How to Measure a 3D Printer's Production Capacity

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Basics

  • This page aims to find and/or develop metrics for measuring how many parts a printer can produce per unit of time
  • This will not be 100% accurate, but a general unit for comparing printers etc will be useful
  • Also units such as print bed, and extrusion speed etc, may not tell the whole story
  • Also perhaps develop a tool in the future (manual, or perhaps automatic) for converting specsheets of printers and printfarms into the value
  • Main Use case of the final unit will be:
    • Calculating "production speed" of machines and print farms
    • Calculating total "machine time" is needed for a run of parts etc (like print time but more generalized) essentialy like labor hours for repairs in car repair bills etc?

Base Units

Proposed Final Units

  • 3D Benchys Per Hour (Given that the benchy nearly tests everything, printing a quality one could be applied to nearly any type of print?)
  • 10mm Cubes Per Hour (May be better for working with vary basic shapes (gears etc, just 2d stacks with little bridging/changes between layers etc and thus faster?)
  • Lattice Cubes Per Hour (May be better for working with VERY complex shapes (Printing airless tires, art, etc)

Calculation Methods

Option A: Brute Force

  • Print as many of the selected object at a "standard" infill etc, that can fit on the printers print bed, then optimize for print speed as much as possible While Still Retaining Build Quality

Option B: Manual Math

  • Some number wizardry with the aforementioned "base units" and/or based off of experimentation witht the brute force tests

Option C: Computer Programs

  • Once option b is completed we can make a script with a GUI for plugging in the values, perhaps deriving what can be to reduce thata complexity, then giving the various values
  • An additional development would be a chrome extension, or libreoffice plugin? or something that can automatically do this for spreadsheets, and spec sheets

See Also

Useful Links