A few questions from a noob reprapper

Hey everybody,

I'm pretty new to the scene here, I got my reprap a few weeks ago and have been spending that time learning the machine and the soft/firmware that goes a long with it. I'm honestly surprised I made it this far without needing help yet lol.

Anyways I had a few questions and prolly more in the future as I get more in depth with this stuff.

1. I'm starting on my first "Large" segemented piece. this is about 134.58mm x 134.58mm x 168.3mm for this single piece, now this piece ir required to have solid infil and some support printed to it as well. as per ponterface my print is going to take me 19hours total. I'm already 4 hours into and am 25% done. does this seem like a normal ammount of time to do a print such as this?

2. Since currently these prints require a signifigant ammount of time to print is it safe for me to not have to watch all this time? I.e. can I go grocery shopping or do a full days work or sleep even without a gigantic fear that my print will be a neat blob of goo when I get back?

3. If so do you have any tips or suggestions that would help to safeguard a proper print? or is it just s shot in the dark?

4. Are there any safe meathods to speed things up more?

And just for more information I am using the reprap mono mendel with abs plastic at 240c for the hotend and 97c for the bed(according to my thermometer its misreading by about 5 degrees! so 97 is really about 102)

thank you very much for all of your help
christian

Quote
enrapha
1. I'm starting on my first "Large" segemented piece. this is about 134.58mm x 134.58mm x 168.3mm for this single piece, now this piece ir required to have solid infil and some support printed to it as well. as per ponterface my print is going to take me 19hours total. I'm already 4 hours into and am 25% done. does this seem like a normal ammount of time to do a print such as this?

2. Since currently these prints require a signifigant ammount of time to print is it safe for me to not have to watch all this time? I.e. can I go grocery shopping or do a full days work or sleep even without a gigantic fear that my print will be a neat blob of goo when I get back?

3. If so do you have any tips or suggestions that would help to safeguard a proper print? or is it just s shot in the dark?

4. Are there any safe meathods to speed things up more?

1. Yes that seems like a fairly resonable print time for running at moderate speeds

2. Really depends on your confidence in your machine. I wouldn't leave it alone for the first few times you do this, but now I've been running mine for a while and I'm happy nothing overheats or behaves stupid, I've left mine running overnight unsupervised on more than one occaision.

3. Really once you've started there's not that much you can do, keep it away from drafts, don't disturb it, check in on it every now and then so you can abort it if something screwy happens.

4. You can try increaseing speed settings on your slicer/firmware and see if you still get acceptable prints ( you may have to *SLIGHTLY* increase hot-end temp to support higher speeds and acceleration settings in firmware can be a factor too) It's also been noted elsewhere on this forum that different slicers can result in quite startling differences in print speed so you'll have to try and see what works well for your machine.

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Prussa i2 Comissioned 4-Nov-2013
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A few things you can at least consider:

1) Print from an SD card rather than a computer, monitor with an LCD (less stuff to fail)
2) Make very sure your filament feed path is solid and that it will not kink or tangle.
3) Make sure your filament spool doesn't have kinks in it from the supplier
4) Consider a UPS if your local power is flakey.
5) Make sure your power input is fused
6) Do a quick check on the printer before you start a long print (free motion / dirt on rails / simple stuff)

For the truly paranoid:

7) Get a web cam and point it at the printer, watch it on your phone
8) Stock up on *lots* of coffee before you start a long print
9) Hire a team of local kids to watch your printer and clean out your fridge...

There are a only a couple of things to be concerned about:

1) Filament grabs onto something and you pull this or that over (like the lamp)
2) Extruder jams and you don't finish the print
3) Early on you discover a wire / nut / bolt / belt that isn't quite as secure as it should have been.