Is it possible to print a #3DBenchy in less than two minutes? It seems so.
YouTuber Jan Roetz has been on a quest to develop the fastest desktop 3D printer for well over a year. The “Minuteman” 3D printer uses FFF technology, but in very different ways that attempt to optimize every possible angle to achieve the highest print speeds.
Roetz has been able to print the #3DBenchy model in less than five minutes for a while, and I should note that these are actually quite good quality. There is no benefit in printing a crappy part fast, as it’s really about quality AND speed.
The Minuteman 3D printer is quite interesting, and it has several highly unusual features. The two most interesting are the extrusion system and the motion system.
The extrusion system is actually four high-performance BondTech extruders bolted together to provide very high material flow capacity. The speed barrier for most machines is that they are simply unable to deliver any more material to the hot end. That’s definitely not the case with the Minuteman. You can see an image of the extruder at the top.
The motion system is very different on the Minuteman. Because the extruder is so complex and heavy, it remains stationary, while the print plate moves around. The plate moves in the X-Y directions by using four motors on the corners that pull the plate precisely and very quickly.
In the most recent video, Roetz explains several new developments.
One of the most interesting is a new style of cooling system. Cooling is incredibly important for high-speed 3D printing, because it ensures the previous layer is fully solid before a second layer can be built on it. High-speed machines run so quickly that normally layers are still soft while more material is deposited on them.
The new cooling design attempts to get the airflow as close as possible to the freshly printed material. This ensures the fastest possible cooling. The design has a circular orifice that surrounds the hot end, providing full 360-degree coverage.
Another factor investigated in the latest update is optimizing the slicing parameters. One factor examined, for example, is the use of different heat levels. Roetz has found that variable temperatures can provide some advantages.
However, there’s a problem: hot ends don’t heat up instantly. Therefore, Roetz has been looking for ways to “look ahead” and get heating going before it’s actually required during G-Code execution. He’s using open source code from sb35systems for this purpose.
Even with all these changes, Roetz found a #3Benchy printed in two minutes had significant quality issues. However, he believed that these were all caused by the layer time being too short to enable the plastic to solidify. In other words, cooling was insufficient.
Incredibly, he added a dry ice circulation system to dramatically cool down the air being blasted on the extrusion. This apparently dropped the temperature below freezing and should significantly increase cooling capacity.
What happened? The print completed in 2:03, basically a two-minute #3DBenchy. The results are shown above, which is actually pretty decent.
Is this the end? Not quite. Roetz’s ultimate goal is to print a #3DBenchy in less than a minute, hence the name of the 3D printer.
Roetz has plans to modify the extrusion system in a major fashion for his next update, and that will be quite interesting.
Is this a waste of time? Who needs a #3DBenchy printed in two minutes? Well, no one really. What it’s really all about is the development of the innovation that allowed higher-speed 3D printing. Once discovered, they could be incorporated into a proper 3D printer design and sold to the public.
And that seems to be where this project is ultimately going.
Via YouTube
