====== 2020-06-08 - printing BIG ======

{{ :blog:2020:06:08:full_size_cube.png?800|full-size cube in OpenSCAD}}

last year i've bought a new printer (will write a review one day -- i promise!). details aside, it's printing area is huge! it can print 40x40x45cm objects. this opened a lot of doors (again -- topic for a separate blog entry). while obviously you typically do not need to print things THAT big, i did had 80h lasting print this year already. so i wondered -- what is the maximum print time?

it obviously is model-dependent, but just to have an overview on a row of magnitude here, i've create the test app, in [[wp>OpenSCAD]]:

<code openscad>
cube([400,400,450]);
</code>

it took some tens of minutes and GBs of RAM to generate [[wp>gcode]] out of it. it took even longer to process it with a [[https://github.com/kliment/Printrun/blob/master/printrun/gcoder.py|python script for estimating print times]], based on gcode. here are some numbers:

  * OpenSCAD model processing time -- 1s
  * model STL file size -- 2kB
  * gcode generation with [[wp>slic3r]] -- about 5 minutes
  * gcode size -- 4GB
  * print time estimation calculation -- about 15 minutes
  * print time estimation RAM usage -- over 95GB (//gods bless cloud computing!//)
  * estimated print time -- 70 days
  * filament required -- 20kg

checking this out was an amusing experience. when it domes to predicted results -- i definitely never want to give a shot in practice. ;)