I’m struggling with the concept of “high speed” 3D printers, and now believe there should be a terminology change.
Over the past couple of years, a dramatic transformation of the desktop 3D printer market has occurred. With Bambu Lab’s huge success in their introduction of high-speed FFF equipment, the rest of the industry has had to meet that challenge.
We saw multiple companies introduce “medium speed” devices, quickly followed by fully high-speed devices. They had to do this, otherwise, they’d lose even more market share. Several 3D printer manufacturers that did not do this seem to have disappeared from the market.
Along this path, we’ve been reporting on all the new 3D printers that have rapidly emerged, some of which are incredibly impressive in not only their speedy prints but also the print quality and convenience features.
Any machine that prints more than 400mm/s (usually with 0.1mm layers) has been considered “high speed” by our team. Most of the manufacturers follow this practice as well, labeling their products as “high speed”.
Unfortunately, in practice, the stated speeds are rarely achieved because most prints are 0.2mm layers, which require a lot more material flow. Often, the realistic speed achieved is about half of the stated “high speed”. Nevertheless, we’ve specifically labeled these machines as “high speed” for a couple of years now.
As I peruse the market for desktop 3D printers, it’s now becoming increasingly rare to see any viable device that is not high speed. Only a couple of years ago, these would have been considered “normal”, and the other machines would have been “high speed”.
Now they are slow.
It’s time for a reset in terminology. The so-called “high speed” machines of today are no longer “high speed”, they are “normal”. It’s the older machines that are now “slow speed”.
It makes no sense to call machines high speed anymore, because they all operate at more or less the same speeds. There are only two outliers.
They are older machines that are now slow speed, and a very few machines that are much faster than the average. This would include the FLSUN S1 Pro, which can print at an astonishing 1200mm/s, about double the new standard print speed in the desktop 3D print industry. That is probably the only machine that now qualifies to receive the label “high speed”.
Going forward, we’re not going to call these machines high speed anymore. They are just normal machines. However, we will begin labeling the slower machines as such.
I think you should, too.
