This 3D Printer infill is the strongest (3D Printer Academy Tested - Episode 2)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 พ.ค. 2024
- There are many different types of 3D printer infills to choose from, but which one is the strongest? Does infill or wall count matter more? Let’s find out!
Timestamps:
(Coming soon)
Learn more: www.3dprinteracademy.com
Happy 3D printing!
-Steven - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
5 years ago Stefan at CNC Kitchen did testing on infills. His results were similar to yours, however, he also took time to print into consideration, which eliminated both honeycomb infills, as they took 3x as long to print. That left Gyroid and Cubic the recommended infills.
Printers are so much faster now. I don’t think time-to-print is as critical as back then. In this example print time is as follows:
Lightning: 27m
Gyroid: 34m
Grid: 34m
3D Honeycomb: 41m
For most applications that require strength, I don’t think 7 minutes makes any difference.
Going from 3 times as long to only about 20% longer is pretty amazing. Any interest in seeing which infill is the best thermal insulation? @@3DPrinterAcademy
@@3DPrinterAcademy Gyroid print time greatly depends on the max acceleration of your printer, as its curved nature implies permanent changes in direction / accelerations, whereas grids and other "linear" types of infill are not.
And I think time is actually still critical. Not for small prints, for sure:
I came from my 1st printer 8 years ago, a MK8 RepRap, printing at 30mm/s to a Voron 2.4 today, printing at 350mm/s, on a larger bed, but one thing hasn't drastically changed : average print time. I can now consider way larger designs and prints than before, and usually keep max print time under 8 hours.
7 minutes difference over a 30 min print doesn't make much difference. Over an 8 hours print, you would save almost 2 hours. This is critical
Don't forget about rapid changes in movement directions which potentially wear printer's mechanics. Cubic infill is choice of mine
Yeah, the results are similar. Turns out one of the best infills is the one you got when you open your first slicer.
Might also be interesting to know how strong the infills are in another axis. From my experience Gyroid is quite good in all directions. But it's nice to see that still if you want strenght, you add walls.
Exactly my thoughts, he should've tested at least the vertical and horizontal axes
@@Reza1984_ So many different ways to test, so many datapoints :)
Should not use a square. A tube with a 3 mm hole in the center, so it would load the infills in all directions...
Infill probably will be more significant on thicker prints where the distance between the walls is greater. The strength due to walls probably drops off quickly as the distance between the walls increases.
also type of beam shape, in structural engineering its very well known that I-beams have better strength to weight ratio than square beams in one direction of load.
so it would be an interesting test to see if using an I-beam shape with infill on both sides of the web would outperform a square beam with infill inside.
Funny how a week ago I was looking for this exact video because a prototype of mine with gyroid infill just snapped easily, then I printed again with 3D Honeycomb (adds 14% more grams, ABS) and it's probably 3x as strong. One of the important things to look into is the orientation of it, as gyroid infills print 4 layers per "switch in infill directions" so for every 4 layers it's pretty snappable into a spaghetti-looking remains. Shape, material, and walls play proportional parts altogether as well in achieving the most efficient prints
Yes, i had this problem too. It really depends for the gyroid infill, what orientation it starts , how tall is your modell and where te force comes.
This is exactly the type of nuance that needs to be in these kinds of videos!! Please pin this comment lol
Infill should not make a part stronger in terms of tensile strength in real measurable way...(you stated snap, so I assume it wasnt a compressive failure)
If its having a significant effect it means your walls are not thick enough, and you can increase strength to a greater degree using the plastic in the walls rather then infill.
Infill is to provide compressive strength and internal support for layers, not overall strength.
Sorry, you missed to show in what direction the infill was oriented in the test. It makes a difference if you apply bending on a part in original z or y direction. If your profile would have been asymmetic i could see by myself, but as you use a square profile, it is hard to precisely make out, which direction is used.
I paused the video: The pieces are being broken laterally! I bet the other orientation will show better results and gyroid will not end on top any more.
I always taught my students to use gyroid for solid objects for the better aesthetics when visible through walls and stronger strength with the same material use as triangles. So glad to see your results supported my experience!
I really don't like gyroid when it's semi visible through the walls. It reminds me of worms or parasites crawling around skin deep or funky looking veins.
Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time and effort to do this
Great experiments! I especially like how you designed the 3 point tester. One minor thing is that intersecting the graphs like at 4:05 isn't the best way to optimize. Imagine if one graph were a horizontal line and the other graph curves above it. The best place would be at that peak, not where they intersect. So I'd pick from the peaks in each graph.
