Modern printers advertise 500mm/s or even 700mm/s. Your first instinct might be to print as fast as possible - but blindly cranking up speed creates a mess of artefacts, weak parts, and failed prints.
This guide explains what speed actually does, what limits it, and how to dial in the right settings for your specific goal.
Faster printing introduces several problems:
1. Under-extrusion at speed
Your extruder can only push filament so fast. Exceed the flow rate limit and you get gaps, weak layer adhesion, and poor surface finish.
2. Ringing (ghosting)
The rapid direction changes at high speed create vibrations in the frame. These show up as wavy artefacts on the surface - especially visible near sharp corners.
3. Corner rounding
At high speed, the print head can't change direction instantaneously. Corners get slightly rounded as the head overshoots.
4. Layer adhesion issues
Less time at the deposition point = less heat transferred = weaker bonds between layers.
The good news: modern firmware features (input shaping, pressure advance) dramatically reduce these problems.
The overall speed the print head moves while depositing filament. The headline number.
Speed when moving between points without depositing filament. Can be much higher - 150-300mm/s is common even on slower printers. Travel speed doesn't affect print quality directly.
Speed for the outer walls. This is what you actually see - keep it slower for better surface quality. Many slicers default outer walls to 50-60% of the overall print speed.
Speed for internal fill patterns. Infill quality matters less than walls, so infill can run faster. 80-100% of print speed is typical.
Always slow this down - 20-30mm/s regardless of your overall speed. A good first layer is the foundation of the whole print.
Bridging (printing in air across a gap) needs a specific speed: fast enough that the filament pulls taut, slow enough to not sag. 40-60mm/s is a common starting point.
Every hotend has a maximum rate at which it can melt and push filament - measured in mm³/s. Exceed it and you get under-extrusion.
Typical limits:
| Hotend Type | Approx. Max Flow |
|---|---|
| Standard brass nozzle | 10-15 mm³/s |
| High-flow hotend (e.g. Bambu) | 30-35 mm³/s |
| Volcano / CHT nozzle | 20-25 mm³/s |
At 0.2mm layer height with a 0.4mm nozzle, 20mm³/s = roughly 250mm/s print speed. Above that you're under-extruding.
A wobbly frame vibrates more at speed, creating ringing. CoreXY printers (Bambu, Voron, etc.) are inherently more rigid and faster than bed-slinger designs (Ender 3, etc.) because only the toolhead moves.
Klipper firmware and Bambu printers support input shaping - the printer measures its own resonant frequencies and cancels them out. This allows much higher speeds without ringing.
Without input shaping: practical speed limit around 100-150mm/s for good quality.
With input shaping: practical limit around 300-400mm/s on a rigid printer.
Controls how the extruder reacts to speed changes - prevents blobs at corners and gaps on outlines. Enabled in Klipper (pressure advance) and Marlin (linear advance). Bambu handles this automatically.
Slow down the outer walls and reduce layer height. The rest can be faster.
The default starting point for most prints. Good results, reasonable time.
Accept some surface quality reduction in exchange for speed. Fine for parts that aren't visible.
Only relevant if you have a Bambu Lab printer, a Voron, or a heavily modified Klipper setup.
Tune flow rate first. Before increasing speed, make sure your extrusion multiplier is correct. Print a single-wall cube and measure the wall thickness - adjust until it matches your target.
Lower outer wall speed, raise infill speed. The outer walls are what you see. Keep those slow. Infill is invisible - run it fast.
Enable acceleration limits. High speed with aggressive acceleration is worse than moderate speed with smooth acceleration. In PrusaSlicer, check your acceleration settings.
Don't compare to Bambu benchmarks without their hardware. A Bambu A1 doing 500mm/s on Bambu hardware ≠ your Ender 3 doing 500mm/s. The hardware is fundamentally different.
Increase speed gradually. Add 20mm/s at a time, run a test, check quality. Don't jump from 60 to 200 and wonder why it's bad.
High speed is a bonus, not a requirement. For most home printing, 60-100mm/s with a 0.2mm layer height produces excellent results on any printer.
If you want to go faster: check your volumetric flow rate limit, enable input shaping if possible, and reduce outer wall speed even when increasing infill speed.
The best speed is the fastest you can go before quality visibly degrades - find that point through testing, not through benchmark marketing.