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
man makes me think back to those vhs 1980s videos they showed us in class of bees making honeycomb and then cutting to fighter jet wings being manufactured with honeycomb infill. the absolute bestigons
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Author is fundamentally wrong about reading the graphs 4:15 . It is clear that best results for infill are around 10% - which means that optimal infills is probably just enough to act as internal support. But for walls it is clear that maximum measured walls is the best. Generally there is not enough data, because at some point thickler shell will not make part significantly stronger, until you reach a point, where you just have 100% infill.
It's a fallacy that the optimum point for two parameters is where their 2D curves cross over. It's actually the peak of a 3D solution space describing the strength to weight at every combination of infill and wall count.
Author is fundamentally wrong about reading the graphs 4:15 . It is clear that best results for infill are around 10% - which means that optimal infills is probably just enough to act as internal support. But for walls it is clear that maximum measured walls is the best. Generally there is not enough data, because at some point thickler shell will not make part significantly stronger, until you reach a point, where you just have 100% infill.
Super interesting. Thanks for this. I really appreciated the tempo/speed of this, many others would stretch this out to a 20 minute video. Keep making more videos like this.
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.
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.
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…
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)
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
4:01 The number of walls and the infill % are mutually exclusive (for strength/weight), so why use the intersection? The actual approx. max strength/weight ratio is the parameter that has the highest ratio! In your results, that 10% infill and 8 walls. Think about it: why do you place the infill curve axis(0-80%) on the wall count axis (1-8) such that 80% infill correlates to 8 walls? You could also have done only 4 walls in your test set, so then 80% infill would correlate with 4 walls? Since the axes are independent of each other, you can't overlay them all willy-nilly. This is why some comments are saying that you are better off using thicker walls than trying to increase infill density for this type of mechanical failure. Infill is more useful for compression integrity when the walls can't be used to support the applied force.
Great video! I really liked how straight forward and well structured you presented your results, without additional stuff to artificially lengthen the video. Great that you put so much effort to get some knowledge for the community. I would really like to see more. For example it would be interesting to see how well the different infill pattern perform when it comes to multilateral forces applied.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Very interesting findings. Thanks for sharing! One thing I would suggest is maybe using a tensile test to compare infils next time. Since you're loading these beams in bending, the most critical factor is the wall thickness. Much of the infill is close to the neutral axis, and therefore contributes very little to the bending strength. In a tensile test, the print orientation relative to the load orientation would be critical too. Thanks again for the info!
Gyroid is what i use bc its strong, fast, and eliminates high spots that can cause the nozzle to knock the part off the bed. The others get high spots where the infill crosses over the previous pass. Theres a few videos on this too
I would like to see the "Cross Hatch" pattern compared to the others and also print behavior meaning shaking while printing should be interesting. Biggest downside to gyroid is print speed and shaking so I am looking for a better infill with similar amazing anisotropic and strength behavior.
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.
I've kinder missing the speed component, strength to weight ratio is nice if you care about the material price, but often enough we care more about the time. Does some infills have an optimum percentage for strength/print time?
Agreed, though as a serious hobbyist with more than one printer, I've taken to printing slowly with some items, PETG can work wonderfully with clear as glass prints in that regard, much over 20mm/sec and the clarity drops significantly
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.
Fantastic - Thanks for this. I am looking into this for sheer strength of a gaming table part joiner. Will take your advice onboard and test the walls and likely use honeycomb for the dimentional advantages of the shape
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'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.
I'd love to see an updated version of these tests that includes the brand new Cross Hatch infill. It replaces Grid as the new default infill pattern in Bambu and Orca slicers! It was created by Bambu Labs and improved by the Orca Slicer team to work better at lower percentages.
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'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!
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.
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
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.
