Okay, I finally swapped out my PS to a Meanwell 450 and last night I semi successfully printed some nylon at 250C. So, that got me thinking, how fast can I print some PLA?
I cranked the print temperature up to 240 and am printing a test cube right now. I have a 0.8mm nozzle. I’ve got the infill set at 150mm/s and the wall speed set at 75mm. I haven’t cranked up the bottom layer, but at some point I will.
Other settings: layer height 0.32, width 0.8. (I have ordered an all metal hot end because I don’t expect that piece of PTFE to hold up very long in the stock Ender 5 hot end…)
So, Frederick_Law, got any tips on printing fast?
I also saw in your other post about using HTPLA…What are you using that for and other than being stable at higher temperatures, what are the benefits of that material?
Doing the above I’m getting a part that’s “bowed in” in the X and Y direction. Measured at the corners is spot on in the X and Y. Also, I need to tweak my layer height. I’m getting 19.75mm high instead of 20mm. But, it printed… Drafted it up in SW to show what I mean:
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I’ve tried 120mm/s. I think print was 100mm/s.
80mm/s is more manageable.
I do print hot, 240, 250.
Adjust, lower your accel or the printer will shake to pieces.
Stiffen the frame. My bed thumb screws keep getting lose.
Also play with extruder cooling. Might need more cooling because you’re putting down more plastic.
Keep track of your changes and results.
Thanks for the tips.
I went ahead and bumped the accel down to 200mm/s2 from 500 (cube print speed went from 15min to 18min est. in Cura). What do you have yours set at?
I also lowered the temp to 230. Initially when I set it to 240, I was hoping to push the print speed above 150 mm/s, but Cura won’t let me do that. We’ll see how the cube comes out next…
I used to print ABS, but I had a printer with an enclosure that I vented outside. Printing ABS smells awful. I really want to like PETG, but it’s just a difficult material to deal with. Believe it or not, I’ve had much better results with TPU with my Bowden setup than PETG.
I keep posting about TPU, but I guess people don’t see the benefit. If you print in TPU, you get a good bit of flexure and it’ll be a tough part you’ll never break. It’s great for things around the house. It’s so much more versatile than PLA or ABS, IMO.
I saw a video of a guy who was pushing the limits. He said the biggest challenge was getting the filament hot enough, since it is moving through the hot end so fast. (And then getting it cooled down again once it was on the bed.)
CURA profile attached.
I have accel at 1500 but I lowered jerk.
Need more testing to get it print faster.
Need to put insulation back on the heater blocks. A crash took them all out. i3 120.zip (1.47 KB)
Thanks Fred,
I’ll poke around and copy your settings and see how they work out for me. My all metal hot end should be in today. I have a new LCD on the way, too. So, the 260C limit Creality sets shouldn’t be a problem once I install it.
I installed the new hot end and printed a test cube at normal temps just to make sure it was level. The Ender 5 comes with a BL Touch and I wasn’t sure the Gulf Coast Robotics all metal hot end would be a “drop in” replacement, but it worked!
Before I printed the cube I tried heating the hotend to 250 without the silicone sock because I’ve read it’s important to bring it up to temp and then tighten the nozzle. That didn’t work because the cooling fans keep it from getting that hot without the sock. So, I got it to 220 and tightened it down. I’ll probably try to heat it up to the 260 that the software allows tomorrow with the sock on and tighten it a bit then, but we’ll see.
Unfortunately, I have run out of time tonight to work on the this, but I’m looking forward to copying your settings and seeing how they turn out with my printer.
Thanks for posting that Fred.
Let us know how it goes. I haven’t fine tune it enough yet.
Make sure you tight all the bolts.
I use 0.3 nozzle.
Gyroid infill work great.
Adaptive layer helps with details.
I’ll have to tweak your settings. I have a 0.8 nozzle which really helps with speed because it prints faster than a 0.4mm nozzle because the linewidth is twice as wide, also the layer height I have now is 0.32mm which is also thicker than I can get away with when using a 0.4mm nozzle. Before the upgrade I was already printing at 80mm/s. I slowed it down a bit for printing TPU, but with the new hot end, I may just bump the temperature up. Yeah, yeah, I’ll get stringing, but I watched a video of a guy who just burns the strings off with a torch. Seems to work pretty well.
I’m thinking with such a wide nozzle I can really push filament through by bumping the temp up. As the guy in the Voron video that FMAAID posted said, if you have the temperature higher than the manufacturer recommended filament temperature you will not actually be “cooking” the filament if you push the filament through fast enough. That’s what I was thinking when I initially bumped the speed and temp up. The PLA I was using has a label stating 180-210. I may have burned it, but I couldn’t tell. I guess to be sure, I’d have to do some strength tests or something.
The problem is flow rate and heat transfer.
The plastic need time to melt. You can only extrude so fast before it come out solid.
I’ve been running 240 250 for a while, no burning.
Print the cube but stop before it print the top. So you can see infill.
I got stringing infill which doesn’t give structure.
Maybe make gcode to print a few lines at different speed.
That’s a good idea. I could set up a few “half” test cubes and print them at different temperatures and speeds to see the results in the center. Obviously it’d take some tweaking to lay down the first layer, but by printing them one at a time, this is doable and a good test. Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that.