3D Printing In TPU - Tips and Tricks

[Music] hello makers welcome to 3d makernote I'm Joe and today we're going to talk about flexible materials more specifically we're going to talk about TPU now while I'll be using the spinner hands TPU which by the way is my awesome sponsor for this channel make sure you check them out links in the video description I have also found that TPU works pretty much in the same way for all mix that I have tried so far whether it's been in hands whether it's rigid ink whether it's matter hackers they all kind of have the same properties so this tutorial should work the same way before that I get asked what do you think when you swag I finally see my chart it took a few days to get here but it's finally here I finally have swag official swag if you want in on this also links in the video description so what we have here are many samples of the same file printed over and over again in kind of different manners so I get a lot of people asking me how to print TPU I know a lot of people have difficulty printing TPU I know a lot of people have difficulty printing to queue on the mark 3 or whether it's Bowden even if it's direct so today on I really want to share with you guys how I print and TPU the first thing that you need to know is that TPU surprisingly is actually hygroscopic yes hygroscopic not hydroscopic you learn something new every day I always thought you know hydro Hydra water hydroscopic no its hygroscopic basically TPU actually absorbs moisture and surprisingly it actually absorbs quite a lot relatively quickly so we're gonna start off with these two samples here I want to put them down both of these are the exact same G code printed on the exact same printer which is the Cree ality under three in the same day the difference is the one on the left is from this fold that I have left out for about three or four days so it was absorbing moisture the one on the right was actually sealed in a little plastic bag with desiccant in it for about a week this is the main result different so the first thing you really really need to take care of is storing your TPU correctly so what I did once I printed these two I decided I want to kind of do a bit of a benchmark I want to see which is the quickest and easiest way for me to actually be able to print well like this without having to wait a few days and have the filament dry up on its own with desiccant in a an airtight bag so in come these four pieces here now once again same exact G code as the other two pieces the only difference is that these have been cooked so what I did was I cut up four pieces of filament in five meter length speech and I decided to cook those sample filaments in the oven for a certain amount of time at a certain amount of degrees the first sample was put in the oven for half an hour at 50 degrees Celsius and as you can see the print quality was already a lot better now keep in mind this is the same exact filament half an hour after I had printed with it there's pretty much a Bismil model here which was well basically doused in humidity so after half an hour at 50 degrees it already looked a lot better so what I did after that I took the second piece sample that I had and I cooked it for half an hour at 70 degrees and that improved the quality even further it's pretty much pristine it actually looks even better than the sample that I did that was sort of you know drying on its own in the sample bag so then just to explain further on that I also did two more pieces the other two samples that I cut I cooked one for one hour at 50 degrees and the other one for one hour at 70 degrees and to be completely honest there wasn't much difference there from the one that was in the oven for 30 minutes at 70 degrees so I came to the conclusion that if you throw it in the oven for possibly 60 or 70 degrees for about an hour if you have a full spool of filament leave it there for an hour 70 degrees it should give you a lot better print quality this then led to another bit of a benchmark experiment I wanted to do and that was printing on the mark through now I know a lot of people have difficulty on the mark 3 because filament tends to come out between the bowdern and the the gears the the Bonta gears now the thing is this I've printed a lot of TPU I've printed with Bowden style extruders I've printed with direct extruders and I've come to the conclusion that you can pretty much print TPU with any printer if you print with the right settings so the first two samples are this is standard TPU the one that I had sitting on the spool outside as you can see the print quality once again pretty much abysmal lots of stringing lots and lots of stringing and I took another sample left it in the oven for a half an hour at 70 degrees and the result is night and day and even the stringing actually reduced to almost non-existent just very very tiny wisps now the reason why these on the under three look a bit better than the ones on the mark three is because I sliced those which simplify 3d and simplified 3d has the option for you not to travel through open spaces when printing so it kind of makes it much cleaner because when it needs to move on the model from one point to another it just moves through the model itself without going through open spaces and leaving wisps behind now another thing that you can do on the mark 3 in order to remove those risks is make sure you disable 0 for those who don't know zip hop is the setting in the mark 3 which gets the nozzle to lift up about less than a millimeter about point 8 millimeters so when it does travel moves from one place to another they just lifts up moves and starts printing again now what happens what TPU is that Singha is very stringy and there's quite a lot of pressure within the hot end when it does the Seahawk it actually pulls a little bit of filament out and creates those wisps so what I did once again same exact G code all I did was remove the Z hop I sliced the files same exact setting except the Z hop and I reprinted once again with the normal filament that was left outside I will unattended in the humidity and the other one that was cooked for half an hour at 70 degrees as you can see even without z hop if you leave it outside not taking care of the filament you still get those stringing wisps whatever the filament looks absolutely hideous and if you look at the one that was cooked it looks almost pristine so there you