18 months ago, a 3D printing enthusiast challenged himself with the task of printing a 3DBenchy in under a minute. Over the weekend, the first sub-60-second 3DBenchy output was shared on YouTube. Join Yan Roetz on the final furlong of this 3D printing journey (the 20th episode) and understand the motion, heat, and cooling challenges that had to be overcome.

Roetz was already the holder of the 3DBenchy world speed record, adhering to SpeedBoatRace rules, with a time of 74 seconds. He recognized that shaving another 15 seconds off that time would need considerable design changes to the specially designed Minuteman 3D printer. The three main considerations behind a successful under-a-minute attempt were thought to remain the same – maintaining rapid material flow, capable cooling, and an optimized motion system. However, the maker thought that the Minuteman was capable enough to achieve a sub-60-sec 3DBenchy by reworking the motion system alone.

In summary, Roetz thought the Minuteman hotend, designed to be capable of 400mm/s filament flow, wouldn’t hold back the record 3D printing attempt. Neither would its cooling air duct system, which the maker said could deliver about 400 liters of air per minute (additional cooling possible using gas such as helium). As we said above, the bed’s motion system was the current bottleneck, and the tech that Roetz said would be completely revamped for this 20th episode.

You can see Roetz get stuck into the motion system redesign process from around 11 minutes into the lengthy video above. We note that the key changes implemented were to significantly reduce the mass of the moving components (such as the pulley ‘wheels’) to reduce system inertia. The use of carbon fiber and custom-cut parts also facilitated extreme acceleration.

The first sub-minute run was achieved and documented at around 37 minutes into the episode. Then Roetz took the opportunity to iterate and fine-tune some more settings on the granite slab-mounted Minuteman to achieve the best quality.

The quality of the sub-second 3DBenchy is pretty good considering the speed. Roetz also compared it to the first sub-2-minute version he output about a year prior, and the new one was clearly better. A 3D scan of the final output is available for you to scrutinize.

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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.