First top layer/printing over infill

Al_Capwn · March 10, 2023

Hello all,

I'm tuning a 3d printer and trying to get my print times down as I have quite a few things to print, a problem I have run into is top/bottom print speed.

I think I have sorted out the problem as to why my top surface looks cruddy and it seems to be due to the first layer to be printed over infill. If I print anything faster then 50mm/s the lines being laid over the infill end up broken and cause the following layers to be far from perfect. I understand that I could probably fix this buy having more infill but at 25% it is already a big portion of the time spent printing and I do not want to add more time or more material for little gain in strength.

My thought is, If there was a speed setting for that initial layer that is printed over the infill I could set that to 45 or 50mm/s and then bump up the speed for the rest of the tops to be 70-90mm's no problem. If there is such a setting, or a way to effect the speed of the layers to be printed over infill separate from the printing of the other top layers please let me know.

I'm printing parts for a printer so 4-5 top layers are going to happen, and running them all at turtle speed is going to kill me on time. The main issue is power is not totally solid where I am and I would love to be able to print more in one go, but Any print time over say 10 hours is asking for it...

Thank you for reading ^_^

MariMakes · March 14, 2023

Hey @Al_Capwn,

Welcome to the Ultimaker Community 🎉

There are a number of settings that you can tune to help with your situation.

Have you taken a look at any of the following settings?
- Skin Edge Support Layers, are extra infill but only in the top most layers to help with a low infill percentage
- Bridge Skin Support Threshold, will help with determining which parts of your model is printed as a bridge, improving your tuning options because than you can define Bridge Skin Speed
- Infill Layer Thickness, really depends on your printjob, but will help you skip a number of layers where infill needs to be printed, it just prints thicker infill.
- Infill Travel Optimization, will help with finding the most efficient way to print infill
- Lightning Infill Pattern, one of the fastest infill patterns around, I use it often to speed up my printjob.
- Shortest Zseam Alignment, This option simply minimises the length of travel moves leading towards the seam, making no effort to place it anywhere in particular. Because the travel path is shorter, you'll save a small measure of time on travel moves.

Is this the kind of information you are looking for?