29 Hours for a single print ?

hi guys i am trying to 3D print a custom designed robot and when i generated the Gcode for the chest i estimated the build time in ReplicatorG and i was Shocked to get this:

18:05:03] Estimating...
[18:06:02] Estimated build time is: 1 day, 4 hrs, 57 mins

is this ok for a printer or it will damage it ?
any thoughts or experience on printing for such a long time ?

I had jobs running longer than this without problems. You should check though why print time is so long. If it is a large print that you want in a small layer height it might be realistic.

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thanks for the reply, i it is as big as my build area 225x150x140 mm

here is a screenshot maybe my gcode settings are wrong.

It's very important to have your machine running well before attempting such a long print. It is horrible having a print fail after 18 hours. Another thing you might want to consider is breaking the print down into parts and then gluing them together. This way if something goes wrong you don't waste a whole day.

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Couple of things:

1. Any particular reason you are using Replicator G?

I would think either Makerware or even Repetier would give you more control over your print.

2. How tight of tolerances do you need?

I know we print most things as 0.1mm layer height at work, but that is because they are manufacturing samples. For my personal stuff, I just go with 0.2mm at most.

3. Consider orienting your object so it is flatter. It looks like it might be able to fit if you lay it dont. That would cut off some time.

4. Not sure what it means by travel feedrate, but if that is your travel speed, then it is really low.

5. It looks like you are using a Replicator 2, which if I remember correctly, only prints in PLA? The temp you have (230 C) seems really high.

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@jzatopa because the build is a 1.2m humanoid i wanted to reduce week points as much as i can. this will also has a high risk of reprinting the whole part if it fails as you mentioned but i can live with that for my prototype.
@gmh39 am using a Flashforge a replicator dual clone with some modifications in the extruder for abs as well (am using ABS at the moment). i am using Replicatorg for no reason i guess i never though Makerware will work on a clone.
i think i will take your advice on .2 mm layer height and increase the travel federate. to see if i am going to save few hours.

cheers guys.

Just make sure you also have enough filament in your printer! Imagine being away for a while and it runs out...

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rebuilder
@gmh39 am using a Flashforge a replicator dual clone with some modifications in the extruder for abs as well (am using ABS at the moment). i am using Replicatorg for no reason i guess i never though Makerware will work on a clone.
i think i will take your advice on .2 mm layer height and increase the travel federate. to see if i am going to save few hours.

Of the 2, Repetier is the better option IMO. You can adjust more settings like speed, layer width, etc. There is even a setting for infilling every few layers (like infill layer 1, not infill layer 2, infill layer 3, etc). That saves a bunch of time too.

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Yeah, 0.1 layer heights and 30mm/s speed lead to very long print times. Most printers are OK with 24hr+ print times. If your printer handles 6 hour long prints without any hiccups, 24 hours isn't that big of a leap.

Don't underestimate what Ohmarinus says, everyone who has printed a lot of long prints has forgotten to check how much filament is left on the spool at some point. Finding out you didn't quite have enough usually happens too late.

That would make a great reprap contest - longest print times.

make sure also to have safe practices in place a 29 hr print means if you are not home someone should be, and if you are asleep that you have a fire detector.


It gets kind of anxious after the half way point.

what i do for long prints is slow them down to 80% of normal. the theory is that after the first few layers it will be printing at full speed, and that at 80% of that oozing should be minimum and that no part should be significantly stressed.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2014 09:28PM by jamesdanielv.

BTW you are going to use pounds of plastic for support.
Are you sure you want to do this?

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There is a serious safety risk if attempting a long print unattended.

An option in Repetier is to pause the print part way through (I have done this but not always successfully I must admit).
If you pause the print you can lift the Z axis and switch off the hotend and the bed in the manual settings in Repetier. Leave the PC connected. It is then safe.

The next day bring the bed and hotend up temp, extrude some filament to make sure everything is OK, press resume and voila it carries on where it left off.

That's a pretty complicated part. What printer are you using because 30mm/s feedrate and 35mm/s travel speeds are slow. I use those on my Cupcake CNC. I use 70mm/s and 150mm/s respectively on my I3 and it can go faster than that. Keeping the speed slow may help you prevent any mechanical issues assocaited with a faster feedrate but the print times are going to be through the roof. I also think you should try out a different slicer like slic3r or Cura. I have been using slic3r but have gotte discouraged by the many bugs in it still and so I have switched to Cura which seems to be better. There's also KISSlicer. Watch out for that support for the big overhangs, too.

I think I would definitely split that up in pieces even with a good running machine or even a professional machine that is going to have a lot of time printing support material

My longest print is 30hrs 43 min and I did run run out of filament in the last 4%... however I was there to pause and switch out rolls. It's what triggered this idea actually (see below link).
I'd say before starting such a print you would want to clean and lube any friction surfaces you have. If you have overheating issues then you would have detected them with a 4-6 hour print as well, unless you suddenly get a lot of gap fill further into the print.

[forums.reprap.org]

Consider printing a scaled down version of that part before trying to print at full size. With ABS, there's a good chance that it will ending being warped.

thanks guys for the tips, i managed to reduce the build time to 12 hours with some changes and hair spray. i think this is reasonable after i updated the firmware to the latest ver. and using Makerware instead of ReplicatorG.

try a build in cura. probably would improve your path planning. my prints take less time in cura and slic3r than replicatorg. (unless i do a higher resolution z)