Speed up init time?
Hi,
I recently received my Core One and while I am pretty happy with the printer, there is one thing that really annoys me. And that is that it takes several minutes (up to 5 minutes) until the print starts. I am not entirely sure what the printer is actually doing that takes so long, but it seems that it first heats the nozzle to 150°C, then does some checks, then heats the nozzle to 170°C, followed by the bed probing and then finally heats the nozzle to 230°C, before it starts printing.
I tried to speed up things by pre-heating the printer in the LCD menu, but that didn't help that much. Compared to my MK3S, it takes ages until the print starts. For longer prints I do not really care, but since I am doing a lot of prototyping, it is a bit frustrating to wait ~5 minutes for the init, just to do a 10 minute print.
Is the Core One's init routine really that slow compared to the MK3S? Are there any settings (either on the printer or in the slicer) that I can change to improve that?
Thanks a lot!
Bernhard
RE: Speed up init time?
Unfortunately, I can't edit my initial post anymore, so I'll put the additional information here. It looks like that the printer spends ~1:45min cooling down the chamber temperature to 20°C. I guess that is because the nominal chamber temperature setting in the slicer is set to 20°C?
RE: Speed up init time?
Unfortunately, I can't edit my initial post anymore, so I'll put the additional information here. It looks like that the printer spends ~1:45min cooling down the chamber temperature to 20°C. I guess that is because the nominal chamber temperature setting in the slicer is set to 20°C?
That should not be the case, in my understanding of the chamber temperature settings. There is a "minimal" chamber temperature, to which the printer will heat the chamber before it starts a print. And there is the "nominal" temperature, which the printer aims to reach and maintain during the print -- but it should start the print right away, even if the nominal temperature has not been reached.
I am not aware of a mechanism where the printer defers a print until the temperature falls below a maximum value. Do others see the same? Is this a bug?
The process of heating the nozzle in multiple steps, which you describe in your first post, should not extend the overall initialization time significantly. The total time should be the sum of the time to heat to 230°C, the time for bed probing, and for any other checks. Whether the probing and checks are done before or after the heating, or halfway while heating is paused, should not matter.
RE: Speed up init time?
Ouch. So I was not hallucinating...
I noticed the very same phenomenon when printing PLA. As we work in a pretty comfortable workspace the temperature might have been a tad too high to the CORE One's liking for PLA. If this is designed to work like that I find it pretty good, actually.
RE: Speed up init time?
You didn't mention the "absorbing heat" step which also adds a couple of minutes. The XL does this with its much larger "multi-plate" bed, I guess Prusa feels like their smaller machines can use this as well. I wonder if the MK4S will get this at some point. Anyway, if I'm near the printer I usually skip this as I'm using one of those BIQU Cryogrip sheets that I assume don't need to "heat soak" to 60 C if they are already perfectly "sticky" at 45 C and the material isn't prone to warping. So far so good on that (but again this is only if I'm babysitting the print start).
RE: Speed up init time?
Thanks a lot to everybody who replied - very much appreciated!
I did a couple of more tests and this time the chamber temperature was too low and the printer spent a few minutes in the "absorbing heat" step. To me it looks like the print only starts if the chamber temperature is at exact 20°C. If it is too hot, it waits until it is cooled down, if it is too cold, it waits until it is heated up.
Unfortunately, I can't edit my initial post anymore, so I'll put the additional information here. It looks like that the printer spends ~1:45min cooling down the chamber temperature to 20°C. I guess that is because the nominal chamber temperature setting in the slicer is set to 20°C?
That should not be the case, in my understanding of the chamber temperature settings. There is a "minimal" chamber temperature, to which the printer will heat the chamber before it starts a print. And there is the "nominal" temperature, which the printer aims to reach and maintain during the print -- but it should start the print right away, even if the nominal temperature has not been reached.
That was also my understanding, but at least for me, it seems to behave differently 🤔. Just double checked my Slicer settings and the min. chamber temperature is set to "0". What I also find a bit surprising is, that while the chamber gets heated up/cooled down, the nozzle temperature is lowered to 150°C again. Not sure what's the purpose of this is (safety feature?), but this means that after the chamber reached the required temperature, the printer again waits until the nozzle is at 170°C.
Does anyone know if I can (temporarily) disable the heating/cooling process and start the print immediately? To me this still sounds like a bug, but before investigating that behavior further, I would really like to test if I can somehow abort the heating/cooling process and if the print then starts immediately.