It's not a minor problem! The intersection solely depends on how he aligns wall count to infill ratio, so is completely arbitrary. Geez! 🤦♂️
I'm curious about his motivation about this intersection on a graph being optimal. It seems wrong. From this test you want to minimize infill and maximize wall count. Don't see anything special about infill and walls str/weight being equal. What are we optimizing for, exactly? More meaningful experiment would be to test strength of a piece for given weight changing wall count and infill simultaneously. And test for different weights as the optimal point would probably shift.
This is awesome!!!! I love 3d printing soo much and i love to see new ways to use and adapt to life. Fantastic video!!!!
Very nice!
I usually print 3 walls at 20~% infill...now I know they are pretty much optimum for strength/weight...and my default infill is cubic
I like your testing methods and multiple tests with different types of geometries and infill/walls setup...it really covers alot of the "normal" slicer settings most people use.
Keep em coming!!!!
It is not, unfortunately he made a mistake implying that. He hadn't tested for best infill/wall ratio and those graphs tell very little about that (and even if they were, he used them incorrectly)
Great video. Would like to see tests done also on tensile and compression strength.
They will certainly give different results according to the shape.
It would also depend on the direction of force. If you only need to support weight in one direction that is simple, but if force can be applied in any direction that is another thing.
Really interesting tests, yes please do more of this! I'd personally like to see the top performing infills tested again with different filaments to see how dependent the infill is on rigidity. I'd also be curious to see if the ideal infill percentage varies with each infill geometry.
Fantastic video and format. Pure science. Thank you.
Gyroid makes the most sense to me, because it's not only very strong, but it's also very quick to print because the pattern can be laid down continuously as much as possible.
Thanks for taking the time to do these tests and report your findings, it's really helpful.
I learned a lot from this video. Thank you for taking the time to share with us.
I this the thing about honeycomb is that a hexagon has the lowest perimeter compared to its area, so it probably just made the part lighter. Maybe you could try 0% infill with just walls filling the entire part?
It actually turned out to be the 3rd heaviest one ( 6:00 ). I definitely wouldn’t have expected it to do so well. I wonder if further tests would show the same thing…
One of the reasons why I always use Gyroid is that it always works well. It's quick to print and maintains a good surface for the tops.
Gyroid is quick to print? In what world?
@@user-ix9lx4sp1zOn this world, of course.
Use the option "Connect infill lines" or something like that (I do not have Ultimaker Cura in English) and you will se.
@@user-ix9lx4sp1z gyroid only increases print times by about 5% for me vs cubic.
@@user-ix9lx4sp1z In the group of strongest infills, Gyroid is one of the faster infills to print
one of the most useful tests!
Suprised no one has mentioned this, but apparently hexagons, are still, the bestagons
Great video, proved several tests/points and wasn't an hours long video with meaningless talking! Thanks for sharing w us!
Thanks for posting this saved me a lot of time
Nice work, thx for uploading.
Great video dude, out here answering all our questions..
When I got started with printing I admit that at first I really only looked at what infill looked the coolest and chose Gyroid. Then I though about it and drew the conclusion that Gyroid must also be one of the strongest infills since it redirects the force away from the direction it is trying to travel in, strengthening the piece as it does. It works kind of like the straws that Mark Rober used in his egg drop video.
Very useful! Toying around with printing the "FPV pickle frame" which is a micro toothpick frame either 3" or 3.5". This video gives me much good info to think about. 🎉❤
Very very cool. Thanks for making this video.. I learned alot here.. Keep on doing this. Thanks Rolfie
The reason Cubic is so good is the best trade off on time to print, and part strength. It gives support in all directions, and 3d honeycomb does this too but takes a lot longer to print since your printer has to do a lot of cornering. All other infills give strength in only one direction or are just for fun.
Considering 3D honeycomb and gyroid are very close, test the two against each other at various infill densities.
Gyroid is generally faster and stronger in your tests, but that might change with different infill density.
Having a comparison with a piece with no infill would be very interesting!
4:16 has 0% infill
Thanks for making this video.
First, let's assume the flow ratio is correctly set for each filament, as that will obviously has a direct impact on any part's strength. Also, I'm afraid that without testing different extrusion (line) widths for the top-performing infills you cannot state that infill A is better than infill B. Moreover, different types of infills serve different purpose when loaded in different directions, so that's also something to consider when choosing infill types for a part.
Last but not least - certain infills like Hilbert Curve, Archimedian Chords and Octogram Spiral are to be considered for visual appeal of a part, either in first or topmost layers. Lightning infill is to be used for a model which requires no rigidy (such as a display model or a statue) but still has to support some internal structure. It has a potential to save a ton of time and material.
Great work, thank you!
