Advice on long prints

[Pekish79]

Hello i am an architect and i will receive my maker gear this tuesday i have been preparing several models and i have been analyzing them with S3D i have a question about the printing time

how long is safe to print for i came up with some models 18 hours long should i split them any particular advice for long prints? extra fans or pause

i just need some generic direction couldn't find anything regarding it on line

[ednisley]

some models 18 hours long

You'll get cogent advice from folks around here who routinely print objects that run for days on end, but you'll also hear heartrending wails 48 hours into a print that should last for 52 hours... [grin]

Many, many things can go wrong over the course of 18 hours, some of which have nothing to do with the printer or the object. While it's possible to push your luck with crazy-long print sessions, IMO it's Bad Practice.

Instead, chop the model into pieces that can be printed in a few hours, then glue them together. Add holes for alignment pins along the split sides and you can rejoin the parts with a perfectly registered joint. If you split the model along concave corners, the joints will be nearly invisible.

I use holes sized for pegs made from filament snippets:
http://softsolder.com/2013/11/12/improv ... 3d-prints/



The key advantage to printing small pieces is that you can reprint a failure without too much anguish.

[Pekish79]

thx for the quick replay my goal was to keep print under 4 hours each but at the same time i was wondering if it was better to have just one print

i made the same model in both way one long print of 18 hours or 6/7 piece each of 2/3 hours

anyway back to my main question any special requirement for print longer then 12 hours like extra fan or a pause system every like 6 hours or so

[Jules]

Another thing to keep in mind if you used S3D to analyze the time requirements - it's short by about a third. If it tells you 4 hours print time, it's going to take 6-7. And it tends to be farther off, the longer the print time.
(So if it tells you 18 hours for the print, plan on it taking a couple of days.)

Makes much more sense to cut it into parts.

It is safe to print for longer times, some folks have pushed it up to a week, but you always run the risk of running out of filament, or jamming the nozzle into the print if it warps at all, or something else going wrong with the print. I've run them overnight, but i prefer to watch it as much as possible in case any of the above happen. But no other special requirements are needed.

[Pekish79]

yeah i am not that patient i will break it apart i didn't know S3d was off that much

dividing it in parts the pars are all below 4 hours in S3d that should do -__- for the 4th time i have to redo the model plus i just got a .25 nozzle to help with 1/500 models

it's really time consuming to readjust the model according to nozzle x-y-z extrusion thickness

thanks for the info

[innkeeper]

For the first part, safety...

Running any 3d printer unattended is not safe. Things can go wrong while your not there

if your lucky, if something goes wrong you will come back to this:

7088OT_01_18 200.png (84.25 KiB) Viewed 12759 times

but the nightmare is this:

Burnt Printer 200.jpg (66.74 KiB) Viewed 12759 times

It is possible for any 3d printer of any brand to hang and freeze the printer, and leave the hotend in a powered on state which could lead to a fire in the worst case.

For me, I've not found that running the m2 for extended periods requiring any special handling at all. runs fine for 2 hours or 2 days.

I agree with others though that if you have a choice, do shorter prints. It is more a practical issue, if something goes wrong, you may loose a few hours and its related plastic over loosing 15 hours and a lot of plastic because something went wrong.

having said that... have i run 18+ hour prints ... sure... and i am happy with the result, and accept the failures when they happen. But i tend to save those long prints for parts where its more a necessity that its one piece, like structural components. I try to not set myself up for unnecessary failure risks, like printing 20 copies of something that would take 20 hours instead of printing 5 copies at a time. at 5 hours a shot. or i'll spread those copies across multiple printers (if you have that option)

hope that helps.

[Jules]

I did not need to see that!

[Pekish79]

i narrowed down the base to 2 hours i think is all right

and i left the hole for the building ^_^

[Pekish79]

i may have gone a little overboard with the details those are .8 and 1.2 millimeter difference but in scale 1/500 that's what u get i will do one scale 1/250 as well after i get use to the printed at 1/500

[sthone]

I did not need to see that!

I know right... I keep thinking about buying these and hanging one over each printer just in case.

-Steve