Newbie with Question Regarding Print Time & Slicing

[pattersonc 0]

Hello everyone. I'm new to this community and new to 3D printing. I have previously used 3-D Hubs for printing, but just this week I ordered an Ultimaker 2+ Extended. I'm excited and a little nervous.

I've modeled a print and when I load it into Cura it tells me that it will take 49 hours to print. I think I've heard something about slicing prints into pieces, but am unsure about how to go about doing that. If I slice them then I need them to come back together in the end. Is there a glue that's used? Is there a way to somehow model "clips" or "plugs" to make the pieces fit together?

I'm looking for some insight into how to slice this object up to reduce print time, but yet make it still be secured together as 1 object in the end. I hope that makes sense and thanks in advance for any insight you can provide to a noob!

[gr5 2,265]

49 hours - don't do that for your very first print.

Well to start with why not post an image of your print.

You can probably get away with very little infill - try setting that to 0% or 10%.

Try setting layer height to .2mm and shell to .8mm and speed to 40mm/sec.

Now how long?

Well you can speed it up more by using the .8mm nozzle that comes with your new printer. Set the nozzle width in cura to 0.8mm. Now you can make layer height .3mm and the shell will be one pass instead of 2 .4mm passes. now how long is the print?

It takes quite a few prints to get good at using the machine so I recommend the first 20 or so prints be under an hour to print each until you are getting very good results.

[gr5 2,265]

Oh - and yeah - sometimes prints take 49 hours. I am not going to give any advice on splitting the print up into multiple without seeing it first.

[yellowshark 153]

This print in total was circa 40 hours but the longest print run was 5-6 hours. I use Revell’s Contacta professional glue, chosen on the basis that Revell has been making plastic kits for decades! It needs the parts to be held in place for 5 minutes or so and seems to cure within a couple of hours or so. No doubt there are other good ones.

[yellowshark 153]

For a lot of things glue will be fine but if you are placing stress on the assembly and need extra strength/adhesion then yes using plugs/dowelling is pretty easy to do/print. You will probably have to play around with dimensions on first try to get the dowel to fit the hole. Probably a bit tricky on small stuff but pretty easy on larger assemblies. The dowels will obviously be quite small so you will want to print say 6-10 at the same time using the option Tools/print all at once   ,   from the menu system. Probably print at 20mm/s or 30mm/s and have the extruder temp as low as possible. If you are using PLA then 20mm/s, layer height .15 and extruder temp of 190 should be a good staring point - you should be able to go a bit cooler, 185 or 180.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Guest