What a great video! Short, interesting, highly informative! Thanks! Since the video of Stefan from CNC Kitchen I used Gyroid since it's somehow the best compromise between print speed and strength in all directions. Lighting for example is best for lightweight applications, but if you compare the absolute strength it's not that great. It's only the highest score because of the low weight.
A large note for this is considering that some perform better for vertical infill and some perform better for horizontal infill. The force applied on the beam should be tested in both directions.
Im more interested in hotend stability and wear and tear with each infill, this would be a fantastic watch.Also print duration of each infill would have been nice,great video.
As an engineer This was a damm good video i would love to see further testing on the infill when exposed to different kinds of loads namely (compressive, tension, torsion, etc)
Yes! Definitely agree with this. I don't think I've actually see a whole lot of testing being done on torsion either
And other axis
When you were giving the results, it would have been helpful to have a picture of the infill type beside each name. I couldn't remember which was which from you quick introduction to the infills earlier.
Good video. I'm not completely convinced that the intersection point is the most optimal, though. It would be interesting to see strength when weight is kept equal and strength tests for both axes.
This is absolutely fantastic video! :)
Thanks fo4 doing all the testing. Very interesting! Did you have them oriented the same way? Would be interesting to see how print orientation effects print strength
Definitely interesting. More data is needed!
Nice work!
Nice.... Very informative!
Another awesome video! Thank man!
Great video, yet when you talk about infills you should mention printing time which is crucial even in bambu lab printers and alike.
Keep yp the great work, very interesting to watch! Personally I usually use gyroid and now know that I can keep using that and mix between walls and infill percentage to optimise :)
Another issue I ran into is not the overall strength of the print but the warping over time you may get if not using the right infill which this video should help me better understand. Thank you.
It would be interesting to test small parts (1-2mm thick) using 100% infill and various numbers of walls. I think more walls can actually reduce strength in that case, because walls are identical from layer to layer, whereas 100% infill crosses itself at right angles.
Great vid! For more meaningful results each setting test should be run at least 3 times, ideally 5.
Would love to see a walls+infill combined variable test.
Overall, my suggestion would be to pick the best performing metrics from these results and iterate on those settings. With 5 samples per setting you can toss an outlier and perform meaningful statistical comparisons.
Cheers for the great content, looking forward to more!
I'd be really interested to see these stats with print time included. Really the bast balance of time to strength matters more to me than strength to weight does. Having said that this was great information presented in a very easy to understand format. Thanks for the work!
in the table, place a shading (or image) that corresponds to the type of fill, because in a quick short video, when you first watch it, it is difficult to remember which number in your test corresponds to which fill
Great video and info, thank you for doing it! I appreciate that you factored in strength to weight ratios because as 3d printers, we're always concerned about how much filament is used, but there are times where we only care about strength and using an additional 10 grams of filament isn't a factor in the decision. It would be nice to have organized them based off only strength too. Also would have been cool to know what wall count you used while doing the infill percentage and the other way around and then taking the best from both and seeing how strong you could make one part. Just my 2 cents 😊 great video though
It'd be hella interesting to see samples of infill percentage in the different types of infill.
And yes, I know what amount of printtime I just casually threw around.
Your testing is actually quite close to standardized load testing for shear strength. Theres three more that are relevant: with one end supported and one free, compression along long axis and torsion against twisting load.
I suspect that honeycomb and cubic will be of highest interest.
Missed the opportunity to test out adaptive cubic at high infill percentage. It scales up differently than the rest, only increasing density near the walls. Whenever i need an incredibly stiff part i do adaptive cubic at 99% infill with three walls.
This content is worth to be published as an international journal.
I’d love to see the infills tested with part weight held constant.
I’d bet adaptive cubic would see greater improvement relative to the rest of the pack given how infill is denser near the walls.
#adaptivecubicftw
my defaults are:
Adaptive cubic because it's fast, easy and most efficient for big parts. Bad for warp prone materials because straight lines.
Gyroid for warp prone materials that would self destruct with cubic. Also internally connected cavities, relevant for flooding/ drying.
Archimedean chords for parts that need to flex in a specific way.
I would recommend doing the infill density tests on all the infills and then the wall tests with all the infills, plotting everything on a graph and finding the strongest weight to strength ratio of all. I can definitely see 20% gyroid with like 4 walls being extraordinarily strong for its weight compared to others having to have more walls or more density. Just a prediction, but I would love to see the testing be more in-depth.
I tested wider infill width. I wasn't able to test, just hoping the extra material deposited would increase the strength overall. With your tests maybe I should make wider walls.
Awesome video!! It would be interesting to check the number of lines in the infill (line multiplier). I usually print with a line multiplier of 3 and an infill density of 10%; the print feels very sturdy.
