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Some 3D Printer Stats

My workhorse Prusa i3Mk2 has needed some repairs and small upgrades but it is still soldiering on. I've learned to do scheduled maintenance at least every Sunday. Here are some stats about its use during the Pandemic. Keep in mind this is just one of the half-dozen printers in use on this project by the printing team. All together we have gone through several 10 lb Filamatrix spools and at least that many 1 kg spools of Matterhackers. Early on, getting any PETG filament was a challenge with lead times of 4+ weeks.

The Prusa reports 3.6 km of 1.75 mm PETG filament used. When it gets pushed out the 0.4 mm dia nozzzle, that's equal to 69 km of actual printed filament. That's 75,000 yards. About 750 football field-lengths of filament!

PETG has a density of about 1.27 gm/cc. A 1 kg spool holds about 327 meters of 1.75 mm filament. A 10 lb spool holds 1490 meters of 1.75 mm dia filament. We've been purchasing 10 lb spools of clear PETG from Filamatrix due to their COVID PPE discount. They've been great at holding stock and shipping promptly even in the height of COVID. I think their PETG is on par with Prusament and Matterhackers Pro - which we have also used.

The high precision of the Prusa makes it ideal for printing the chin reinforcement for the shields so most of those for this project have been printed on this machine, usually 10-up. That's in addition to dozens of head bands and all the early prototypes.

75 days of printing operation, that's 1800 hours. This is actual printing time, not power-on time. This wore out the original 400 um E3D brass nozzle. The Y-motor mount broke (so Gernot Laicher of the team printed a replacement, with more infill this time). The wires to both the print head fans flexed enough that they gave out. That led to no cooling fan for the hot end heatsink which led to a horrible clog and print failure that required hot end disassembly and drill out with a #47 (1.99 mm) drill. Surprisingly I could buy such a drill bit in 6" length at Home Depot for a fair price. Hot end clogs are just nasty.

Would I buy the Prusa again? Absolutely! In fact I have bought another Prusa kit, this time the current i3 MK3S and the Bear upgrade for it from Makerparts.ca who I can also recommend. Buying the Prusa kit means you have to assemble it but that puts you in a good position to repair it as needed.

Coming up: some photos of face shields and 3D-printed parts.


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