How To Succeed When 3D Printing Flexible Filament

when most people think of 3d printing filaments some of the first plastics that come to mind are pla abs or nylon but these materials all have one thing in common the rigidity sometimes you want a material that's ductile and able to bend or compress as it is being stressed fortunately there's more than just rigid filaments from tpe to pro series flex flexible filaments are widely useful materials to have at the ready these materials are essentially a 3d printable rubber so you can print your complex elastic designs in whatever shape that you need for your project or product requirements flexible filaments come in a variety of colors chemical makeups and hardnesses giving you the flexibility to use their various properties in unique ways let's talk about how to successfully 3d print flexible filaments [Music] if you already know how you need help go ahead and use the video index to jump ahead to where you need to be in general most rubbers are thermoset by going through a process called vulcanization where they're heated up shaped cooled down and that form is final once it's shaped and molded you can't melt it down to make something new which proves problematic when making filament or 3d prints so to be able to make a 3d printable rubber some careful material science needed to be done to be able to make a thermoplastic reshapable rubber by combining plastic polymers with rubber polymers you get a thermoplastic elastomer tpe with the same principle you can combine materials to create thermoplastic polyurethane tpu polyester co-polyamide thermoplastic elastomer pctpe or soft pla each of these materials has different properties like shore hardness or elasticity depending on the formulation of the spool of 3d printing filament with the flexible filament like matterhacker's pro series flex you can drop it a thousand times over and it won't ever break but that doesn't mean it's ready to replace other materials like pla every material has its place like flexible filaments are great at gaskets and bumpers but you wouldn't exactly print a shelf bracket with it and conversely you wouldn't want to print a pla shoe sole that just sounds really uncomfortable so you want to just consider the needs of your project before committing to any one material the question of how much retraction is enough with flexible filaments is entirely dependent on your 3d printer or more specifically its extruder most modern extruders have what's called a constrained filament path which means that almost immediately after the filament leaves the extruder gear it is guided down a path so it can't divert anywhere else older extruders were a lot more open so there was an open space between where it was fed into the gears after the gears and leading somewhere else and within that gap that filament could spit out and be unconstrained with rigid filaments it's not a problem it will just go straight through but with flexibles they're way more likely to just spit out the side and just coil around the extruder gear with newer extruders after some calibration test prints you should find that your retraction settings aren't too far off from your rigid 3d printing filaments the e3d hamara excels with flexible filaments and this is because of its tightly constrained filament pad this even allows it to 3d print at high speeds without having any kinks in the filament with older shoes you may need to turn off retractions completely and this is because if it doesn't have a very well constrained filament path the constant back and forth motion of retracting may cause it to just bunch up and bind in which case you have an immediately failed print so you may encounter some stringing but that is a trade-off to being able to actually have a successful print flexible filaments tend to have issues with moisture so you'll want to both dry them and know how to keep them dry and we have other articles and videos documenting this process but i do have some tips for you use a vacuum oven to dry your filament in an hour or a half hour or you can use a print dry to easily dry your filament and keep it dry being able to print directly from it now because flexible filaments like to absorb water from the air they're called hydroscopic and you can tell if your filament is already wet by 3d printing it and listening for any pops or sizzles coming from the nozzle this happens because water that's in it instantly boils and forms small air pockets within the 3d print but not only do those pockets of air cause visual discrepancies it also breaks down the molecular chains because the water is boiling it's really easy for it to break down the polymer so not only do you have a 3d print that doesn't look good you also have a print that doesn't hold its strength so you want to make sure that your print is dry for both reasons using the same 3d print g-code and spool of filament i made these two 3d prints but there's a key difference the one on the left was printed with the spool that had been sitting out in the office for some unknown amount of time whereas the one on the right was printed after sitting in the print drive for several hours like was mentioned with retraction settings rigid materials like pla and abs are really easy to 3d print because of how hard they are the extruder gear is very responsive with them able to grip them and push them towards the nozzle without issue printing flexible filaments is like trying to guide one end of a rope by pushing the other by slowing down your 3d print you're