SoliForum - 3D Printing Community — How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-24T15:59:27Z

Printing infill once every 3rd layer saves some time. You can do that for .1 but not .3.

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-24T15:56:34Z

Hum, you would think it would, unless you change the speeds for .001

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-24T15:20:08Z

pcpoirier wrote:

That was for .3mm layers
.1mm layer should take 3 times longer I assume

I don't think it is exactly 3 times longer, or at least does not appear to be from what I've experienced myself.

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-22T17:52:21Z

That was for .3mm layers
.1mm layer should take 3 times longer I assume

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-22T17:11:45Z

pcpoirier wrote:

ABS has
a density of 1.04 grams per cubic centimeter, so a 1kg spool should be
about 962cc. The nominal cross-sectional areas of 1.75mm and 3mm round
filaments are .02405 and .07069 square centimeters, respectively.
Divide the volume by those areas and you get a length of 39976
centimeters / 1311 feet for 1.75mm and 13603 centimeters for 3mm.
115.6 cc = 95 grams 1cc = .82 grams Finished
density of 1.04 grams per cubic centimeter
I figure 4 cents a cc which weighs 1.04 grams.
My sd2 uses about 12 cc an hour so 1k should last about 80hours

Can we use those calculations?

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-21T23:34:45Z

Yes! That sounds right. I was doing the math and using 1.75mm as the radius instead of the diameter, so my end numbers were coming out wrong. Duh...

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-21T22:05:58Z

ABS has
a density of 1.04 grams per cubic centimeter, so a 1kg spool should be
about 962cc. The nominal cross-sectional areas of 1.75mm and 3mm round
filaments are .02405 and .07069 square centimeters, respectively.
Divide the volume by those areas and you get a length of 39976
centimeters / 1311 feet for 1.75mm and 13603 centimeters for 3mm.

115.6 cc = 95 grams 1cc = .82 grams Finished
density of 1.04 grams per cubic centimeter

I figure 4 cents a cc which weighs 1.04 grams.
My sd2 uses about 12 cc an hour so 1k should last about 80hours

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-21T18:48:45Z

I just looked at some suppliers web sites and they estimates .22kg of material is about 100m.
so roughly 1kg roll(2.2lbs) 5x.22 around 500. funny math let me recrunch lol

so 413M maybe 400m then so

so 0.11/cents per meter still great value

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-21T18:34:39Z

I had always based it off of a 300m on a roll based on some calculations I saw in another forum, but I couldn't find the post again.

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-21T17:35:31Z

That's good to know. I ordered three rolls with my S3. More for color variety than worrying about running out. People have been asking me about how much the raw materials cost. Now I have a reasonable idea. So far I've printed the 25cm calibration cube....

Thanks,

TiM

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-21T17:06:43Z

I also just found this:
http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2012/02/24 … 1kg-spool/
1kg of plastic = 392 chess pieces.

Re: How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-21T15:44:20Z

Good post.
I just printed several models
iphone case (2x)
znut (2x)
calibration cubes (at least 6)
v8 block

using the slicer estimate of mm used and the fact that I estimate a 2lb reel of my SD white ABS is about 500 meters

$43/500m = 0.089 cents per meter. My v8 bloc which is pretty detailed. was about 12 meters $1 and the iphone case was 3meters = 0.27cents

pretty good deal.
And after a week of printing about 1x thing a day I probably only used 20meters or less At that rate I can probably run for 4 months or more!

How long will a spool last / How much can I print?

2013-02-21T14:43:57Z

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.