3DPrinting

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3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

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Why do we still use stepper motors? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Why are 3D printers still stuck on stepper motors? Why haven't we transitioned to servo motors with encoder feedback for positioning?

Is it just too cost prohibitive for the consumer-level? We would be able to print a lot faster and more accurately if we had position feedback on the axes. Instead we just rely blindly on the stepper not skipping any steps when we tell it to move, hoping for the best.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Have you seen how fast printers with stepper motors can get? They print benchies in less than 3 minutes. The bottleneck is not the motion system, it's either the hot-end or the part cooling. Also stepper are super accurate and very flexible. Drivers are advanced and can tune for torque, speed, sound etc. Collision detection and skipped step detection is also a thing.