Short overview of how good the nesting capabilities of various 3D slicer are.

The task is simple: placing as many of these shapes on a 200x300mm printed as possible. Manual (quick and dirty for reference): 6 pcs.

Ranking:

  1. Ultimaker Cura: 7 pcs.
  2. human (me): 6 pcs.
  3. Orca slicer: 5 pcs.
  4. PrusaSlicer & BCN3D stratos: 4 pcs. By switching (for this particular part) from the worst (Prusa) to the best (Cura) slicer the nesting performance improved by a whopping 75%!

Ultimaker Cura:

Prusa:

BCN3D Stratos (forked from an old version of Cura):

OrcaSlicer:

  • @[email protected]OPEnglish
    1•6 months ago

    With mainsail and klipper, you can cancel one failed part mid-print and keep going on the rest of the parts.

    There is an addon for Duet (RRF) but I can’t get it working. Anyway, once it is time for a batch print the first testprint has been completed successfully and build plate adhesion is a non-issue on this printer.

    You have to tell it the dimensions of your extruded head, so it doesn’t crash the part Ask me how I destroyed two z-endstops this year (very asymmetrical toolhead and Prusa can’t be configured to reflect this and with a “radius” large enough it would block half of the printbed (60mm radius or so) meaning eyeballing is the best option).

    I only use this option if I need the part before the entire batch is finished and don’t want to start multiple prints. Which isn’t frequent.

    • @mystikEnglish
      1•6 months ago

      I think it’s not widely front-and-center because it’s kinda fiddly, especially with folks with customized printers and there are caveats that can damage the machine or ruin the print if you are not careful. Sadly, I think that some of the more ‘closed’ slicer/printer systems could support it more reliably because the dimensions of the head + arm are much better known and the tool path can be planned much more precisely.