decreasing the pressure that builds up in the nozzle lowering the likelihood of there being any sort of binding at the extruder gear and potentially having the filament just coil up around the gear there's no exact speed setting i can offer you other than to try experimenting because some 3d printers may have an upper speed limit of only 10 millimeters per second with flexibles whereas others may be able to print at 60 millimeters per second no problem because of their more advanced extruder design [Music] the first layer is the most important part of your 3d print because after all it's the foundation upon which every other layer is built upon so here's a few things you can do to make sure that you get a great first layer you need the print service to be level if you are unfamiliar with how to level your 3d printer's bed you can watch the procedure with the pop-up right here have your z offset set to the right height this will depend on the material that your 3d printer's bed service is made of as some materials will bond too well to flexible filaments permanently attaching to them for most surfaces you will want a decent squish to your first layer you need a good base material for your flexible filament to adhere to blue painters tape or a heated glass bed with pva glue stick or matte hacker stick stick are ideal surfaces for your print bed [Music] blue tape or painters tape is one of the cheapest and easiest ways you can put a build surface on your 3d printer for printing with flexible filaments and here's a checklist you can follow to make sure that you're applying it correctly make sure each piece of tape lines up edge to edge without any overlap or gaps keep the bed temperature fairly low when using blue tape as a temperature that is too high may cause the tape to stick too well to your 3d print 55 degrees celsius to 65 degrees celsius should be enough heat to get the job done with most flexibles replace any tape strips that get damaged when removing parts replace the tape after five to ten prints when parts stop sticking or when there is a noticeable loss in the texture on the tape surface if your first layer is not sticking make sure that the print head is close enough to make a nice squished line of filament if that doesn't take care of your problem you can apply a thin smear of pva glue stick or matter hackers stick stick to get a little more adhesion [Music] if you have a temperature controlled heated bed 3d printing on glass for your flexible filaments is a great way to make sure that they stick down but all flexible filaments are a little bit different and some like room temperature beds and some like beds as high as 110 degrees celsius so you'll want to either check the filament comparison guide linked in the description or the technical specifications for your filament for what temperature is best for that filament what i like to do is use pva glue stick or matter hackers stick stick on the glass bed to get a little more adhesion and to provide as a release agent so i can easily pop it off when the print is finished [Music] when 3d printing with the new flexible filament i like to look at the recommended print settings and put the printing temperature right in the middle and then adjust up or down by 5 degrees celsius until i find the print quality that i'm looking for i'm going to give you some tips so that you can help figure out whether you're printing at too high of a temperature or too low if you know that your spool of filament is dry but you still hear sizzling or see stringing and cobwebbing then you may just be printing too high and need to lower the temperature by five degrees at a time but if you do this a couple times and still don't see these problems going away you may just have some other underlying extrusion issue like retraction settings or maybe some extrusion steps that aren't quite tuned quite right a 3d print with the printing temperature set too low will have poor layer adhesion and usually have a matte surface so you'll be able to just pull the print apart layer by layer and it won't have a really good shine to it so if you see these two things then you may want to raise the temperature up by 5 degrees until you start getting that layer adhesion back and see a nice glossy finish to the 3d print with the help of this guide you should be on your way to getting your first flexible 3d prints if there's anything i didn't mention here that's already helped you with flexible 3d prints i'd love to hear it in the comments down below and i'm sure our community would love to learn a little bit more too i'm alex from adam hackers thanks for watching hey there thanks for watching that how to succeed with flexible filaments of all the things i've done with flexible filaments my favorite was the custom bumpers designed for the foosball table made in collaboration with i like to make stuff if you want to read some in-depth articles you can go to matterhackers.com or to stay up to date with all of our digital manufacturing content be sure to click subscribe see in the next one

Channel: MatterHackers

Views: 90,571

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printer, 3d print, Flexible filament, Flexible printing, Maker’s Muse, 3DMN, RCLifeOn, Thomas Sanladerer, Tpu, Tpu on ender 3, Finish tpu prints, Tpe, Thermoplastic elastomer, Tpu test print, Thermoplastic polyurethane, Ninjatek, Ninjaflex, Polyester Copolyamide Thermoplastic Elastomer, PCTPE, Soft pla, thermolastic, elastomer

Id: 2wjPLkxaJDI

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020