Has anyone think of this?

Now those slicing softwares slices at the same layer height for both extruders' parts (if you have two/more) and both perimeters and infills of a model. Why don't they slice perimeters and infills separately, and then different layer heights are applicable of perimeters and infills. Then I would use 1mm nozzle or something like that on one extruder, and 0.1 nozzle on the other extruder, and when extruder #2 (with 0.1mm nozzle) has extruded 10 layers of perimeters, at 0.08 mm layer height (that might not sound practical, but you suppose using a .2mm nozzle and 0.15mm layer height, too), extruder #1 will extrude 1 layer of infill at 0.8mm layer height. I think this would save some time and meanwhile, since only the exterior of the printed part is seen, more details will be shown.

Many of you guys might have thought of the same thing, and I have a feeling that there should be some technical difficulties to accomplish that, but is it actually possible, to slice the different parts of a model at different layer heights?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2014 09:16PM by jpan.

It's been thought of, and I believe it is under way of being implemented. Slic3r can use different extruders for different parts [perimeters, infill, solid infill, etc.] and it infills at different intervals than the perimeters, so really it, it may already be doable.

I recall seeing a printer on Kickstarter not too long ago that used this technique. It looks very professional and they claimed it dramatically reduced the print times. I would not be surprised if that was true.

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This is basically what the infill every N layers feature in most slicers is for. If you set it to slice at 0.1mm and then set the infill every 4 layers the infill will be at 0.4mm. The width of each is defined by the extrusion width settings in the slicer. Some slicers will allow a different hotend for the infill and perimeters and if not you can use my tool change post processor to do it.

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+1 ^

Slicer already does this with a single nozzle. It is limited to your nozzle size. A very common size and width ratio is using a 0.4mm nozzle with 0.1mm layer heights for perimeters and infilling every 3 layers with a 0.3mm height. You get limited at how much you can lay doown by nozzle size. While you dont want a 1:1 ratio of width-height, you could get 4 perimeters to one infill with a 0.4mm nozzle. If you go the other way and get a 1.0mm nozzle, then your 0.1mm perimeters wont look very good either.

So, by adding another nozzle what you get is 2 less infills every 10 layers. Not really a great savings. If you already have the second nozzle, then you can take advantage of this as most slicers already have the option of selecting the second nozzle for infill only. Again, infills are probably the fastest compared to multiple perimeters. Your not really gaining much.

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Since infill "prettiness" doesn't matter too much, you can print infill at silly speeds anyway. I'm not sure this saves that much time. Would save time if you were using a single perimeter, but no structural part should be made like this.

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konwiddak
Since infill "prettiness" doesn't matter too much, you can print infill at silly speeds anyway.

One thing I don't understand so far is, why do people try to achieve short build times with (sometimes ridiculous) high head movement speeds? Moving the head at moderate speeds with a relative high material flow would lead to thick, strong paths laid down and also relieve mechanics a lot while still achieving high build speeds.

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They do it that way to maintain some of the "prettiness." Increasing flow implies larger layers. And the more flow for less movement the less pretty, despite layer size. Corners will not be as sharp, overhang will be worse, etc.