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3D print cost
Material, power, machine wear and a failure rate, with a margin if you want one.
It runs entirely in this browser tab: nothing you type is uploaded, and every published figure on the result says where it came from.
Settings
- The material
- A cubic metre of bark and a cubic metre of stone differ by a factor of five in weight. Choices: PLA, ABS, PETG, TPU, ASA, Nylon, Polycarbonate, HIPS, PVA, Wood-filled PLA, Carbon-filled PLA, Resin.
- Failure rate
- A tenth failing means every print that works carries a tenth of another one's material. A number from 0 to 50.
- Margin
- Kept clear of the printer's own unprintable edge A number from 0 to 300.
- Count machine wear
- Two thousand hours of life is a convention for a hobby machine, not a specification.
How to use it
- Paste your text into the box above, or open a file.
- Adjust the settings beside it until the result is what you wanted.
- Copy the result, or save it as a file. The result updates as you type.
Questions
- Where do the published figures come from?
- From the tables the trade uses: saponification values from the oil chemistry, yarn yardages from the craft council's weight standards, filament densities from the material data sheets. Every one is a figure for a *kind* of thing, and the result names what beats it — the bottle, the ball band, the spool.
- Is the lye calculator safe to make soap from?
- It is arithmetic on published values, and the result carries the safety notes and says to check any recipe against a second calculator before making it. Lye is caustic; the superfat is the margin for a weighing error and is not there to be set to nought.
- Why does the chocolate tool not just say whether the dog is fine?
- Because that is a vet's decision and not a table's. What it gives is the theobromine dose, the whole published ladder with the dog's own row marked, and how much of that chocolate would reach the first threshold — and it says to ring a vet on every result, including the low ones.
- Is anything I type kept?
- No. There is no account and no server: the page runs in this tab, works the answer out and forgets it when you close it. That holds for the baby log and the allowance tracker as much as for the yarn estimate.
Other tools for printing
Filament length and weight
Any one of length, weight or volume gives the other two, and what is left on the spool.
Depth of field
Near, far and hyperfocal, with the circle of confusion shown as the judgement it is.
ND filter exposure
What the exposure becomes behind a filter, with the whole density table beside it.
Photo storage
How much disk a shoot wants, in the format you chose and the copies you keep.
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