Printing today, single object , Preform estimates 2 hours 37 minutes, Dashboard 3 hours 45 minutes, and it appears Wall time will be shorter than Dashboard.
What gives on the variance in time?
When does the clock begin? at print start? when it starts up?
Thanks,
Les
Hey there @Phantom48!
Thanks so much for taking the time to post! That’s a great question.
The reason for the discrepancy between print times is often because the way estimates are calculated. Dashboard tends to be a little more accurate because that time accounts for things like resin sensing and motor movements.
It’s important to keep in mind though, that these are all just estimates, based on the size of the print, how much resin will need to be dispensed etc.
In theory, the timer is only accounting for actual print time, and not printer heat-up time.
All that being said, we’re absolutely aware that print time estimates are a pain point for a subset of our users. While there’s nothing to announce at this time, we are always working to get those estimates as close to the real times as we can manage.
Thanks for the reply, I would think…thinking out loud, that if preform sends the model to be printed, it could also send that info to the dashboard for collected data, and the printer could actually record the real start and real stop time, enabling better metrics and fine tuning on the time estimates.
After all, isn’t the time determined by surface area to be lased and number of layers? yes the add more resin, and print bed movement need to be added too. But you know that too, by number of layers in height. Little bites first keep the preform estimate, dashboard estimate, record start and finish time.
Thanks
Les
If you have more than one printer you will notice that the printing time is not the same, for the same file. This happens to me all the time, and small differences in resin cartridges, for instance, causes this behaviour. If one cartridge is ending, the printer will stop more often in order to measure resin level, and try to correct it, loosing time during this step.
It will never be exactly accurate, but its a good estimation though.
CPinto
Thanks for these informations 
Glad to know you guys are aware of the issue since up to now we never got any answer for this.
Have you had a look at these posts ?
and
On average, 40 to 50% increase over estimated print time is a bit high for calling these “estimates” though, and it’s also wildly variable (from 5 to 100+% increase). At least a window of ±20% or something would allow us to better plan our prints, a reliable yet large estimate is better than an unprecise one.
If the cartridge and resin are already in the printer, it should be possible to give us a relatively precise estimate in Preform even if that estimate is valid only at the time of calculation (since the printer can be used or the cartridge changed before actually launching the print).
The time estimates were definitely more accurate going back a few versions of firmware.,
Yes I have these postings too, we all feel frustrated enough to keep pushing for some better accuracy in those estimates…better than wild *** guesses. We have the information to refine that math. I did not know about the “end of resin cartridge” slow downs. What other factors do we have here? Just hoping for better estimates, especially in preform, since that is the first place I look to determine if I am printing this morning, this afternoon or in the evening.
Todays print was estimated in Preform as 4 hrs 55 min, Dashboard said 5 hrs 45 mins, and apparently the wall time via dashboard was 6hrs 59 minutes
Some more data for you all, my print yesterday, estimated by preform 4 hrs 8 mins as reported by dashboard via email, 5hrs 56 mins… we need to get the original estimate better.
Yeah my prints always take 1 to 3 hours longer than estimated, even when heated up. It would be nice if preform and the dashboard over estimated so it made you feel like the prints printed faster. I find constant resin sensing errors towards the end of a cartridge are a real hassle with prints times as well. In a perfect world the accuracy of resin sensing and resin remaining sensing would be better which in turn would solve those issues. This has been talked about in other posts but a way to turn off resin sensing all together on a per print basis would be most excellent. I’m still wondering why we cant have that kinda control of our expensive investment.
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