Topic: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?
No, this is not a question, but I thought I'd post this for people wondering. The FAQ says you could print a "yoda" a day for several months on a single spool. I've found that to be pretty accurate. If someone wanted a real-world example of what a spool would print, I thought I'd put down a list here.
I'm seeing the average cost of each print to be somewhere between $0.50 and $1.00 in raw material costs. Larger prints are a bit more but not much.
Here is a list of everything I've printed on my first spool:
(all prints at 0.3mm unless otherwise noted)
Portal Companion Cube x 3 (dime sized 0.3mm)
Portal Companion Cube x 1 (dime sized 0.1mm)
Godzilla mini-diorama
B-2 Stealth Bomber (0.1mm)
Minecraft Chicken
Command and Conquer Tank
Minecraft Creeper
Minecraft “Steve” action figure
Minecraft “Skull Island” map section (+1 partial failed print) (large)
Starcraft Protoss Nexus
Snowman x 2
Failed Dial indicator holder print
Failed Blockbot plate 1
Pin Test (to see how big holes need to be for pins to go in)
Sunshine Egg Mold (custom design)
Blockbot Transformer (large)
Winterfell (0.1mm && 0.3mm)
Cinderella’s Castle
72 Tiles of Carcassonne (this was about 21 separate prints of 1-2 hours each)
Levelling thumb screw handles for Printer
Clamps for printing on glass
There might be a few one off prints that I've forgotten, but that is pretty much all of it.
Most of this stuff you can look up on Thingiverse to find them. A large portion of the end of the spool was used for the 72 tiles to make a 3D Carcassonne tile set for the board game. I'm going to do Catan next.
Overall I'm happy with how far a spool of plastic goes. I never feel like I need to ration myself or think about how much something is going to cost. I got my Solidoodle at the end of November and am just running out of my first spool (end of February)
Anyways, hopefully this will help someone looking into buying a solidoodle. Very happy with my purchase so far.