Cura vs Orca - Opinions

I’ve been 3D printing a little over two years. I use an Ender 3 Pro modified with Micro Swiss NG DD all metal hot end, BL Touch, Dual Z using a timing belt, 4.2.7 MB and Marlin 2.1.1.

Cura has been working well. I use the Cura default printing parameters for the Ender. So it’s not a speed demon. I recently installed ORCA to investigate the plane cut tool as I have a project where that could come in handy. I have used Meshmixer in the past to plane cut models which works. Since Orca doesn’t have and Ender 3 Pro printer I choose ‘Marlin’ printer when installing. My first surprise was print times. I realize Orca just used some default speeds that aren’t necessarily for the Ender 3 Pro.

First has anyone played/used Orca? What are your thoughts?

Second, outside of trying to match print speeds one for one between the slicers (which may not be right to begin with) what would some reasonable speeds for PLA and PETG without going through the time consuming testing? I don’t think I would know if what is being printed in my test would be right. Guess I’m looking for thoughts and ideas.

Thanks all

I use Bambu Slicer when using my Bambu X1C but for my Ender 3 S1 Plus I still use Prusa Slicer. I have Orca slicer installed and have used it a couple of times for calibration but as a whole I like Bambu Studio better it’s just easier to use. Isn’t a Ender 3 v2 about the same as an Ender 3 Pro as I remember the V2 was the next version after the Pro. So I would use the Ender 3 v2 profile. You might also take a look at PrusaSlicer as I believe it will do what you want to do…

Orca Slicer has more features than Bambu Studio but for some reason Orca doesn’t seem as polished to me. Bambu in the latest version no has profiles for 3rd party printers so I may give it a try for my Ender. If I could import all the profiles & filament setting in to Bambu\Orca I might be more adapt to switch. But even though Bambu\Orca are forks of Prusa they use different formats for config files. Prusa uses .ini files and Bambu\Orca uses .json files. I would think someone smarter than me could write a script to convert the Prusa .ini to .json but maybe not.

When using Bambu Studio I mainly use the stock profiles and just tweak them here and there for what I am printing. Do have some. filament profiles that I have run calibration on for Max Flow Rate which effect speed, may only work on the X1c\P1P printers though not sure.

I never used anything but PrusaSlicer and Cura. I prefer Cura because the way the tree supports and brims are constructed.

You might check out PrusaSlicer 2.6 (the latest version) because Prusa made improvements to the cut tool as well as auto generation of assembly pegs. I don’t think the improvements have shown up yet in Orca.

Orca (and Bambu) slicer does not have keyboard commands to zoom in or out of a part (only mouse scrolling). This is a show stopper for me. YMMV

Cheers