3D Print Time Calculator

Time (h) ≈ filament length (mm) ÷ (filament feed rate mm/s × 3600), adjusted for travel and acceleration. The feed rate is how fast filament is consumed, which is far slower than the print head's XY speed: a 0.4 mm nozzle at 0.2 mm layers and 60 mm/s head speed consumes only about 2 mm/s of filament, so 50 m (50,000 mm) works out to 50,000 ÷ (2 × 3600) ≈ 7 h.

Time scales roughly inversely with layer height: 0.1 mm prints take ≈2× longer than 0.2 mm and ≈3× longer than 0.3 mm for the same model, holding speed constant.

Layers = print height ÷ layer height; total time = layers × (exposure + peel/lift). At 0.05 mm layers, a 100 mm tall part has 2,000 layers; at 2.5 s exposure + 4 s lift it's 2,000 × 6.5 ÷ 3600 ≈ 3.6 h - independent of XY size.

Slicers usually assume the printer hits commanded speeds. Real acceleration limits, pressure advance, fan ramps, and bed re-leveling add 10–25%. Treat the slicer ETA as a lower bound.

In SLA / MSLA a whole layer is exposed at once, regardless of how much resin is on it. That's why printing 20 miniatures takes the same time as printing just one, as long as they share the same height and layer count.

On simple, compact parts travel overhead is 15-30%. On tall, thin, or multi-island parts it can exceed 50%. If your slicer shows a time very different from the estimate here, adjust the overhead percentage.

With default settings, the real effective speed of an Ender 3 is typically 40-55 mm/s, even though the slicer may show 60 mm/s as the configured speed. Acceleration limits reduce the real speed on short segments.

FDM printers take 3 to 8 minutes to preheat the bed and hotend. SLA printers take under a minute. This calculator estimates only the active print time, not preheating.