Gyroid has been my fav and seems fastest/ quietest to print with as well
I usually just print with minimal infill and then inject a 2-part resin into the part to fill the voids when i need a super strong part.
Lighting for the win!!!
Regardless of the reason. I'll have to do some further testing.
This is a 100% solid video. 😁👍 It would be good if you could measure the plastic deformation point of the print to, because (If I remember correctly) that is the point of where the material can return to its original form with out being destroyed.
I love Gyroid infill a lot, it's strong in all directions, looks cool, prints relatively fast and awesome overall.
For big non functional prints I use 8% Gyroid infill and it makes a good base for all top layers to lay on. Something functional I use 15-20% with 4 walls (0.6mm nozzle) or if the client says 100% infill I do that
Great info!!
Thanks for the very informative and useful info. It would be interesting to know load verses deflection of the top three maximum strength, wall / infill combos in Z and X directions. There seems to be enough deformation prior to failing to be conclusive.
What about the anisotropy of some infill types. Did you test them in their strongest or weakest direction?
I would hope he tested in the same orientation as they were printed, but it'd be interesting to see what the changes would be should they be retested in a perpendicular orientation from which they were printed.
Great video!
You should probably normalize infill percentage so all the parts will have exactly the same weight, then "Strength/Weight" will be the most important stat because weight will be the same!
Excellent video, but there is a unique issue that occurs with the different forms of infills such the the percentages are less accurate the more complicated the infill pattern is resulting in the change in overall weight of the part. This would indicate that the more complicated or heavier parts based on infill are giving you more infill than requested. Basic density calculations prove this given the same material is being used for each. CNC, just using them as an example as you certainly have many excellent methods here, adjusted the infill % to more closely achieve the same weight of the part thereby creating a more fair comparison of strength to weight by keeping another one of the parameters constant.
Nice work.
As far as I can see you in your tests you apply the force only from top direction of the infill, I suggest to try the same test but form the side of the test model, in real life it is very rare case when we use our parts in this conditions.
This is interesting! Ive always had bad luck with gyroid at high speeds and tend to stick with cubic subdivisions/adaptive cubic, but i might have to give it another shot now.
One thing ive noticed with cubic subdivisions/adaptove cubic is that they come out very differently between slicers. On failed or canceled prints ive noticed that Cura cubic subdivisions are really rigid internally and have no air gaps, while in prusa slicer derivitives they tend to be more frail and allow stuff to flow between them. Maybe ive just never found the same settings combo when i jump to orca or superslicer that Cura defaults to? It would be really interesting to see the comparison.
Would have been useful to know what slicer was used, as well as temperature, speed, wall thickness and how many of each type of samples were tested (I presume only one in this case) and what the deviation among them was. Also, were both of the filaments equally dry/wet? Were they from the same individual spools and/or batches? So many things can have an effect on the results here.
3-4 months into 3d printing with a K1 and quickly learnt the ropes and TPMS aka Gyroid has become my go to for strength backup by this and other studies plus a white paper from some phd’s - next down if short on time is cubic sub-d as a second - end of the day just look as what the high end AM boys are doing and follow their lead in aerospace and racing
Greater sample size plus stricter measurements (for example deformation start vs failure would be a useful metric) would definitely improve this project. It's really good stuff though!
I've been using gyroid as my default because of the strength and I like the way it looks. (useful in drip trays of various kinds) I recently switched to 3D honeycomb as it appeared to be almost as strong, but prints a little faster with less vibration. Judging from your results, my assumption was correct. I'll probably use that now and just go to gyroid when I need maximum strength.
Thanks for the comprehensive test. It would have been good to know the direction of force relative to infill orientation, since this affects the result quite much, I suppose. One concrete question: I'm about to print a semi sphere with 296mm of diameter, with 5 walls and no huge force on it planned. But I need to print it with a good outer surface finish. What would you recommend choosing for infill? I thought about support cubic at 23% which will lead to about 530g of weight (while adaptive cubic or rectiliniar would be around 800g) - a good choice in your opinion? Thanks to everybody for commenting!
I e always used gyroid because it seemed strong in all directions and printed fast. Thanks for confirming my intuition.
Nice testing, however I think the other two orientations should be included in the test to make it relevant, since most of these are only symmetrical in one axis. For clarity, these other two would be done by:
1. Using the very same model used here, but rotated on it's side
2. Printing with the same settings, but flipping the model on the slicer so that one of the small ends is on the printing surface.
