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Hi,

I am using Simplify3D and I am comparing layer height to the amount of filament being used.

I am seeing something that doesn’t make sense to me (20% infill is being used):

At 200 micron layer height the calculated length is about 7000mm

At 300 micron layer height the calculated length is greater than 200 at about 7300mm

This shouldn’t be the result of whatever calculation Simplify3D is trying to do… 300 microns should use less material. Am I missing something? This really messes with how I charge for a 300 micron vs a 200 micron print. If the difference is not significant (I can live with spending 300mm extra), how do you charge for the longer amount of time your printer will be active for, it is sometimes double or more and my print will go from 12 hours to possibly 24 hours but the material cost is essentially the same…?

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Her is my guess on the slight increase in filament. If everything stays the same on the model settings except for layer height then consider this. If you have four top and four bottom layers then at .2 you have a total of .8 for the top and for the bottom totaling 1.6 in layer height and solid fill. But at .3 layer height you now have top and bottoms layers that are 1.2 each with a total of 2.4 so over all you have a gain of .8 in total solid layer fill and height.

Does this make sense or am I also missing something?!!

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Hi Again!

Thanks for the reply. Your explanation makes sense to me. Still learning the business :). I guess the print time is the driving factor for pricing when going across layer heights. I will need to come up with a way to determine this myself. Appreciate all your help!

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Yes makes sense to me. Enza3d explained it pretty well. Thanks for taking the time to discuss here!

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You explained it better than I did, sounds right to me!

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Thanks, it just kind of popped into my head and I wondered if it had any substance or was just another wacky thought. I never really think about material used based on layer height but you brought up some good comments.

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This could be an interesting test. Run your print to get the stats at your .2 height with like 3 top/bottom layers or however you had it configured. Then run it again with the .3 layer height but no other changes and record the material usage length.

Now, if you used 3 bottom/top layers with the .2 (.6 for top and for bottom total) then change the .3 to 2 bottom/top (again .6 for total) each total and see if the .3 total material length usage changes.

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You hit the nail on the head!

However, I am going to add this little tidbit, to complicate things further:

Since I hate sag, something you are going to get if you use the 20% infill recommended by 3dhubs, you MIGHT want to modify your top and bottom layers count. I run fast and hot. I like how the prints in PLA look from hot. So I get a little more sag. If I print at .1mm or less there is not enough material to build up against the sag. So I use the same thickness. That is, if I am going to print 4 top layers in .2mm, I print 8 top layers in .1mm.

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Hi @PineappleSystem print time is a big factor in a growing 3D print business, as I know to my cost. If you’ve got a single job that is going to occupy your printer(s) for several days, effectively you can’t take any more orders until the job is almost complete or, you have to adjust your expected shipping date. If orders continue to come in you can soon find that the expected date for new orders is moving further and further away and you run the risk of unhappy customers. So you really need to price such that jobs which take a lot of filament and at lower layer heights are covering the “income per day” you’d normally expect. The current 3DHubs pricing options don’t make this easy as a smaller, complex print with a lower layer height that needs a slower speed could take a lot longer than a large, simple print.

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Hi again!

Any layer height should use around the same amount of material, as all you’re doing is changing how many layers it takes to print, not how much volume of material is required. It’s just a fraction of something whole; if I have a part and choose to slice it using say 300 microns, I get 1000 layers and lets’ say each layer uses 30mm of filament. Now if I choose to slice at 100 microns, I get 3000 layers, but each layer will use 1/3 of the material as the 300 micron layers so 10mm. Regardless of layer height both will use 30,000mm of filament in this hypothetical scenario. Now obviously in the real world things won’t be exactly the same, but they should be close. Simplify does have a tendency to change certain settings when you change layer height (infill, number of shells and number of top/bottom solid layers) so I’d check those and make sure they’re the same between layer heights (can be found in the “Layer” tab).

When I charge for prints, I price it so that my raw material costs are the same (as they should be) which I calculate for each filament. Then I multiply the raw cost by some factor, which compensates for the increased print time when you use smaller layer heights (and increased electrical usage, higher likelihood of failure, etc). When you do it this way, 300 microns is the cheapest, and 50 microns is the most expensive. It’s not a linear relationship between layer height and print time; going from 200 to 100 microns can quadruple the time depending on the printer. The raw material costs are fairly straightforward to determine, the factor for time is something you’ll just have to play with until you find a balance between competitive pricing and a number you feel comfortable with to cover your costs and turn a profit. Electricity costs are a significant part of my pricing calculations (I have NY metro area rates to thank for that one), but that may not be the case for someone in a different part of the world, so it’s a very regional specific type of factor and also very dependent on how much profit you are looking to make.

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How would I measure usage length?

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Unspool the filament and with a really fine pen write the distance at 10cm intervals, then spool it back on. Simple. More seriously, some printers have a stats readout that shows filament used. The Prusa does under “Statistics” while prints are running.

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I must be asleep. I was completely was going another way as to what you were talking about!

Now that I am more awake, I get what you were saying, DUH!

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I use Simplify3D also and I’ve seen plenty of strangeness here as well.

I used to have a MakerGear M2 and the filament length and time to completion seemed accurate. I now have a Fusion3 F306 and the filament lengths and time of print aren’t even close.

I’ve also noticed that there seems to be issues with the SUPPORT option in recent updates.