have it the first thing you always need to do if you want to print and tip you is make sure that your filament is dry and taken care of if you feel that it's not printing well and you know that it's not printing well because while you're printing you kind of hear this sizzling noise going on I try to record it sound something like this that sizzling sound that you're hearing is literally the the watering moisture in the Philippine just cooking itself off if it's if it's printing properly if it doesn't need any more drying it won't just just want make any sound so there tip number one make sure your TPU is dry before you start printing next is what settings to use the good the question I use to get the most is what settings do I use and along the years I've learned that TPU is it's a patient print you have to be very patient to print with TPU I've learned that the slower you print the better with direct extruders especially something like the Flex Yan extruder you can get away with printing a little bit faster maybe 30 40 millimeters a second maximum that's to me at least these are my preferences here these are what work for me they won't necessarily work for you but I'm just sharing what I have learned with Bowden extruders if the extruder and the entry of the filament is actually relatively tight there is no gaps I tend to print no faster than 20 or 25 millimeters a second if the extruder has quite a large gap for the filament to tangle in I tend not to print more than 15 millimeters a second now here's the trick it's not just printing at that speed I change all the speed settings to 15 millimeters a second or 20 millimeters a second just to keep everything constant the printing speed if it is 15 millimeters a second the outside perimeter is the same speed infill is the same speed second layer top layers whether it's supposed to be using supports any even retraction speed I tend to use the same speed that I would use when printing it kind of creates a in my mind it kind of creates this constant flow of how you print would tip you and it equalizes the pressure within the bow to tube and it doesn't do drastic changes in speed and pressure within the nozzle or the Bowden tube itself no as you can see I've I tend to print quite a lot would tip you and I have more projects coming in with TPU I have I also have bio flex coming in that will be very interesting because it will be new to me but I wants to do this episode because I get a lot of questions about it and I wanted to share what I have learned once again this is how I used to be oh it might not work for everyone but if you start slowly work your way up from there you should be good to go as for what this little design is I'm doing a lot of home improvements at the moment and I'm going around the place and when seeing things that I mean what I don't need and this is something it's a little little device let's call it that I've designed in fusion 360 I'll be doing an episode on this but to show you exactly what this is for this is meant to solve a simple problem which can create quite a headache as you can see I have some styrofoam around the handle of my door here the reason what that is there is because every time I open this door if there's a bit of wind it's gonna open it's gonna smack against the wall and it's gonna leave a mark as you can see it's already started leaving a mark over there every time I open the door if I'm not careful it hits the wall and leaves a dent what this will do is simply slide in there when the door is about to close it just bounces off even if you put some force into it it still won't reach the wall and there you have it now there is one final tip which is very very important and that is tip you sticks way too much to pei sheets so if you try to print this on the mark 2 or the mark 3 with p i-- and you've cleaned it with isopropyl alcohol chances are this is gonna stick really well and you're gonna ruin the the in order to remove its happened to me in the past and I it happened to a few people you're careful you don't have to ruin your P I sheet however there's a very simple solution some might suggest two's window cleaner on the P I sheet to make it less sticky I found the dead didn't rate make a lot of difference to me in my case what I do is use a better diesel now in my case I've always loved magico nowadays I am sponsored by magic Oh so this is in no way shape or form directed to me trying to sell magic oh but I do use it quite a lot and I find that using magical on the printbed creates very good adhesion and when it's ready it actually creates that barrier in between to make the tooth to have it easily lift off now you can use also yoohoo it's just not as clean another option also is a printer pro stick print a stick I think it's called also a very good solution so yeah magic oh and a pretty stick are possibly the two that I would recommend to use and those are my two or three tips I think on how to print with TPU it's not the easiest of filaments to use but once you get the hang of it it can become easy it just takes a long time to print if you're not fussy then again if you're into 3d printing speed is not something you're really concerned about I think it's more quality than you want out of 3d print and if you take your time make sure your filament is dry reduce the speed reduce all the settings that I mentioned there's nothing suffering from having that kind of print so that is it from myeon thank you very much for watching guys if you have any questions or suggestions leave them in the comment section below I will see you again possibly tomorrow for mail day Wednesday more packages have come in for the 3d mm mural which is looking absolutely awesome well I think my sponsors bent hands for for his awesome contribution to the channel I want to thank my awesome patrons for their support I want to thank magico as well and I will thank you guys for well constantly watching and interacting with my video that is it thanks again make sure your like share subscribe and as always I've been making guys [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: 3D Maker Noob

Views: 383,106

Keywords: flexible 3d prints, 3d printing, TPU filament, 3d printer, flexible prints, tutorial, 3d maker noob, 3dmn, noob, reprap, creality, ender 3, prusa, prusa i3, pruse i3 mk3, josef prusa, creality ender 3

Id: ACRh51hdBxo

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 10 2018