Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

3D printing is a wonderful hobby. It is extremely satisfying to create something in your mind, express it via Sketchup or Meshlab or Autocad and then print it into reality via a Makerbot. That being said, it's not all peaches and cream. I'm working on designing and printing a custom computer case. Because the pieces are large, relatively speaking, most of them will take more than 5 hours each to print. Time is kind of the enemy when it comes to 3d printing. Anything 3 hours or less, I'm fairly comfortable that it will finish successfully. A 5 hour print, on the other hand is essentially a dice roll only helped by printing from the SD card after oiling and re-calibrating your bot. I didn't do any of those things and I ended up with this expensive ball of twine.