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I'm looking to start a large project. While I can cut down large items and print them myself, I'd prefer them to be in one piece, and I'd also like to cut down the 4-months of print time I'm estimating.

With that being said, does anyone know of a print service that can handle LARGE items made in PLA? One of my estimate pieces will be around 465x380mm.

There will be some out there as people have demonstrated much larger objects than that which have been 3D printed, but I don't know of any personally.

If it doesn't have to be a commercial entity you might try asking in some of the Voron groups as one of those guys has probably put together a 500x500 2.4.

I've seen printers that will do objects that large at my work, though the quality wasn't that brilliant. I have seen a client at work bring in a model that must have been at least that big and was printed to a pretty high standard for a filament print, so I assume, yeah, you can find somewhere that will do it.

Your best bet is probably to just ring around local printers and ask them what they can do.

I can't imagine it'll be terribly cheap as every time I've seen something printed commercially it cost a lot, but I personally haven't gotten anything printed for several years so maybe it's cheaper now than it used to be.

I would also question how much time you are going to save. I have typically found the with a fdm printer, print time is print time and unless there is some commercial grade machine out there with double or triple the speed of hobby grade machines, its still going to be the same 40 hrs. Plus, when you break things up and one piece has a failure, you redo the one piece. A 40 hr print hitting a failure at hour 38 is just 38 hrs and filament wasted.

Shotgun wrote:
I would also question how much time you are going to save. I have typically found the with a fdm printer, print time is print time and unless there is some commercial grade machine out there with double or triple the speed of hobby grade machines, its still going to be the same 40 hrs. Plus, when you break things up and one piece has a failure, you redo the one piece. A 40 hr print hitting a failure at hour 38 is just 38 hrs and filament wasted.

The point was that they could be printing something while I was printing the smaller pieces. This will be an Imperator titan, so I was going to have them print the Chest and upper platform and I'd do the rest. Cura was estimating the total print time to be close to 450 hours.

However, that is now out the window. I got a quote of $900 for those two pieces, including shipping. I mean, for that price I could literally buy a new FDM printer and all the PLA I need, throw it all away after one print, and still be better off.

 cuda1179 wrote:
However, that is now out the window. I got a quote of $900 for those two pieces, including shipping. I mean, for that price I could literally buy a new FDM printer and all the PLA I need, throw it all away after one print, and still be better off.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me, in years gone by I've seen large prints (probably on the scale of FW titans) costing anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars up to 10 thousand for a large multi-piece model roughly the size of a warlord even when the raw CAD was provided. Commercial printing is expensive. As cheap as hobby level printers are, I guess there's a lot of man and machine hours that go into commercial level printing and commercial level machines can be pretty expensive.

If it's your hobby and you have time to burn, best to do that instead of paying a commercial printing service... but if you're a business and need a model made for a project then throwing $1000 at a company to print something for you to save even a couple of days of man hours, it can be well worth it.

It ain't exactly that big but I gotta mega 8k
I could do it in resin for less than the quote you got.
I figure we cut that guy in the middle and do it in two parts should come pretty crisp.

Print Volume: L33 x W18.5 x H40 cm

TheBoy wrote:
It ain't exactly that big but I gotta mega 8k
I could do it in resin for less than the quote you got.
I figure we cut that guy in the middle and do it in two parts should come pretty crisp.

Print Volume: L33 x W18.5 x H40 cm

Those Mega 8k are super sweet - really large build area (13" x 7.25" x 15.5", something like that?) and crazy 43 micron resolution. Oh yes, you could print one heck of a titan!