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. 🎉❤
Interesting to see how infill contributes in part breaking strength. Although I think infill% and infill pattern are likely more important for compression strength than for tensile strength. When loaded in the test fixture shown, the outer layers are going to be taking most of the force-- which is probably why the often-cited advice is to increase perimeter layers rather than infill% if you want higher breaking/tensile strength). Whereas in compression, the infill is contributing a much higher component. I usually use triangle infill for parts needing high compression strength and increase perimeter count when I need higher general strength. The 3D honeycomb and some of the other more complex infill types take a *massive* amount of additional time for large parts. At 15% infill, one of my large parts would take over 78 hours with 3D honeycomb, 36 hours with Gyroid, and 31 hours with Grid. For smaller parts, the time difference probably matters less, but it's usually around 50% to 100% longer due to all the direction changes.
What slicer program & version did you use to do this testing? There are been some recent infill updates in OrcaSlicer and BambuStudio that might influence the strength of infill patterns.
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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.
I haven't done proper empirical testing, but on small (smaller than 2 fists), mechanical parts, you get way better strength with increase in shell thickness (perometers and top/bottom layers) than with infill. Infill helps on large stuff, and even then you get more strength with more perimeters more quickly. Usually when I find myself thinking about the strength of the infill, you're already way past the amount of forces that a plastic part can reliably withstand.
I’m curious to see an experiment making the strongest 10mm beam by combining all three of the highest strength combinations of walls, infills and patterns. As well as the strength of the best strength to weight ratio combinations. I’m also curious what it would take to hold the weight of a person. Man I need to get a 3D printer
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!
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.
What is your infill to wall overlap set to? I'd be very curious to know if changing it from Bambu's default 10% overlap to a more solid infill to wall connection of 40-50% would increase strength across the board. Think about it, 10% overlap of .4mm nozzle is 0.04mm melted plastic connection.
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
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.
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)
In most situations, the biggest amount of force will be applied the farthest from the center of the piece. The only exceptions if is the strength is applied in the same axis as your part. So it is absolutely logic that the number of walls would make the most difference for the bending test you ran. It should also be true for torsion, but it may be different for tension and compression. My guess would be that tension would also depend on the axis the part was printed, and that compression would require the infill to hold the walls together as strongly as possible.
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
Generally when I am printing a structural part I am not too concerned if the weight goes up slightly as I am more concerned with the total amount of load it can handle. With that being said I am glad I generally go with 3d honeycomb or gyroid, they always looked the best structurally to my eye. I often forget about adding walls, thanks for the entertaining research!
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
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.
Hi! This question if offtopic but I don’t know the right place to do it, it’s about the threadboard project that I’ve bought. I want to know if you can make a simple video about how to create a hole in any piece that fits with the thread, because I want to attach the board to my bed’s desk and I designed a piece to that but the hole has not the right hole to be attached. I would like you to make a vertical stand too if possible. Thank you!
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.
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?
These test data are the ones I really need and have been looking for. Thanks for the test! @3DPrinterAcademy Looking forward to more tests and results. But can I know how much infill percentage you used to test other types of infill patterns? Was it 20% for all? or varied? Thanks in advance.
I want to verify the infill density because in other tests and studies I have seen so far, different infill densities can change the strength level of the infill patterns.
Adaptive cubic seems to me to be the best balance of print time, strength, and filament used. Gyroid and 3d honeycomb are both useful, but I've found they often take a bit longer and can really rattle/shake some printers with the constant change of direction. (Adaptive) cubic avoids that. Good video.
I like this type of video! Btw, do you know the strength ratio between PETG and PLA? Companies tell me PETG is stronger, but I made the same piece in both and I can easily break it with PETG, but definitely cannot with PLA (using my hands).
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.
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.
I prefer to do most internal geometry in CAD. if the part doesn't need to be obscenely strong, then I'll just shell the model to 1.6mm thick. However, if there's a large top layer that need propping up, then I'd probably resort to 4 walls, lightening infill. Bridging 20mm with 6 tops layers works fine, before you need to consider infill/internal geometry. The main benefit of CAD internal structure is that anyone can print it, without any slicing experience, and the model can be sliced on any slicer with the same outcome. Strength can be added where needed, and voids can be added to save time/material.
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.
Really nice analysis. I like gyroid, the only downside is it's relatively loud (vibrates a lot) when printing so even slowed down it's the least ideas for overnight quiet printing
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.
