Ways to speed up print time:
increase nozzle size (going from .35mm to .5mm will double the cross sectional area of the nozzle)
Play with Slic3r advanced settings for extrusion width
Variable layer height (Cura: Z tweak) (big layer height for straight walls, small layer for top rounded and sloped areas
Read the good book: http://manual.slic3r.org/
That’s pretty standard and good speed. Mine is about the same, and for Prusa you can go as high as 60.
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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?
I see, a delta printer. I have seen some videos of them but they did not seem that much faster. What delta printer are you referring to?
Thanks Luke! I used the calibration tips allready :-). I think I will stick to the current speed or move to another printer
Stanos
February 27, 2015, 7:58pm
17
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.
3dReems
February 27, 2015, 8:27pm
18
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.
megaksa
February 27, 2015, 9:29pm
19
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.
3dReems
February 28, 2015, 9:46am
20
hi guys
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.
sherif
February 28, 2015, 5:28pm
21
It highly depends on the nozzle size and plastic type
I’m using 3000 mm/min (50mm/s) maximum when printing PLA using a 0.4mm nozzle @ 210C, beyond that it jams
When using the 0.8mm nozzle I was able to go 4800mm/min (that’s 80mm/s) using PLA at the same temperature
I have a prusa i3 rework
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I just ran my big delta at 1000mm/s (using a smoothie board) doing a marvin in PLA in under 10 min, quality was rough but it was a really good speed test, I’m now going to up the acceleration further, here’s a link to the vid
Cheers
Jason
2 Likes
KDan
March 3, 2015, 1:51pm
23
As you try to print faster, a high static speed isn’t really the major factor on how fast a machine can print, it’s acceleration. Your actual speed is quite likely never being reached (especially on smaller parts) due to acceleration limits. Just want to clarify that.
Fast moving delta machines are wonderful, but the limiting factor is often how fast you can extrude the plastic, not how fast the machine can move. A commonly recognized print volume upper limit for most extruders is around 8 to10mm3/s. To figure out how fast you’re trying to extrude your plastic you simply multiply your nozzle diameter with the layer height and speed. So for example, if you’re printing with 0.2mm layers at 60mm/s you would do: 0.4*0.2*60 = 4.8mm 3/s. You might be able to exceed an 8-10mm3/s volume of you really crank up the heat on the extruder. If you don’t, you will encounter rapidly increasing extruder feeding pressure which will cause extruder skipping or filament stripping. However, the problem with higher extruder temperatures is that you risk decomposing the filament and jamming the nozzle tight as a drum when the extruder stops feeding filament.
When you see someone claim they can print at some outlandish speed - do the math. The current extruder technology has limits that can’t be violated.
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What about running a Volcano? Volcano HotEnd – E3D Online or http://e3d-online.com/blog/volcano\_release for video. Has anyone gone down this road?
Stanos
March 3, 2015, 9:24pm
25
I havent myself but im seeing a lot of praise for it on the g+ communities. Only reason I havent got one though is because the majority of what I print needs high resolution and with the volcano you are sacrificing resolution for speed and strength.
KDan
March 4, 2015, 1:20am
26
The volcano is an exception - sort of. By that I mean that if you have a print nozzle the size of a hot glue gun, you are obviously going to be able to extrude much more volume per second. But I think that most of us would like to have more resolution - not dramatically less.
One point worth noting is that PLA can be pushed farther than ABS, Nylon, and most other filaments. PLA has a significantly lower viscosity at printing temperatures. But, there are still limits. PLA seems to strip easier than ABS at high feed pressures.
Thanks KDan, this makes sense. I will do the math for my printer and see if I have reached the limit yet
JF43FR
March 10, 2015, 10:57am
28
Hi. Owner of a Reprapro Mendel, I actually print at 60mm/s for perimeters and 75mm/s for infill. I did not try more since a while.
on my MendelMax1.5 I print at 70mm/s for perimeters and 90mm/s for infills, support and bridges at 0.2mm layers with 0.3mm nozzle
My biggest speed gains came from increasing nozzle size to .5 , increasing layer height to .48 and changing extrusion widths in various points of the slice. I make 3D printed boxes all day long…thousands.
The Volcano is great… however, the basic thermodynamic laws become the limiting factor. With a 1.2mm nozzle and T-Glase material (2.8mm), the heater struggled to maintain 280c at more than a 30mm print speed. We were able to print 5lb models in 20hrs.