For example concentric is ranked 3rd in strength here, but with the other two orientations I'm quite sure it wouldn't be. It would be nice to get comparable testing results and rankings for each orientation, and an average for each type of infill. With a quick google I didn't find any results on people doing comprehensive tests like that. Since you already have the rig and methods in place I think you would be the perfect person to do it.
This is really cool. There's other factors too. Like direction of force, tensile or sheer. For the lightening would increasing the infill little add some more strength without much increase in weight? There's also the time aspect, obviously that's a linear relationship to weight but how does the infill geometry impact print time?
I think that some infills are more popular than others also because of the added printing time. It would be interesting to see that comparison.
I think a test with no infill would have been interesting. I bet it would perform nearly as well as the lightning infill. If no infill has the highest strength to weight ratio, that kind of negates lightning as even serving a purpose for strength.
The video is really interesting. Of course, from the point of view of strength of materials, it would be more accurate to conduct tensile and compression tests. Bending is a special case of these loads.
On the other hand, 3D printing differs from the standard approach. As the part is manufactured layer by layer, this results in varying strength depending on the point of application of the force. The parts are more vulnerable to forces applied perpendicular to the plane of the layer. They are also vulnerable to torque in this plane.
The time to print the test articles alone... phew this was a lot of work!
it would be interesting to compare the infill with highest raw strength to the infill with best str/wt ratio but leveled to the weight of the former by increasing surface layers
Hi friend,
Thanks a lot for your tests.
One of the most interesting part of printing is the strength of the z axis. Could you help to also test the flexural strength of the printing rods when they are printed standing?
Infill line multiplayer is another good variable to test. I’ve found I can reduce infill% by half and make the line multiplayer 2. It prints faster and I assume takes less material.
Another test to do; walls vs thickness. 8 walls printed at 0.75mm line-width is a bit different than at 0.45 :)
So standardizing the wall total thickness
Very usefull video. Regarding the infill percentage, the strength to weight ratio decreases as the infill ratio increases. This result, possibly, only valid for this type of test (three point bending test), as the highest stress occurs at the outer skin of the beam, whic is the wall. The infill is not carry much load. If the test is a tension test, the result could be different.
I wonder if some of the bambu lab ones that did not actually fail (break) fell off of the edge of the tower. That means if tested to breaking point would show stronger. Very good video and testing.
I'm questioning if the intersection of the two lines is actually anything particularly notable. Sure they're both plotting strength/weight ratio, but they are fully independent variables. That methodology of reading the plots would only make sense if increasing perimeters also implies increases in infill - clearly that's not the case. How I read those graphs is that to get the highest strength in a standard beam deflection test, load up your perimeters and reduce the infill to just where it can support the shape of the beam internally. Essentially, make a fancy I-beam (or boxed beam if we're being pedantic). Also, the exclusive focus on strength to weight has its own slight issues - like the lightning infill results seem to support.
Lightning might just be an outlier for the particular orientation it was printed and tested in. Knowing that it starts sparse and grows to be dense, I wonder how it would do if the testing orientation were flipped upside down. This way, the force is still along the same axis, just opposite direction. All of the other infill patterns should do the same because they don't change in density as they grow.
I always use Gyroid for my Drone parts ;-) combining with 5 walls and 2mm top and bottom. PC or ABS!! Great data, thanks!!!!
Something I never see with these tests is infill orientation. Print the same things off and rotate them 90° and see how that affects the strength. I'm also curious as to how print speed vs number of walls affects print strength? 40mms vs 80mms vs 120mms. Does printing slower net you a stronger part?
Very nice video, thanks!, but to summarize everything, what filling and walls are generally good for printing PLA or PETG pieces that must have good mechanical resistance? Thank you!
1:20 in which axis orientation to walls did You perform tests ?
4:17 Which one is lightning infill ?
4:50 some infills are only 2D - while others are 3D - in which axis orientation did You perform tests?
I really like the 3D honeycomb, it looks good and I feel like outsourcing that design to nature is funny, I think bees have put more thought into tiny structures than me.
Regardless of results, Gyroid is my favorite infill.
Combine it with the "gradient infill" hack (see CNC Kitchen's video) and "lightning infill" (which isn't technically an infill), and you basically have a jack-of-all-trades hybrid infill going on.
Lets talk about plastic deformation!
But first, great video! I appreciate the effort to be scientific. Your video covered fracture strength, which is definitely useful. I also think it would be useful to know the strength of all these parts be at the point just before they are permanently deformed (aka plastic deformation). This would be very useful, since i think most of us printing functional parts would not really like to have the part operating in a deformed state.
Disclaimer: i understand polymers have a funky stress strain curve, where the elastic region of deformation is… atypical of other materials. I also know that parts under a bending moment exhibit a different curve than parts under tensile stress