CHEP looked at infill wall count - he found you could reduce infill percentage, filament used, and increase strength by increased the wall count to 2, - stronger part less filament. Would be interesting to feed his results into yours and see what the optimal is.
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.
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.
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.
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A related question is, what infill is fastes to print? When you don´t need strength. Meny like gyroid, but the printer shakes a lot and I get the feeling it is taking time with lots of direction changes...
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!
Using a Strength to Weight ratio as the indicator of which is strongest only applies when one cares about weight or cost of the part. It also depends on which direction the force is applied. I understand that you're trying to give some indicator of strength, but there are a lot more variables that go into determining infil than just weight and cost.
@@vim55k If your part takes loadings on a face instead of edges where there are perimeters to support it, then more infill and less perimeters is generally strong and a lot stiffer.
@@vim55k Direction of the forces on the object. Personally, for a lot of my parts I have a minimum strength that will be required. At that point it's a matter of finding which one provides the strength I want with a good balance of print time. Most of the parts I do are smaller, so cost isn't really a factor.
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.
Suprised no one has mentioned this, but apparently hexagons, are still, the bestagons
I came to comment this. But instead here’s my like
man makes me think back to those vhs 1980s videos they showed us in class of bees making honeycomb and then cutting to fighter jet wings being manufactured with honeycomb infill.
the absolute bestigons
Gyroid has always been and always will be the best
Ok now i can make stuff in a way that wont just explode itself instantly
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.
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.
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.
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!
I'd go for strength/speed. I don't care about the weight but about the most strength in the least time (also he did strenght/weight)
Author is fundamentally wrong about reading the graphs 4:15 . It is clear that best results for infill are around 10% - which means that optimal infills is probably just enough to act as internal support. But for walls it is clear that maximum measured walls is the best. Generally there is not enough data, because at some point thickler shell will not make part significantly stronger, until you reach a point, where you just have 100% infill.
It's a fallacy that the optimum point for two parameters is where their 2D curves cross over. It's actually the peak of a 3D solution space describing the strength to weight at every combination of infill and wall count.
Was thinking the exact same
Based on this data, the best combination is the highest point on each curve.
We need a plot of the pareto front (surface)
Author is fundamentally wrong about reading the graphs 4:15 . It is clear that best results for infill are around 10% - which means that optimal infills is probably just enough to act as internal support. But for walls it is clear that maximum measured walls is the best. Generally there is not enough data, because at some point thickler shell will not make part significantly stronger, until you reach a point, where you just have 100% infill.
Super interesting. Thanks for this.
I really appreciated the tempo/speed of this, many others would stretch this out to a 20 minute video.
Keep making more videos like this.
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.
Great video. Would like to see tests done also on tensile and compression strength.
They will certainly give different results according to the shape.
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.
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…
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)
Optimum according to his graphs are 20% infill with 8 layers of wall
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.
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.
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
@@user-ix9lx4sp1z In this real world. Is not the fatest, but one of the fatest/strongest.
Try it with a non shitty and slow printer.
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.
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.
Lighting for the win!!!
Regardless of the reason. I'll have to do some further testing.
4:01 The number of walls and the infill % are mutually exclusive (for strength/weight), so why use the intersection? The actual approx. max strength/weight ratio is the parameter that has the highest ratio! In your results, that 10% infill and 8 walls.
Think about it: why do you place the infill curve axis(0-80%) on the wall count axis (1-8) such that 80% infill correlates to 8 walls? You could also have done only 4 walls in your test set, so then 80% infill would correlate with 4 walls? Since the axes are independent of each other, you can't overlay them all willy-nilly.
This is why some comments are saying that you are better off using thicker walls than trying to increase infill density for this type of mechanical failure. Infill is more useful for compression integrity when the walls can't be used to support the applied force.
Great video! I really liked how straight forward and well structured you presented your results, without additional stuff to artificially lengthen the video. Great that you put so much effort to get some knowledge for the community. I would really like to see more.
For example it would be interesting to see how well the different infill pattern perform when it comes to multilateral forces applied.
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.
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.
Great video, proved several tests/points and wasn't an hours long video with meaningless talking! Thanks for sharing w us!
