Recently, I got serious about proper filament storage and bought 4 kg of silica gel. My first task was to print a huge number of AMS boxes, cylindrical spool inserts, and other containers for it. This was all very time-consuming, so I tried the maximum 166% speed that you can enable from the printer’s menu during a print.**
I used PETG, and even though the filament was damp (I’m sure of it), the print quality was no different from printing at 100%. This surprised me. For some models, I can start printing at 166% speed right after the first layer; for others, I wait for complex sections to pass and then enable it to avoid any potential issues. But overall, it’s a completely viable scenario without random failures. What’s your experience?**
It’s hard on the machine. Kinetic Energy goes up with the square of speed, so the mechanics have to deal with much higher forces. I’ve tried it a few times for simpler prints where the print head wouldn’t be banging around every few mm, but print quality still degraded enough I didn’t like the results (was probably a function of my filament’s maximum flow rate). And if you manually change speeds during a print, the “texture” of the outer wall will change, there’ll be a visible transition between the low and high speed areas.
Longer prints, I just kick off before I go to bed.
If you’re going to run ludicrous speed a lot, I’d recommend reducing all the accelerations by 20% (ex: 5000 goes to 4000) and it’ll “soften” the blows to the mechanics some… I run with these lower accelerations at my slower speeds. Doesn’t make a meaningful difference in print times but does make the printer a lot quieter while it’s printing.
Well, I wouldn’t print anything that requires quality. But for technical things that you need a lot of and quickly, it’s an excellent option. Also, as you correctly noted, it increases wear and tear, and that’s something we need to remember.