I may be getting ahead of myself here, but having done some calibration tests http://julianh72.blogspot.com/2011/11/quality-street.html which have made HUGE improvements on my print quality, I decided to see how fast I can print.
I know, I know, I haven't finished calibrating yet, but I guess the "best" 3D printer for me is one that can build parts with "acceptable" quality at the fastest practical speed. I figure it is likely that there will be trade-off between speed and quality, and I just want to know what my options are.
Most of my calibration printing was done at 30 mm/ s, and while it is by no means perfect, the quality is "not bad" (if I do say so myself). I decided to have a go at 45 mm/s and 60 mm/s, just to see what happens.
And here's what happened (with print speeds of 30 mm/s, 45 mm/s and 60 mm/s, from left to right):
In short - my printer will print quite happily at 60 mm/s (maybe more - maybe even a LOT more?), but the quality drops off a bit as the speed increases. (No real surprise there!)
Here's a (bad) video of my machine printing at 60 mm/s:
For now - I will probably do most of my "quality" prints at 30 mm/s, but it is nice to know I can double the print speed whenever I need a "quick and dirty" print of something in half the time.
Very interesting. In the faster pieces, it definitely looks like your extruder isn't keeping up with the rest of the machine - creating gaps in the walls.
ReplyDeleteAt my current calibration level, I don't see too much difference between the speeds. Of course, that may change as I get my calibration 'dialled in' to a better level. In fact, on some pieces, faster is better, as the hot tip spends less time dwelling over the piece and melting all the plastic in the vicinity.
I'll replicate your above test on my machine to compare.
I've completed my own test, you can see the results here
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking to your own tests.
Your tests seem to show the general degradation in quality as the speed increases. There doesn't seem to be any single speed at which everything "falls apart" (at least not in the range of speeds that have been tested so far).
In my case,unless / until I can get an even better standard, I will print at 30 mm/s when I need "quality" prints, but maybe 45 mm/s when I can live with rougher (but stil functional) parts.
In your case, if I was in your shoes, I would suggest that I would use 30 mm/s for "quality" printing; but I could live with 45 mm/s for faster, rougher prints. In my opinion, the 60 and 90 mm/s prints are a bit too rough for my tastes, but might be quiet acceptable for non-critical components.
Cheers!