4 ms·
Depends on who you are, and what you're using it for. If you're printing stuff out that other people designed, more likely than not, you're willing to wait. If
by iamwil 14y ago
Depends on who you are, and what you're using it for. If you're printing stuff out that other people designed, more likely than not, you're willing to wait.
If you're designing the object, a shorter iteration process means faster learning and better creative flow. There's a significant difference between being able to think something up and try it out within an hour vs waiting a week for it. If you're a programmer, it's the difference between having a REPL and sending a deck of punch cards for overnight batch processing.
The current designs of single head FDM machines average about 60mm/s. The fastest XY heads can achieve 400mm/s, and the deltabots are around 300mm/s or so. There is an upper limit to how fast you can move a head around, but it doesn't feel like we've hit it yet.
In addition, I think as the FDM designs get explored and played out, we'll see explorations in other possibly faster methods. So as the home desktop printers get faster, I believe it'll find a niche that's different than what you'd do with online 3D printing services.