manisland

This is a popular thread isn't it? I feel lonely. Regardless: I have found another trick that works great and doesn't add significant time to the print. I now put a very thin (one layer or two) of support blocker in for the entire layer, instead of blocks under the required corners as I did above. If the normal fill has a line spacing for fill of 5mm, or 8 or whatever suits the situation, then I put one or two layers of support blocker across the entire design with 1 or 2mm line spacing. Then the print is only slowed down for one or two layers, and I can do it quickly since editing one monster all encompassing support blocker doesn't have to be carefully placed, and only one is required, rather than the method I posted above.

I've been studying this and came up with a solution that works for me. I'll post in case others can use it. First I used Support Blockers, along with all the gyrations required. Placement, sizing, using Per Mode, overlap, and selecting from the Infill menu Infill Line Distance. There are plenty of Youtube vids showing that. But I also found that Extra Infill Wall Count would put up a wall, just not in the perfect place.... At least when using Grid as a fill pattern, it wants to make the Support Blocker larger than I asked for, I think because it wants an even number of grids. So the wall is further out than the structure I want to support. See picture. Perhaps if a different fill pattern is used, like concentric? or ? then the infill wall would be where I wanted. I may try that at some point, but changing the fill pattern thru the Support Blocker routine is very tedius and lengthy, so maybe another time... on a 4:32hr project, the more dense fill count added just a few minutes, and the infill walls as shown added another 20 minutes. Meanwhile I would be very pleased if someone showed me better way, I'd love to hear it. It seems this is a fairly frequent situation, and something that many would like to see handled automatically by the software. Yes?

Here is a pic with 10mm fill spacing. Disaster when printed! That wall has no support.

If I have a fill (eg line) with a high density, say line spacing of 3mm, then when it gets to a ceiling of the structure, the lines there have pretty good support. Or near walls. But say I have a 5mm thick plank, with a letter sitting on top of that, or a cube, etc. There are corners created where the letters are, and there is no support for those. If I want a a line spacing of say 10mm to speed up the print, disaster. The ceiling has interruptions (corners) for where the letter walls, and the letter fill is going to go. i.e. when an object is printed on top of a fill pattern, there may or may not be good support for those corners. They may be just hanging in air, especially if the fill below is loose for speed considerations. The included picture shows that corner hanging in air. That is with 5mm infill distance. There is a trick here somewhere, I would love to know it. Thanks in advance!

And thank you also!! The 100mm/s case went from 12.5 hours down to 10hrs. That is a huge improvement. I'll run some real/physical prints tomorrow on my test/benchmark case and see what results I get. I am confused how this works on several points. First on say layer 5, it puts down a double thick line for some fill. Does the software understand that on layer 6 there is already some PLA there, so it doesn't print then? That way printing every other? (i.e. I don't have to worry about do I?) Also: If I am on, say, layer 5, and I put down a .6mm fill line, and the rest is putting down .3mm, when the tip is passing by some of .6 stuff does it bash into it? Or is the fill always put down after the walls? I guess in my preview studies I see walls first, but my experience is limited... I appreciate your time and effort! Thank you so much.

I believe you are correct about acceleration. The part in question is small, and has many structures, and nothing straight for more than a centimeter at most, except the bottom layers, which are thin. The other test subjects I worked on/with were similar. I put in my big project, which takes 12.5 hours and did trials there. It's a cover for a raymarine PFD, so picture a lid 13" by 8", and a lip 1/2". It's a big box cover. all 5mm thick. At 100mm/s the time projected was 12.5 hours. At 150mm/s it was 11.5 and at 50mm/s it was 16.2 hours. The small(ish) improvement for 100 vs. 150 is because it has a lot of short fill segments in the 5mm direction (thickness). The largish improvement for 50 vs 100 is because the walls start to add in heavily. You were a massive help in getting me to understand that concept. I won't waste more of your time posting .3mf files. Thank you so much! I very much appreciate the help.

Two more things. First I have an Ender 3 Max Neo, which I've read should do either 150mm/s, or 120 depending on whom you believe. Second, if/when I change all the speeds down to 50mm/s (except initial settings) I get 57 minutes, same as 100mm/s. Thanks!

I'm printing a project, and want it to print fast. I have experimented with a lot of variables. But SPEED has me befuddled. I set PRINT SPEED to 100, along with WALL SPEED (inner and outer), and TOP/BOTTOM SPEED, TRAVEL SPEED. I have all the INITIAL speeds set to 25. All mm/s of course. Slice. Time = 58 minutes. Change everything that was 100mm/s to 150mm/s. Slice. Time = 57 minutes. In the analysis it says retractions is 40%, and skin is 23%, walls are 28%. There is something I do not understand. If I am printing 50% faster (for most of the at least 51% of the time, I would thing I would see 25% improvement. What do I not know? Thanks.