Amount of plate covered with objects?

Usually when I print something with multiple parts, I will cover a good portion of the plate instead of splitting it up into multiple print jobs of smaller chunks. I don’t completely pack it up with parts but probably between 60% and 85%.

Printing multiples of a multi colored object has a significant advantage in terms of reducing wasted material. So disregarding that use case, how much of the plate do you use in a single printing cycle?

I was concerned that I might be reducing the quality of my prints by printing too many things at once because of potential uneven cooling and longer layer time. The uneven cooling may especially affect taller parts. What are people’s experience with this? Do you see quality issues with printing several items or no difference?

I’ve noticed the A1 mini has a couple of problems worth noting.

  1. Small items on the edge of the plate are at more risk of not sticking likely due to what appears to be an inconsistent temperature across the entire surface.

  2. Bigger items with a larger surface are touching the plate (think large rectangle) the edges are more likely to peel upwards particularly at the corners again, likely due to an inconsistent temperature across the entire surface.

I’ve filled the A1 mini with a lot items of various sizes, heights and contact areas at the same time and found after a while something has been knocked over or moved slightly because it was sticking to the plate.

The solution was to pair it down a bit.

The plate was thoroughly cleaned before and after.

I did not apply any science to it as I was rather p’ed off - it was a large print over a long print time.

I suspect the A1 mini and A1 will fair more poorly with filled plates as the phrase we all know ‘bed-slinger’ was coined for a reason. The contents of the plate suffer a significant amount of inertia whilst moving back and forth. There is no doubt the thing is fast in every sense, but, that does increase the potential for vibration playing a part in the mix no matter how well the printers try to iron it out.

The core x/y machines don’t have this issue obviously.

The sections of objects closer to the center of the plates may cool down slower because of the collective heat of the objects beside eachother.

What benefits have you noticed by keeping the auxillary fan off with PLA? Are there any potential issues with clogging from heat creep?

This was clearly talking about the motion of the bed-slingers moving the whole bed back and forward.

The core x/y machines don’t move the bed at all, thus they don’t have this problem.

I think you misread my post.