Time calculations for printing
Hi together,
I am pretty new to using PrusaSlicer and I am not sure how to interpret the output in this screenshot:
As I add up the times for printing the perimeters and so (~3h10m) on I get a much lower printing time for all the stuff than the shown "Total" time (~4h28m). What is causing the huge difference here?
NOTE: I did not print the item in this case (yet) so I am not sure what time might be accurate at all. It is more a general question to understand the difference in the times shown in this dialog.
Thanks for any hints and help in advance!
Kind regards
Daniel
RE: Time calculations for printing
There are items you are not showing in the list to display like travel for example.
RE: Time calculations for printing
Hi Neophyl,
thanks for the hint, travel seems to be the main missing point. As I understand travel time it is nozzle movement without printing, correct?
I think I have to take a deeper look into that, travel time seems to be very high for several models I had a quick look at (e.g. honeycomb storage walls).
Thanks and kind regards,
Daniel
RE: Time calculations for printing
Travel time seems to be highly affected by the perimeter generator setting. For a honeycomb storage wall e.g. setting the perimeter generator to "Arachne" triples the time for travel than setting it to "Classic". This is several hours for a big piece of honeycomb storage wall.
Just out of interest I tested the "Arachne" setting in the Anycubic Slicer (the old one, based on PrusaSlicer). In the Anycubic Slicer this setting does not seem to affect the travel time.
Is there anything to optimize with the "Arachne" perimeter generator to lower travel time or is this just normal?
RE: Time calculations for printing
Unfortunately the travel time with Arachne is 'normal'
In fact if you monitor the Prusa Slicer github where all bug reports should be made - https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues/13004
or https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues/11658 for example. There are several closed duplicates in there so it is not like its an unknown issue.
PS has always been accused of having poor travel planning but Arachne seems to have made it worse.
One other thing that I find make a big difference is the z hop height setting. There can be a big difference just between 0.4 and 0.8. Probably due to the fact that Z movement is the slowest of all movements. It is worth experimenting with and comparing the time estimates.
I will say that the estimates from PS are generally pretty good. Certainly better than Orca. In general the PS ones tend to be a few minutes over estimated so the print finishes a bit sooner, the Orca ones tend to take about 30% longer than the estimated time.
RE: Time calculations for printing
Hi Neophyl,
thank you very much for taking the time to clarify things a little more for me. I will try to fall back to the classic perimeter generator for some prints that are significantly faster (will have a look at the results though). Maybe this slow travel times will (hopefully) be fixed in the near future.
Thanks a lot and kind regards,
Daniel