This is awesome!!!! I love 3d printing soo much and i love to see new ways to use and adapt to life. 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
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Very interesting findings. Thanks for sharing! One thing I would suggest is maybe using a tensile test to compare infils next time. Since you're loading these beams in bending, the most critical factor is the wall thickness. Much of the infill is close to the neutral axis, and therefore contributes very little to the bending strength. In a tensile test, the print orientation relative to the load orientation would be critical too. Thanks again for the info!
Gyroid is what i use bc its strong, fast, and eliminates high spots that can cause the nozzle to knock the part off the bed. The others get high spots where the infill crosses over the previous pass. Theres a few videos on this too
This content is worth to be published as an international journal.
I would like to see the "Cross Hatch" pattern compared to the others and also print behavior meaning shaking while printing should be interesting. Biggest downside to gyroid is print speed and shaking so I am looking for a better infill with similar amazing anisotropic and strength behavior.
I appreciate how well you detailed your scientific method :)
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.
I've kinder missing the speed component, strength to weight ratio is nice if you care about the material price, but often enough we care more about the time. Does some infills have an optimum percentage for strength/print time?
Agreed, though as a serious hobbyist with more than one printer, I've taken to printing slowly with some items,
PETG can work wonderfully with clear as glass prints in that regard, much over 20mm/sec and the clarity drops significantly
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.
Fantastic - Thanks for this. I am looking into this for sheer strength of a gaming table part joiner. Will take your advice onboard and test the walls and likely use honeycomb for the dimentional advantages of the shape
I learned a lot from this video. Thank you for taking the time to share with us.
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'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.
I'd love to see an updated version of these tests that includes the brand new Cross Hatch infill. It replaces Grid as the new default infill pattern in Bambu and Orca slicers! It was created by Bambu Labs and improved by the Orca Slicer team to work better at lower percentages.
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'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!
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.
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
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.
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. 🎉❤
Interesting to see how infill contributes in part breaking strength. Although I think infill% and infill pattern are likely more important for compression strength than for tensile strength. When loaded in the test fixture shown, the outer layers are going to be taking most of the force-- which is probably why the often-cited advice is to increase perimeter layers rather than infill% if you want higher breaking/tensile strength). Whereas in compression, the infill is contributing a much higher component.
I usually use triangle infill for parts needing high compression strength and increase perimeter count when I need higher general strength. The 3D honeycomb and some of the other more complex infill types take a *massive* amount of additional time for large parts. At 15% infill, one of my large parts would take over 78 hours with 3D honeycomb, 36 hours with Gyroid, and 31 hours with Grid. For smaller parts, the time difference probably matters less, but it's usually around 50% to 100% longer due to all the direction changes.
What slicer program & version did you use to do this testing? There are been some recent infill updates in OrcaSlicer and BambuStudio that might influence the strength of infill patterns.
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.
This is absolutely fantastic video! :)
I haven't done proper empirical testing, but on small (smaller than 2 fists), mechanical parts, you get way better strength with increase in shell thickness (perometers and top/bottom layers) than with infill. Infill helps on large stuff, and even then you get more strength with more perimeters more quickly. Usually when I find myself thinking about the strength of the infill, you're already way past the amount of forces that a plastic part can reliably withstand.
I’m curious to see an experiment making the strongest 10mm beam by combining all three of the highest strength combinations of walls, infills and patterns. As well as the strength of the best strength to weight ratio combinations. I’m also curious what it would take to hold the weight of a person. Man I need to get a 3D printer
good ideas! here's my recommendations: 3dprinteracademy.com/blogs/3d-printers/3d-printer-academys-3d-printer-recommendations
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!
Great video, yet when you talk about infills you should mention printing time which is crucial even in bambu lab printers and alike.
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.
What is your infill to wall overlap set to? I'd be very curious to know if changing it from Bambu's default 10% overlap to a more solid infill to wall connection of 40-50% would increase strength across the board. Think about it, 10% overlap of .4mm nozzle is 0.04mm melted plastic connection.
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
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.
