Build times way off my on Prusa i3 Anet A8

Hello all,

I am new to this 3d printing world as I just recentely purchased a Reprap Prusa i3 printer from Ebay, My printer is the acrylic frame model. Everything went well with the build and I am happy with the printer other than the need to replace the Y axis acrylic subplate with a aluminum plate. My question is: I have used both Cura and Repetier for my slicing and both slicers will show a total time to print the part, I have found this number calculated to be way off, Just last night I went to print a file and the time calculated was 4 hours, 7 1/2 hours later my part was completed. Am i missing something? is there a way to get a more accurate build time? The time will update if I change layer height, fill amount, etc, but the actual printing is always a considerable amount longer than the software calculated time.

Scott

It's the lag in communication between the computer and printer. Print directly from the SD Card to get the fastest print times.

I use [gcode.ws] to get a more accurate calculation of the time.

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My updated Instructable on our Prusa i3 Build
[www.instructables.com]

I have been printing directly from the SD card and it really makes no difference vs printing from the USB. I will give the Gcode.ws a try. THX .

This has been annoying me for a while as well. I don't know how the slicers are calculating the time but I was wondering if they are using the max print speed value. Since everything will be lower than this it may account for the error. Any one want to have a look at their speed settings and reduce the max print speed to there highest set print speed and see if the times get closer.
For example. Max print speed is set to 80 but I actually don't print anything higher than 50. Moves can be higher as the are not printing. So in this case would I get more accurate speed predictions if I set max print speed to 50.
No need to actually print just see if the time prediction changes. If it does then this may help us reduce the error. I thought slic3r had a parameter to adjust the time prediction.