Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.  

RE:

Welcome to the world of large prints. I printed basically a frame 350x350mm, 5 mm wide and 160 mm tall and also printed away a full kg of filament for that. And that one was completely empty on the inside. 4 days for 2 kg also doesn't sound out of the ordinary. 

Of course, if you could upload the zipped stl or 3mf file, one could verify if there is anything off with your file. 

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Thanks Thejiral, if I could work out how to add the zipped stl I would-  I tried 3 times and appear to have failed. There only appears to be an "add media" button, nothing for files.

Any hints would be good.

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

have a look at the lower left hand corner of the text input window, just outside the frame, you should see Attach File
regards Joan

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Also Add Media allows you to add zip files to your media library too.  Mine has quite a few of them but I usually use the Attach File as Joan describes.

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Thanks Joan- but sadly, there's nothing in the area you indicated- perhaps because I am still being moderated as a new member?

Anyway, we have other ways of dealing with this problem. I have a page on my web site I set up especially for  downloading of odd files. If you go to- 

https://vk7krj.com/Ffiles.html

there is a file called- 

lathe tool trays my own 6x4.zip

Click on the link to download the zip file.

Ken.

www.vk7krj.com

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

That's Odd! 

I'll have a look at your file in a mo...

Joan

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Looks like you are trying to print this with the shelves horizontal, 
May be best if the shelves were vertical, print the cabinet on its back. 
Still takes a long time... 
are you using 0.6, or 0.4mm nozzles? 

I have set this as 0.4mm on an XL 5T printer

regards Joan

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Thanks Joan- yes, I'm printing it on it's back , I rotate it after bringing it into the slicer- it would require a mountain of supports and be quite silly of me to print it any other way.

My XL has 0.4mm nozzles.

I sliced your file, it is still over 2Kg of filament, so I guess that's the answer- it really does need that much filament- almost $170 of it at the price we pay for prusament here in Australia. That's an expensive set of storage shelves- but then, I can't buy exactly what I want, and hey- it's a hobby, who counts the cost........

Thanks again for your help.

Ken.

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

do you need to use Prusament? 

a more cost effective  filament may be satisfactory

regards Joan

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

I agree with Joan, nothing wrong with Prusament, its really good but outside of Europe shipping is pretty prohibitively expensive. 170 Austrialian Dollar are around 105 EUR, right? One can get decent branded PLA for 20 EUR/kg and I guess, purchased at the right place even without shipping fees if you buy 3 spools or so. 

I am in a similar situation right now. I did not care that much for the filament price (as long as it was halfway sane) but now with a big printer where prints can use up 1 or 2 kg at once, I am looking for some cost optimization, while still getting decent quality. 

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

I think you are both correct.

I have had bad experiences with cheaper filament in the early days, that's why I have stuck with Prusa.

But I think they might be worth a try again with the XL to see if the quality has improved enough.

Prusament is available here in Australia, same price per roll as buying direct from Prusa, but without the much higher postage. But it still comes out at more than double the price of most other filaments.

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Is it time to look for large roll suppliers to see if they are more cost effective? 

regards Joan

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Posted by: @joantabb

Is it time to look for large roll suppliers to see if they are more cost effective? 

regards Joan

It is.  With there being a number of larger format printers now I think 2kg rolls should be more available imo.  Especially since a filament change mid print increases the chance for defects. 

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

2.3 kg spools are the most widely available, at least at 3djake. Colours are often more limited but you do get them for most materials and often for a number of different brands. The only weird thing is that many of them are comically large for "merely" a bit more than double the filament. 

Cost wise I have seen everything from very minor cost advantages to considerably lower prices per kg. For the cheaper ones the savings are lower but some of the more expensive ones get a lot more affordable. 

As example, TitanX from Formfutura has a very steep price of 45 EUR/kg on a 750g spool, but a much more reasonable (but still considerable) price tag of 34 EUR/kg on a 2.3 kg spool. NiceABS costs 29.99 EUR/kg for 1 kg spools while it costs 26.08 EUR/kg on a 2.3 kg spool. 

This can get really interesting every once in a while on sale or quite reliably on black friday week, when its possible to find up to 30%, maybe even 40% discount on some of those big spools.

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Thanks everybody- I had a look and my favorite Australian supplier has 3kg rolls of filament, so I now have one coming.

This raises a question though- can the XL or the slicer be told to automatically use more than one roll for a print?  

I know I could set up a colour change part-way through, but that would require guessing when the first roll is going to run out. Far better would be a switch in the slicer that says "when this roll runs out, use this roll" so there's no wasted filament.

It seems like it should be possible- it would be a backward step to have to manually change filaments when there are potentially four more available on the printer. 

Ken.

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Look at "Spool Join!"
Or #Filament Mapping, as I believe it is called on the XL

This post may help

https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/original-prusa-xl-tool-changer-hardware-firmware-and-software-help/how-to-get-filament-remaining-out-after-spool-runout/#post-689209

RE: Print time and filament quantity seem excessive.

Thanks everybody- found the Spool Join. I also found 3 new, still in the box, 1kg spools of pet-g I had forgotten about (what can I say- I'm getting old!!), so I put them on the printer, Spool Joined them, now the printer is now happily making my lathe tool storage box.

Ken.