To be clear, this is the first time I have thought of how to potentially make my prints faster. I have a couple of 18 hr prints I have to do and am working out what might be the best way to attempt to speed them up.
The printer I am working with is an Ender 3 S1 Pro. I have thought of buying the Ender Sonic Pad, since it has Klipper on it and that might be the fastest way, but I don’t learn very much.
I have, up to this point used SuperSlicer exclusively. It is a clone of PrusaSlicer and I like the control I have, considering the tiny number of settings I have changed. I have used Cura a few times, and for some reason as a total novice, I didn’t like it as well. Given I want to try to improve my printing, that might need to change. So, I went and made a table of the values for the two slicers so I could compare them and try to understand what kind of changes might be available.
I’m assuming the values for the SuperSlicer could just be transferred to the Cura slicer and it would already be better. My first thought is that the cura settings seem better because it gives more control for the different paths a print could take.
I have looked for information on how large these speed and accelerations could go, my first thought was to attempt to increase them one setting at a time, keeping track of the values, and stop when the prints begin to fail.
Or, is there another approach I might try?
Edit: I just looked at the Ender spec and max speed is 160 mm/s so the numbers from SuperSlicer are total BS. I assume I can look at the gcode and see what is really sent to the printer. And I looked at the GCode for the print that is currently printing and sure enough it sends M204 S500. I don’t understand this at all unless the printer doesn’t let that value through and replaces it with a valid number.
Short answer: I think you’ll find reducing the number of walls and amount of infill will have the biggest impact in reducing print time. This, combined with a modest increase in print speed, is the approach I’d take.
Long answer: You could set the print speed to 160 mm/s and accelerations to 1,000 mm/s^2 and hope for the best, but quality will likely suffer. There are a number of factors to consider when adjusting how one prints to minimize this degradation. Some of the factors include: mechanical rigidity of the surface the printer is on and the printer itself, the maximum volumetric speed of the hotend, maximum accelerations, pressure advance, and part cooling, The ability to easily test and adjust for these factors is where Klipper shines (see Andrew Ellis’ Print Tuning Guide for Voron printers, for example) .
Why do you want to use Cura over SuperSlicer? They are based on different slicing engines, so it’s hard to make a 1-to-1 comparison of settings. I’ve read that SuperSlicer gives you more control over slicer settings, and since you are familiar with it, that’s what I think you should use. If your printer supports Marlin’s Linear Advance function, try running the calibration test at your desired speed to see if the printer can compensate.
Also, there are general machine speed limits and physics -a machine might be capable of a bazillion mms/sec, but there’s getting up to speed, how long it has at speed, and other operations it has to slow down for, plus cooling.
Thanks, I’ve watched his video and looked at cura, I can’t find a way to compare profiles to see what he actually changed. The ImportExportProfiles from UltiMaker reports “The given author does not exist.”
Check out 5axes’ plugin, Profil Analyser. I just checked and it still works with 5.9.
I also use the GCODE documentation post processing script to add human-readable text containing the print settings at the end of the GCODE file.
Cheers
P.S. – Cura stores profiles in a zipped text file. Just make a copy the profile and add “.zip” as the extension to the copy. Decompress and open in a text editor. 5axes’ plugin is more elegant tho.
I decided to just get the Sonic Pad from Creality. It was on sale for Black Friday and was cheap enough even if it ended up being a mistake. I have learned a lot over the past few days installing it and printing with it. It is much better than me groping my way through all of the setting to figure out how to get it right.
A real benefit is that Creality publishes Cura profiles for the Ender 3 S1 Pro for a normal print and a fast print. Given these as a starting point makes a huge difference. I have no idea how long it would take me to get to that level, if ever.
I don’t have it all setup yet but am already printing at 1/2 the time I was before.
Thanks for your guidance, I really appreciate your help. I did get the Profile Analyzer running and can now see the changes between profiles.
