Here is a part printed with Up! official ABS (with PC?) filament on both printers. The part was printed with its narrow side down because I didn’t want to have to dig support out of the deep “well” and captive nut cavity.
Both printers were set for 0.2mm layer thickness, medium fill, and 30-degree support, but the Afinia was in “fast” mode, while the Zortrax was in its only current speed, slow/normal. The Afinia was in an Octave enclosure, the Zortrax is not enclosed. The Zortrax printed a lot more support than the Afinia, constructing a full cylinder around the cylindrical portion of the model and another cylinder around the outer perimeter of the zig-zag support.
The end result, as you can see, is quite similar. A bit more precision from the Zortrax apart from the vertical “seam” resulting from the toolpath direction reversals. Support removal from horizontal surfaces was easier and cleaner on the Zortrax.
[quote name=LonV]How were the printing times?
[/quote]
Not a fair comparison because the Afinia was in “fast” mode and the Z doesn’t have a fast mode yet. Also the Z made a ton more support; it’s pretty much optimized for print quality and not speed at the moment, but I’m sure we’ll have the ability to make those tradeoffs ourselves after a software update or two.
The Afinia took an hour and a half I think. Suffice it to say the Zortrax took a lot longer due to the above, but I wasn’t timing it.
I don’t think so… It only waits for nozzle to heat up. They said to wait about 10-15 minutes to be sure bed is hot enough. I think in the future the printer will have some kind of timer to let you know when it’s ready.
The heated bed does heat up quick though, and feels hotter than the UP. Pretty sure the perfboard is metal, not FR4 like on the UP so heat transfer is better. The hot end takes a while to heat up too, I haven’t timed it but it seems longer than on the new UPs, giving the bed extra time to get to temp.
[quote name=LonV]Hey Juila/Jamie, does it wait for the bed to heat up before starting a print?
[/quote]
I think the bed starts heating as soon as the printer is turned on, and it seems to heat up pretty quickly. The heater and the bed are bolted together with heat-conductive paste between them.
The extruder takes a long time to heat up but once it’s up to temp it pretty much stays there - when you hit extrude or withdraw or print after that it starts immediately, which is wonderful for those of us used to having to wait for the Up every time we do anything. I think there’s a timeout that turns it off eventually, but it’s a long time.
[quote name=Old Frog]Thanks Julia! I expect you will be sharing more comparisons as soon as you get your Z-ABS.
[/quote]
I hope to be able to stop making comparisons and just enjoy each printer for what it does well The Up has proven itself as a faithful workhorse and I know how to get usable prints out of it. The Zortrax has already shown that it can equal or exceed the Up’s print quality; I’m looking forward to using its larger build area once adhesion and warp issues have been overcome.
