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.
I think it’s too cost prohibitive and not really practical with current hotend, extruder, and kinematics design. Higher torque BLDC (like the ones used in robotics) motors fetch quite a price and require expensive controllers that can only control one or two motors at most plus some kind of encoder mounted onto the motor to know the position of the motor.
Off the top of my head, I think the main limitation is the hotend and extruder systems since you can only melt precise amounts of plastic so fast without any defects from moving the hotend so fast like rippling, rounded corners, or the layers not adhering to each other. You can look into the 3d printer speed boat race to kinda see where we’re at with that.
One middle ground would be a closed loop stepper system where you add in an encoder attached to the stepper which will detect skipped steps or overstepping. Though I think it’ll introduce defects in the print which may compromise the part even if skipped/extra step is corrected.
Tl;dr: Current hotends, extuders, and kinematics design are the limitations in 3d printers today rather than the motors