General advice for shaving time (LOTS!) from print?

Hello! I’m not including the model intentionally. I’m hoping to get your tips and tricks to eliminate large chunks of time to print. Off the top of my mind, internal voids? Is that a thing? Converting solid areas to lattice?

This is a kitchen drawer organizer. I do not need strength. This is a 4 hour print and I have to believe I should be able to get it down to two. It’s 83mmw x 295mml x 42mmh and it’s a .06 nozzle H2D

By default infill is 15%, you can drop it lower to shave some time. Also, the filament type plays a role in the print speed. Nozzle size effect the speed to some extent, but not as much as you would expect in most prints. Tweak your layer height, it will shave more time off, so long as detail isn’t needed.

I noticed that the infill and nozzle don’t shave as much as I expected. I’ve been dropping the infill to either 5% or 10%.I have NOT experimented with layer height yet.

0.8 nozzle, ludacris speed.

Should be quick.

I find that “Adaptive Cubic” is typically the fastest infill and the pattern I use most. See if that shaves any time off.

Also, you might want to tune your filament and find it’s max flow and minimum layer time. The printers speed can be limited by those two parameters

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Not neccessarily. In many cases, it will increase both the printing time and filament usage, because of the increased number of walls to print. The good thing is that one can make the change and slice the model and compare the printing time and filament usage with those before the change without actual printing to know.

Layer height is another thing that can save some time. For models that don’t need fine surface, I use 0.28mm layer heigjht.

Increasing the maximum volummetric speed can have some effect. Increasing other speeds such as acceleration can speed up some but can be at the cost of print quality.

Overall, with today’s printers being better at speed in general, I am paying attention to how much time I have to be involved, instead of how much time the printer has to work. I want to spend the minimum of my time. For example, I don’t want to spend 30 minutes of my time tweaking things just to save 15 minutes for the printer. If the model is to be printed multiple times, then the calculation may be different.

Every situation is unique, but based on what you posted and asked, this is probably what I would try.

Make sure you are using the 0.30mm Standard profile for your 0.6mm nozzle. Since you said this does not need much strength, I would drop from 2 walls to 1 and use adaptive cubic infill around 12%. After the first layer looks good, turn on Sport mode as it will typically shave 20% off the print time.

Walls matter more for strength than infill, and in this case, you said strength is not the priority. A 0.6mm nozzle with one wall is not as weak as people sometimes assume because the wall line is wider than a 0.4mm nozzle wall. I would not call it equal to 2 walls with a 0.4mm nozzle, but for a low-stress print, it may be more than enough.

Adaptive cubic is a good choice here because it is efficient and gives decent internal support without using a lot of material. It helps the overall part feel more supported, but wall count is still what matters most for exterior shell strength.

Use Lightning infill if you truly do not need strength.

You could turn off infill (0%) and introduce your own into the model’s design. You create your model, hollow it out if it isn’t already and add in some simple bracing internally.

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For your specific use case, you can probably drop the Bottom Layers # to 2. It’ll be flat in a drawer, doesnt need to be super rigid or take impact from below. That will delete some significant grams from the bottom. Maybe even 1 but I would be very careful peeling it off the plate :slight_smile:

Could even be 0 bottoms lol, might be wild to try. Crumbs and other assorted “Drawer Crud” could collect in there from below though if it was open like that

Is the model yours so you can edit it? If so I would do some cut outs either side of the spoon shaft/handle so it replaces it with air. Above or below.

Cutting print time in half is quite a challenge usually. Have you already checked the line type view in preview window? It shows in detail which take how long, so you can see where you have most potential. Some random ideas:

  • instead of a bigger nozzle, switch to a HF nozzle, even 0,4 is typically faster than 0,6 standard.
  • Why not reduce bottom layers to zero?
  • Maybe try to print with 0% infill? you might have to increase top layers a bit.Only if the cavity goes down far enough.
  • In the filament profile, what is max flow? print the max flow calibration test to find out, how far you can really go and set a little less in the filament profile. Then..
    • increase inner wall width to 1mm and reduce wall count to 2 (assuming still 0,6 nozzle)
    • increase layer height
    • increase speeds
    • check in preview that flow actually reaches max flow

My tips:

-Reduce infill if possible

-0.8 Nozzle recommended

-If possible HF nozzle

-Reduce wall loops

-Reduce bottom/top layers.

-TIP! Haven’t you realized that the demo benchy is very fast with good quality and then any other thing is slow? Speed it up, or copy the benchy’s speeds!

-Have a look at this, there are some nice tricks: X2D slower than A1?

You could try cutting g it out like a plastic mold, with the inside cut out and the spoon part indented and then just supports, that would use less filament as well I would guess

THANK YOU ALL!

I will be mulling over these suggestions.

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Lastly, a second printer speeds things up quite a bit… :wink:

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I have a H2C and a H2D. This is just a hobby, but I will have more before years end!