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
In most situations, the biggest amount of force will be applied the farthest from the center of the piece. The only exceptions if is the strength is applied in the same axis as your part. So it is absolutely logic that the number of walls would make the most difference for the bending test you ran. It should also be true for torsion, but it may be different for tension and compression. My guess would be that tension would also depend on the axis the part was printed, and that compression would require the infill to hold the walls together as strongly as possible.
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
Generally when I am printing a structural part I am not too concerned if the weight goes up slightly as I am more concerned with the total amount of load it can handle. With that being said I am glad I generally go with 3d honeycomb or gyroid, they always looked the best structurally to my eye. I often forget about adding walls, thanks for the entertaining research!
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
Have you done something similar to this, but testing for impact resistance?
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.
Hi! This question if offtopic but I don’t know the right place to do it, it’s about the threadboard project that I’ve bought. I want to know if you can make a simple video about how to create a hole in any piece that fits with the thread, because I want to attach the board to my bed’s desk and I designed a piece to that but the hole has not the right hole to be attached. I would like you to make a vertical stand too if possible. Thank you!
Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time and effort to do this
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.
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?
These test data are the ones I really need and have been looking for. Thanks for the test! @3DPrinterAcademy
Looking forward to more tests and results.
But can I know how much infill percentage you used to test other types of infill patterns? Was it 20% for all? or varied?
Thanks in advance.
I want to verify the infill density because in other tests and studies I have seen so far, different infill densities can change the strength level of the infill patterns.
Great video dude, out here answering all our questions..
Adaptive cubic seems to me to be the best balance of print time, strength, and filament used. Gyroid and 3d honeycomb are both useful, but I've found they often take a bit longer and can really rattle/shake some printers with the constant change of direction. (Adaptive) cubic avoids that. Good video.
I like this type of video!
Btw, do you know the strength ratio between PETG and PLA?
Companies tell me PETG is stronger, but I made the same piece in both and I can easily break it with PETG, but definitely cannot with PLA (using my hands).
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.
Fantastic video and format. Pure science. Thank you.
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.
I prefer to do most internal geometry in CAD. if the part doesn't need to be obscenely strong, then I'll just shell the model to 1.6mm thick. However, if there's a large top layer that need propping up, then I'd probably resort to 4 walls, lightening infill. Bridging 20mm with 6 tops layers works fine, before you need to consider infill/internal geometry. The main benefit of CAD internal structure is that anyone can print it, without any slicing experience, and the model can be sliced on any slicer with the same outcome. Strength can be added where needed, and voids can be added to save time/material.
Very very cool. Thanks for making this video.. I learned alot here.. Keep on doing this. Thanks Rolfie
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.
Really nice analysis. I like gyroid, the only downside is it's relatively loud (vibrates a lot) when printing so even slowed down it's the least ideas for overnight quiet printing
Thank you! Very useful for my ongoing project😊
Gyroid is a must for first printing as it’s the only one where the lines do not cross each other reducing the chance of nozzle strike
so what does the lightning looks like? you results shows 18 row infills but previous part only show 16 type of structures
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.
CHEP looked at infill wall count - he found you could reduce infill percentage, filament used, and increase strength by increased the wall count to 2, - stronger part less filament. Would be interesting to feed his results into yours and see what the optimal is.
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.
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.
Definitely interesting. More data is needed!
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.
A related question is, what infill is fastes to print? When you don´t need strength. Meny like gyroid, but the printer shakes a lot and I get the feeling it is taking time with lots of direction changes...
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!
How much filament did each infill use? That would have been nice to know.
Using a Strength to Weight ratio as the indicator of which is strongest only applies when one cares about weight or cost of the part. It also depends on which direction the force is applied. I understand that you're trying to give some indicator of strength, but there are a lot more variables that go into determining infil than just weight and cost.
What are other variables? I noticed honeycomb and gyroid more flexible.
What are your considerations?
@@vim55k If your part takes loadings on a face instead of edges where there are perimeters to support it, then more infill and less perimeters is generally strong and a lot stiffer.
@@vim55k Direction of the forces on the object. Personally, for a lot of my parts I have a minimum strength that will be required. At that point it's a matter of finding which one provides the strength I want with a good balance of print time. Most of the parts I do are smaller, so cost isn't really a factor.