What's your print speed?

Hi guys!

For a day now I've tried to find out what the limit of the NEMA 17 motors that comes with the RoBo is, or any other NEMA 17 motor for that matter without any luck.
I know some printers, like the Ultimaker can do up to 300 mm/s which is insane and I'd love to step up the RoBo to it's max. (without damaging anything of course.)

Right now I'm printing at 80 mm/s without any problems at all but I'd like to see it go even faster.
The Marlin firmware has the default speed set to 500 which I doubt the stepper motors or controllers can handle, but that would be pretty cool if they could. I'm not gonna sacrifice my printer to try that out.

I recorded a whole print if anyone's interested in seeing what 80mm/s looks like.


So at what speed are you guys printing at?

 

What software are you using? I'm using Repetier so there's different print speeds depending on layer, infill, and exterior shell. Having said that i think i'm printing at 60mm/sec for better adhesion and finish. Bridging is done at 80 an infill at 70 i think.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I'm using Cura with everything except the first layer set to 80mm/s.
Note that in the video above I had outer shell speed set to 50 mm/s as I was still trying it out.


I haven't noticed any print quality issues so far with proper cooling.

 

Nice. I looked at Cura on the weekend but couldn't find how to manually control the printer and pre heat it before starting the print. I need to watch some YouTube vids or something I think. I want to try its slicer, wish it worked with Repetier.

 

Just found this the other day.

To bring up printer controls to manually control the 3D printer, please do the following in Cura.
- Go to the “File” menu and select “Preferences”
- Select printing window type “Pronterface UI” from the drop down in the preferences dialog box.
Now you will have this window below popup when you click print.

 

Thanks Montravont. Do you use Cura?

I like Repetier + Slic3r and have had good results but have seen a lot of people prefer Cura, at least to slice. The Cura slicer doesn't integrate with Repetier so I installed Matter Control and Cura in the weekend. I must say I don't like Matter Control but maybe that's a learning curve thing too. I did however like Cura and how it rendered it's slicing, and if course it's slicing speed. I didn't print with Matter Control or Cura though.

I've installed Slic3r 1.1.3 experimental to see how that goes too as they've made some tool path improvements and apparently performance improvements.

I had a failed print due to a lot of short extrusion/retractions which caused the hobbed bolt to clog (retract speed was 12mm/s and 2mm), hence investigating more options. I suspected it would happen and then when it was 2/3rds of the way through it did

 

Galaxius,

I'll PM you so we don't hijack the thread with a different topic.

 

I think they removed printer controls from the latest version of Cura. I'm using a Raspberry Pi with OctoPrint so I only use Cura for slicing.

 

I'm running 14.03 Cura and the option is still there. No heating controls sadly, but motion & terminal window.

 

I like the heating controls to preheat everything before I start the print. I wonder if I can connect both Cura and Repetier at the same time to use Repetier for the heat controls and temp graph.

 

Two applications can't connect to the same serial port natively, but you can use something like this (some computer knowledge or the try-and-fail technique is required) to have both programs connected to the printer at the same time. Although it would be easier to use Cura to create the gcode and Repeiter to print the gcode with.


Back on topic, I posted a question about print speeds on Reddit and got some really good answers. I'll experiment with higher speeds now!
Have a read over here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Reprap/comments/27bcfa/increase_print_speed_and_what_to_watch_out_for/

 

Next successful settings are in!

In Cura I'm now printing at:
Travel speed: 150
Infill speed: 110
Outer shell: 80
Inner shell: 95

I need some better cooling to go any faster now. I have some 4.2w server fans coming hopefully within a week or two.

 

Nice! That's pretty damned fast. I need to look for a bracket that allows a front fan as well. Whenever I do fast prints the front never has time to cool without a fan on it and ends up "Pulling" at one corner or another.

 

I'm using a mirrored version of this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:166452 for front cooling. I'm working on my own version with fan ducts and fan mounts on each side, but it's far from done yet.

 

I think this is at least 120mm/sec. I'm pretty sure most of my numbers are in the 60mm/sec range but I was running at 200%... Acceleration settings will have an effect on top speeds as well. If you notice, the longer runs move faster than the shorter ones.

 

Looks good! What acceleration settings do you have? (Control > Motion > Accel on the XXL controller)

 

The controller is saying 1300. I have 9000 for X & Y in firmware.

 

It sounds a bit slow with the acceleration to me, but it might just be my ears fooling me then.

 

I agree... I've been meaning to play with that 1300 value while its printing something. Hopefully I'll remember on the next print. I want to find where in the firmware it's hiding too. I'm assuming it affects X,Y,Z & E