We are mostly all FDM (aka FFF) people here as UltiMaker doesn't sell any resin printers. The speed of a resin printer is controlled mostly by the thickness of each layer. Whereas the speed of an FFF printer is mostly controlled by the size of the nozzle and the volume/weight of the plastic printed.
Other things to keep in mind.
Assuming you go FFF, ff it all possible, use PLA. You will get better quality results, you don't have to keep it insanely dry before printing, it can withstand sun and weather, however it does have a drawback: it starts getting soft (like hard clay) around 130F which is usually not a problem outdoors but could be in theory. A bigger worry is that sometimes people use various forms of 2 part epoxy or resin that gets above that temp while hardening - say if you use the PLA for a mold.
That's another reason to do a practice part.
The full size elephant by Joris was printed in about a week (maybe?) with 5 printers.
I think he has done full sized humans as well with a different technique.
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gr5 2,224
I am told that ChatGPT is particularly bad with formulas and math. Just a warning.
@rooiejoris made a life sized elephant using Ultimaker 3D printers (about 200X200mm print area but he extended it so that it's unlimited height). He's also an artist. He might have ideas.
This project sounds quite doable. It's hard to get concrete (which usually has gravel as you mentioned to cut costs) to fill into small spaces. You could skip the gravel (then it's called mortar?). Either way you want some kind of "gentle" vibrator to put against your scupture and vibrate it to get the air bubbles up to the top.
It seems to me it would be best to do this in many layers of maybe about 1 foot each.
I recommend you do a 1/4 scale version first. At 1/4 scale it will have 1/16th the surface area and 1/64th the volume. You will learn a lot and you won't be upset when you make mistakes and you won't lose much money either.
Also think about 3d printing nozzle size. I think Joris used a 1mm nozzle (that's the opening). Typical printers use a 0.4mm nozzle. If you double the nozzle diameter (and layer height) you can print 4X faster which will save you weeks of time. You can do test prints with different nozzle sizes to see how you feel about the resolution.
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TotalNEWB 0
Very good suggestions, I want as many opinions as possible because the initial setup is 3-4K for printers alone, not to mention resins and other materials and equipment, so knowing whether it's doable from the start is very important.
I'm worried that the resin calculation speed might be off. I saw a video of a guy who printed a 30ish centimeter tall helmet, and it took him 30 hours, which would bump my printing time to 60 days
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