Cura Slicer doubles up the printtime compared to an old version of Creality slicer

[BA2 1]

I find that compared with Cura some models prints a lot faster when sliced with the creality-slicer that was shiped with my Ender 3 pro.  Creality slicer is a customized version of an early Cura version, so I find that strange. 

This model ends up with more than double estimated print time!!!

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4945700

I used https://www.gcodeanalyser.com/ and get this results: (I have tried to make the settings as equal as possible in the two slicers) Ultimaker Cura Slicer result to the left Creality slicer to the right

Edited January 22, 2022 by BA2

[gr5 2,178]

Wow - that "gcode analyser" is very cool.  Never saw that before.  Did you put the correct values in for acceleration and jerk and such?  I think you can get those values possibly out of the menu system on the creality?  Is it accurate for your printer?  I find that these time estimates can be off by 2X because you may have the wrong value somewhere.

 

Anyway the slower print has twice as many retractions - that is the key difference I think.  Did you play with "combing"?  combing will reduce retractions and save time.  I guess I would concentrate on the retractions.  There are many settings that affect retractions.

[GregValiant 1,262]

There are some things that stick out to me.

Total Movement:

Cura = 1046 meters

Creality = 496 meters

Lines of Code:

Cura = 1,389,549

Creality = 650,014

 

Filament Used (these are from my slices):

Cura = 11.11m

Creality = 9.91m

File Size (also from my slices):

Cura = 23,481kb

Creality = 17,730kb

 

Looking at those numbers, I think the comparison is between apples and oranges.  The Cura file has twice as many lines of gcode as the Creality file and is moving twice as far.

What I'm really curious about is where the extra 1.2m of filament went?  That's an additional 36 METERS of extrusion distance.  The slug just doesn't seem that big.

 

[gr5 2,178]

how is 1.2 meters of filament an additional 36 meters?  I don't understand your point.

[BA2 1]

4 hours ago, gr5 said:

Wow - that "gcode analyser" is very cool.  Never saw that before.  Did you put the correct values in for acceleration and jerk and such?  I think you can get those values possibly out of the menu system on the creality?  Is it accurate for your printer?  I find that these time estimates can be off by 2X because you may have the wrong value somewhere.

 

Anyway the slower print has twice as many retractions - that is the key difference I think.  Did you play with "combing"?  combing will reduce retractions and save time.  I guess I would concentrate on the retractions.  There are many settings that affect retractions.

I sort of stumbled upon that analyser in the search for an explanation here 🙂 I found the combing settings in creality after your tip to check the menues. It was set to "all" in creality and "not in skin" in cura. Changing it to "all" did not do any difference. I'm not able, however, to find Jerk and Acceleration in creality. Combing Its not easy to compare settings in those two, because Creality do have fewer settings. I did print the creality sliced slug and that was 5:16 in actual print time, so that closes the gap with one hour. I will do a print with cura too, just to check how "off" the estimates are.

[GregValiant 1,262]

1.75 filament is 2.405mm³/1mm of length.  The extrusions are .2 Layer Height x .4 Line Width = .08mm³/mm of extrusion.  2.405/.08 = 30.06mm of extrusion/mm of filament.  1.2meters is 1200mm of filament x 30.06 = 36,072mm of extrusion so 36.072meters of extrusion are going someplace.

 

I think that's why there is so much more movement in one file than in the other.

[BA2 1]

3 hours ago, GregValiant said:

There are some things that stick out to me.

Total Movement:

Cura = 1046 meters

Creality = 496 meters

Lines of Code:

Cura = 1,389,549

Creality = 650,014

 

Filament Used (these are from my slices):

Cura = 11.11m

Creality = 9.91m

File Size (also from my slices):

Cura = 23,481kb

Creality = 17,730kb

 

Looking at those numbers, I think the comparison is between apples and oranges.  The Cura file has twice as many lines of gcode as the Creality file and is moving twice as far.

What I'm really curious about is where the extra 1.2m of filament went?  That's an additional 36 METERS of extrusion distance.  The slug just doesn't seem that big.

 

It clearly is two different ways of printing the same STL-file. I would love to find why this is happening. I did find a couple of settings that is different: One is the top and bottom/top thicknes the other was combing mode. none of them made any difference. I will do a printout of the cura sliced slug to find out how much off the cura-estimate is. The creality print used 5:16, so one more hour than estimated.

[BA2 1]

3 hours ago, GregValiant said:

There are some things that stick out to me.

Total Movement:

Cura = 1046 meters

Creality = 496 meters

Lines of Code:

Cura = 1,389,549

Creality = 650,014

 

Filament Used (these are from my slices):

Cura = 11.11m

Creality = 9.91m

File Size (also from my slices):

Cura = 23,481kb

Creality = 17,730kb

 

Looking at those numbers, I think the comparison is between apples and oranges.  The Cura file has twice as many lines of gcode as the Creality file and is moving twice as far.

