Well, on my prusa i3 I print at 32mm/s, then the Y axis will loose step I think because the ø8 bars are not parallel, after that the X will be the problem… But I’m building another printer similar to ultimaker… So I will not upgrade my prusa
I have mine tuned in pretty darn well, the only thing I need to upgrade is adding acme rods to the z but they are difficult to find for a good price. I have been printing at anywhere between 75 to 90mm/s for the last couple of years, but I have recently taken it down to 50-60mm/s in order to increase quality now that I am selling a lot more of my own designs through Etsy and at work. If I am just doing a structural part of something that is not going to be seen I have no issue ramping it up to 120mm/s, but the corners will come out a bit over extruded and I will get really bad shadows around areas like text.
So ya, 50mm/s is a good speed to stick with unless you get the rest of your machine tuned in better.
I print between 40-60 using an E3DV6,the Hotend you use is most important,I can crank up the speeds much higher but my X axis motor feels scorching hot.
My melvin print in 25 minutes because my print speeds are lower (30mm / s) for a better definition.
Also used the Cura for slicing, but in tests other slicers are short in printing time of issue
If you play with accel values you might be able to get some more speed if you run the hot end a little hotter (since you’ll be pumping plastic through there). Delta printers are very fast usually if you’re interested int he pursuit of speed.
Mine (Prusa i3, slic3r, infill_speed=60,perimeter_speed=30) takes about 42mins… No idea which of the Slic3r speed settings is worth quoting, there are so many! (havent resliced it with Cura yet, tho I have that set to similar numbers)
Thanks everyone for the quick replies! What I distill is that the speed is not that bad at all. I really like the accuracy of my printer not, so I think further tweaking will not help me. Somehow I think the speed should increase for the printers to become more useful for bigger items. Or do other (non-reprap) printers have a much higher speed?
Printers like the makerbot are slower. If you want to go even faster you have to reduce resolution and go with bigger nozzles. The volcano from E3D is a good example. It can spit out low res super strong parts really fast but you wouldnt use it to print a figurine.
I think that the speed can be increased if mendel changed. I suppose that the throubles starts for the inertial mass that move in alternative motion. If we introduce a calibrated spring we can delete the problem, and speed can be increased.
Confirm. 50mm/s for Prusa i3 is good value. I have some issues with bearings at the moment. The max reasonable value I could achieve was 100mm, but the quality becomes worse. Reason is rigidity/inertia. Moved masses at Prusa are pretty big.
Deltas have way lesser moved mass and I could achieve ~150mm/s (I’m still trying to improve the mechanics) and reasonable is ~100mm (mostly because frame is made from acrylic glass (PMMA) and in current version is not rigid enough to withstand higher speeds (quality loss due to printing head inertia).
Overall speed currently sucks on all available printers. To improve the technology must move from single point printing (printing area 0.4mm x 0.4mm) to some kind of array (linear or other shape, for example 4mm linear array may imporve 10x), or to some other physical principles.
If you suppose that there are some vibration when I increase the speed, the first think that all the people think is: oh, the printer is bad, I should reduce the speed. But if you digg in the science and if you study all the problems around you can discover that you can remove all the problems. There are some frequencies that are called natural frequencies of materials. An example? See the resonance effect. For all the problems of resonance there are some rubber support that reduce the vibration. Another problem is the slides and the lubrification. Every material when is coupled has different surface contacts. And each one require the calibrated oil. And the error? Has anyone discovered what is the precision of all the position in our machine? This is the mechanical part of the problem that should be solved.
