Hi guys,
first of all, I’m no native english speaker, but I tried my best describing my current situation. I hope in the end everything makes sense. If not, just ask me and I’ll try to describe it more in detail or in a different way. 
I got an order requests from a designer (not via 3dhubs). He wants me to print an enclosure with various other parts, which should later be inside the enclosure. Furthermore the final object should have a surface as smooth as possible. So far so good.
The problem is that the enclosure has a dimension 50*35*12 cm (w*d*h). A quick search in Google showed me, that there is no consumer device which is capable of printing objects of this dimension (but I may be wrong). I found an industrial device which has a large enough build space, but it costs €20000,-. But I do not plan to buy such kind of device.
My first question is, knowing that I’m not able to do it, but, would you generally recommend printing objects of this dimension with an FDM printer? Based on a first rough calculation the printing time of just on piece of the enclosure was about +170h! Besides this enormous printing time, I’m thinking of the problems like a clogged nose, running out of filament, etc… Wouldn’t e.g. SLS, also in terms of printing quality, be the wiser choice?
As I told the designer that this object it’s to big for my printer, he offered to split the object into several parts and he would glue them together later, if I tell him what’s the best “glue”. This and the requirement of a smooth surface sounds perfect for ABS in combination with Acetone to me, but does anyone of you know what happens if I first glue the parts together with Acetone and afterwards do some vapor smoothing of the object? Are the glued parts get soft again and the object breaks into it’s original parts? If that’s not the case, are the glued edges still visible after vapor smoothing?
I personally tend to saying the customer that this object is to big for FDM and that SLS may be the wiser choice for printing this object. But I might be wrong. So what are you thinking?
Thanks for any kind of feedback.
