Good morning!
Firstly, thanks so much to sdj544, HubertM, and especially brent113 for your help on my last forum post. Feeling good about the prints we’re making!
Onto the relevant questions…
I am printing a bunch of stands for a local nonprofit, and I realized that the gcode has the columns printing all at once instead of one column at a time. Is there a way to change the gcode to make it print one column at a time? I think it would save a few hours on the print.
To clarify what I mean, check out the image below. It will print one layer on 1, move to 2 and print one layer, move to 3, and so on. Wouldn’t it be far faster if it just print the entire 1st column and then move to column 2?
My second question is about batch printing. I am also printing some 3d cubes from Universal Core Vocabulary – 3D Symbol Format – Project Core for a nonprofit and would like to print more than 1 per a print but I’m not sure the best way to go about doing that. I assume printing one at a time instead of having the printer go back and forth layer by layer like it does with the columns would be best. I’d greatly appreciate any advice!
I’m pretty sure if you went at the model you’re showing in the order you’ve described, the printer would hit 2 while printing 3 and knock the model over. This is likely why I’ve never heard of a slicer that will optimise prints to minimize horizontal travel in the way you’re suggesting. At minimum, it would have to know something about the design of the entire print head, not just the nozzle, to make certain it didn’t hit anything. (Theoretically possible, I guess, but a lot of work.)
If you have completely separate objects, as in your batch print case, some more sophisticated slicers (not Luban) will allow you to print each one completely before moving on to the next. In Slic3r, the setting is called “Complete individual objects”; I would expect that Cura has some equivalent. Slic3r warns you outright that it can’t guarantee that the print head won’t hit anything if you use this setting, though.
Yea, what ElloryJaye said. I have heard of some slicer optimizations for printing as high as possible before moving on. It requires some level of modelling the print head geometry.
It’s typically valuable with a print head geometry like this:
It’s not very wide, so the slicer marks an exclusion zone around it, and your column examples could be printed very tall without worrying about collisions.
That’s less practical on the Snapmaker toolhead, because the sensor is about 1mm above the nozzle tip, and the rest of the toolhead is just above that. There’s also minimum layer time considerations for cooling that make it even less practical for small tall objects, but would be fine on a cube.
There’s some discussion here: Multi-Part Printing | Simplify3D Software Sequential printing has some benefits, mainly a slight benefit to surface finish and speed, but the benefits usually don’t outweigh the limitations it imposes geometrically with the toolhead and X gantry risking hitting the model.
Thank you both!
That makes a lot of sense. Never thought about the possibility of running into parts.
