Two questions to the Prusa i3 MK2 users:

3D Printing
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Two questions to the Prusa i3 MK2 users: (hard not to bite the bullet :slight_smile:

  • what is a ‘realistic’ high printing speed (that you actually tried out) with an ok quality ? (I saw Prusa mention that anything beyond 80mm/s is too high for good quality and 50mm/s is a good reliable speed)
  • has anybody tried out an swapping the hot end to an E3D Volcano ?

Thanks in advance !

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I think 50mm/s is probably what most people would print fdm for a decent quality print irrespective of the printer. I print at 55 on my machine which is fine and drop to 45 for a nice print finish. Honestly I slice everything at 55 and may turn the feed rate up or down on the printer to adjust. To rush a print I’ll push the feed rate to 150 or 200%

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@Michael_Scholtz ​ thanks, that is pretty much the speed I use on all my printers but I keep “wishing” for higher speed for quick and dirty prototypes ( hence the Volcano. :slight_smile:

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I’m now at 55mm/sec for the i3 MK2 - (exactly the same settings as I use on the BigBox and Sigma) and I’m not seeing any sign of lowering quality. In fact I see no reason to slow down below that with most of the ‘normal’ models you would print on a day-by-day basis in various materials.

I’ll go faster and see where the limit is. And I may also try out a Volcano on the i3 MK2 at some point soon.

I do go faster with the Volcano on other machines, but not by much. In general I would prefer a better print, with less chance of failure, than a slightly faster one. A speed of around 60mm/sec seems to be a good general figure for most well built machines these days.

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@Richard_Horne thanks for the infos ! Looking forward to see you squeezing (literally:) more out of the i3 MK2 !
Did you already try flexible filament on it as well ?
(one of my points of interests, since all my printers are bowden & not direct)
As far as speed goes :honestly I am a bit surprised, I always assumed I was printing ‘slow & safe’ but way below what is actually the norm.
Reliable & slow is indeed a good option, but even more so if you don’t keep the printers in the living room haha :slight_smile:

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@Mark_Moissette_ckaos I think we had a period of time when many people were reporting high print speed settings that were being limited by firmware speed.

Generally lower layers and improved print quality are now desired, so I think we are seeing many people slow down more than a few years back.

I still print some models at 80 - 100mm/sec but there was a time when I only set to 120mm/sec on lower layer height prints.

I almost always use z-hop on all prints so that slows things down a little. I’m using the Volcano as it has a good material deposition rate on everything apart from the MK2.

One day maybe we will talk about material deposition speed rather than print speed as a way to gauge quality & finish vs print time.

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@Richard_Horne thanks for the insights ! (and sorry for the much delayed response !) I find the switch back from the search for speed to a more patient approach interesting .
I still wish I could find the time to test out the 1mm Volcano nozzles to see how much of an increase in deposition speed I get vs quality, so your analysis is spot on !