What I'm really curious about is where the extra 1.2m of filament went?  That's an additional 36 METERS of extrusion distance.  The slug just doesn't seem that big.

 

And: Cura does print 57mm from 1mm filement and creality prints 37mm

[GregValiant 1,262]

"And: Cura does print 57mm from 1mm filement and creality prints 37mm"

I think that calls into question the competence of the software there.  There is no way that Cura would put down a flow rate of 50%.  Something is wonky and it might have to do with 2X the retractions in the Cura file.  I think that gcode analyzer has an addition error in it and it appears to involve the retractions and primes.  There should be exactly the same distance in retracts as there is in primes so the net difference should be zero.

Edited January 23, 2022 by GregValiant

[gr5 2,178]

I think it has to do with wall widths.  In cura look at these parameters:

 

wall width

wall line count (calculated)

line width

wall line width

outer wall line width

inner wall line width

 

So for example if your wall width is 1mm and your line width is 0.39mm cura does this dumb thing where it does 3 passes!  WTF?  3 passes to achieve a 1mm wall.  If your line width is 0.4mm then cura does it in 2 passes.  In the first case with 3 passese it underextrudes by a LOT on the inner most wall.  In the latter case it overextrudes quite a bit on the inner wall.

 

I think you have a case where cura is doing more passes per wall to get the same wall width than the other slicer.

[gr5 2,178]

Fix this by making wall width an exact multiple of line width (probably called "nozzle width" in other slicers).  Do this for both slicers so you get apples to apples.

[BA2 1]

Beeing a newbe here, I learn a lot from you guys!! I will look into the factors you point out. I did the testprint with the cura sliced gcodefile, and it took 10:13. Then i used the pen-move feature in cura and made a video of a the nozzle behaviour. Then i imported the gcode from creality slicer and did screncapture from that too. I can see that cura is making this extra line (yellow) inbetween the walls. Is this the 3-passes you are talking about @gr5 And i guess this can explain this extra length too?

(I fasttracked creality one a bit to get to about the same spot on both)
 

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by BA2

[BA2 1]

My nozzle is 0.4 and linewidths are 0.4. A good clue, but it is already a multipple.

Edit:  Wait a minute. What exactly do dynamic quality do?? That might not give me control over the linewidth?

Edited January 24, 2022 by BA2

[GregValiant 1,262]

@gr5 could it be that "Fill gaps between walls" is set to "Everywhere" in Cura but to "Nowhere" in the Creality slicer (if it even has such a setting)?

[BA2 1]

You solved it!!! 

1 @GregValiant Fill gaps changed from everywhere gave me an estimate of 7:30 ish

2 @gr5 Dynamic quality do change line width through out the model. And I guess there will be a lot of 3 passes instead of 2 on walls thats not an multiple of nozzle. Change to standard quality and then change to same 0.16 layer height gave me a estimate of 5:30.

 

This is about spot on as cura is often a bit high on the estimates.

 

Thanks a lot. I've learned a lot and now I don't need to have this nagging feeling that i need to use this old version of creality slicer.  

[GregValiant 1,262]

Trying to synchronize one slicer to another so you can compare the results is tough to do.  It always ends up like this problem where you know something is wrong but it can be really tough to find.

 

Congrats.

[gr5 2,178]

Nice.  Hopefully your part won't be weak because you didn't fill in those gaps.  I think it will probably be fine.

 

I didn't realize your part had such thin walls.  If I had then I might have figured this out.

 

I was talking about there being extra green lines.  Not yellow lines.  Yellow is basically infill.  Red is outermost line, green are inner walls (there can be many but typically 2) and yellow is anything inside that (infill, skin, gap filling).

 

You still might want to play around with the "wall" value and make it exactly half the width of those curved walls.  If you know what that value is.  Otherwise you may have gaps in the walls and the part may end up weaker than if you allow it to do "fill gaps".

[BA2 1]

2 hours ago, gr5 said:

Nice.  Hopefully your part won't be weak because you didn't fill in those gaps.  I think it will probably be fine.

 

I didn't realize your part had such thin walls.  If I had then I might have figured this out.

 

I was talking about there being extra green lines.  Not yellow lines.  Yellow is basically infill.  Red is outermost line, green are inner walls (there can be many but typically 2) and yellow is anything inside that (infill, skin, gap filling).

 

You still might want to play around with the "wall" value and make it exactly half the width of those curved walls.  If you know what that value is.  Otherwise you may have gaps in the walls and the part may end up weaker than if you allow it to do "fill gaps".

It seem to be strong and good print the one from creality slicer, so i think those settings are fine for this model. Do you know what the dynamic quality profile does? It seems that this profile print the model with variable line width (?)
I would love to learn what setting that is on to make it "dynamic quality". Somehow the line width property does not apply or at least only serves as a base-setting?