# How to determine real printing speed (TEVO Tarantula/Cura)?

Recently I noticed that Cura always is giving me less printing time than the print itself takes on my TEVO Tarantula with Marlin firmware.

The time difference is about 15 %, at requested 50 mm/s printing speed.

How could I verify real printing speed?

• slow down the travel options in cura to reflect hardware limits – dandavis Apr 10 '18 at 2:05
• Multiply by 0.85 . Done. – Carl Witthoft Apr 10 '18 at 13:08
• haha @CarlWitthoft, if life were so easy ....... – profesor79 Apr 10 '18 at 13:09

Printing speed is dependent by the firmware and physical properties of your printer.

Slicers typically compute the expected time by assuming the printer will execute exactly what it is instructed to do, but a printer is a real object, with mass and momentum, and stepper motors that have an upper limit for their power output and rotation speed.

So for example, the GCODE may say "extrude 200mm at 100mm/s" and the slicer will compute that operation as taking 2 seconds. However the printer will need to accelerate and decelerate at the extremes of the movement, and it may even be incapable of reaching speeds over 70mm/s, so the actual operation will likely take 3 seconds or more.

Accelerations and decelerations account for most of the difference between ideal time and real one, and since the number and intensity of those is totally dependent by the GCODE/model being printed, it is not possible to simply multiply the computed time for a given factor (for example 1.15, as your question seems to imply). A large cylinder printed in vase mode will have a printing time much more similar to the computed one that an intricate model with a very complex surface, for example.

In recent years, slicers that are maintained by a printer manufacturer (cura, slic3r PE) have become better at estimating printing times for their own printers, as the settings of the firmware are accounted for in the actual estimating algorithm.

If you use Octoprint, you may have noticed that the time estimate octoprint gives improves over time, as octoprint will analyse the GCODE and measure the elapsed time, and will be able to guesstimate the real time with an increasingly degree of accuracy.

I use a Anet A8 which has a system acceleration and jerk of 400 and 20 When i slice with Cura, then I use a gcode without acceleration control, because the printer does this by its own and a combination with the gcode acceleration/jerk control gets me some strange behavior (e.g. sometimes some ultra slow movement in fine detail sections, or random nearly stopped movement) But to get a realistic approximation for the print time, i enable the acceleration/jerk control in cura and then I get a really good result, that is really close to the real values.

And to be more specific to your question: It is e.g. 50mm/s >>maximum<< speed you can set, not a exactly and absolut speed. If you know your printer you can also experiment with the following approach: Set the max speed really high, so that the max material volume per time is the limiting factor and set the acceleration and jerk as low as needed for good results. So that your printer will accelerate on long lines as long as it can up to the point it has to deaccelerate for the next corner.