How to Use EVERY 3D FILAMENT

building weekly projects takes a lot of plastic and with all the stuff i've been making lately it's time to restock wait a second coming what the hell this isn't filament thanks to your liking commenting and subscribing i am now officially a youtuber it's time to start acting like one and you know what that means a vulgar display of consumerism we're getting flashy filaments floppy filaments shatterproof heatproof conductive magnetic ceramic low friction crystal clear reinforced with carbon fiber and infused with the power of red copper each of these materials has unique strengths and nasty weaknesses so to feature 50 filaments we are forging a friggin fused filament fabricated flotilla of fanciful fragrance here is how and why to use nearly every 3d printing filament welcome to my 3d printer closet i have loaded it with all the filaments we're going to use today and i'm keeping them all at optimal filament preserving humidity and i've packed this with all the toys that we're going to need if we want to print you know everything advanced filaments require an enclosure some materials will spew toxic gas as they print and others go berserk if they're even touched by a cool breeze you can create a makeshift enclosure by modifying some ikea furniture or even just putting an upside down box over your printer but a purpose-built enclosure is going to be safer and more predictable i will be using this boximo enclosure courtesy of today's sponsor boximo the rugged aluminum frame crystal clear windows and gasketed seams trap the 3d printer's heat and vapors inside they block drafts and shield the printer from cats children and drunk people this pair of thermostat controlled fans suck outside air to regulate the enclosure's temperature and keep the electronics at a safe level if i'm printing a filament like abs that emits toxic fumes i just route the exhaust fan out the window and now it's the environment's problem some studies also show that nanoscopic fragments of plastic are fired into the air when even a non-toxic filament like pla prints i staunchly oppose any kind of health-conscious inconvenience because i'm an american so it's a good thing the boximo handles that crap for me thanks to boximo for making it possible to safely print all of the wildest and wackiest filaments and if you plan on doing the same use the link in the description and help out the lab we got the gear now let's do the thing that brought you here print boats lots of boats and we're starting with pla the people's filament poly lactic acid is the most common hobbyist filament and it should be it's cheap it's safe it's easy to print it's available in tons of colors and uh works on everything you can even print it straight on bare glass use psycho pla is technically both recyclable and biodegradable but don't start hogging the trees just yet it only biodegrades in an industrial composter not a landfill it is renewable most pla is made of corn starch or sugar cane instead of petrochemicals because pla sets up at such a low temperature printers equipped with cooling fans can do some pretty aggressive maneuvers like really long bridges and aggressive overhangs the other edge of the sword is that a hot car or even a hot sun can turn your prints into puddles pla softens at such a low temperature that if heat starts creeping its way back up the heat break the filament will melt too soon and jam up the system pla plus this pla has been alloyed or blended with other plastics to cover its weaknesses pla plus is sometimes called pla pro or tough pla and just like each manufacturer has their own brand name there isn't a standardized meaning for what pla plus actually is this inland pla plus from micro center withstands impacts a bit better and softens at a higher temperature if your prints have to take some punishment like nerf blasters or you think they'll get warm like nerf blasters in the sun pla plus is just straight up better if all you're making is death toys and figurines there's no reason to pay the plus premium you classic stuff will work just as well and cost about 20 percent less htpla this is proto-pasta's proprietary high temperature pla it doesn't print any hotter but it does allow you to heat treat it in the oven which raises its glass transition temperature from about 50 celsius to a scorching 160. that means this stuff won't melt even in the most brutal sunlight htpla is great for car accessories appliances and really any place that brings the heat apart from that hdpla is identical to regular pla it's brittle it's hard to post process it doesn't do well outdoors and it's also crazy expensive like four times as expensive expensive so what if you want all of the style but none of the strength well then you want silk pla this is not metal this is 100 plastic with a secret ingredient that makes it luscious and shiny it's an elastomer parts printed in silk filament are as bright as brushed metal right out of the extruder silk pla is way way more brittle than standard pla especially along layer lines so this plastic is strictly for aesthetics that does mean that support material detaches from silk pla more easily than regular which makes this perfect for printing busts sculptures and other organic shapes one quirk is that silk filament foams up when it extrudes this doesn't affect the quality of your print but if your retraction is too aggressive or if heat starts to crawl its way back up the printer this can easily cause jams rainbow pla this is the regular pla silk in this case except instead of being one color the factory dumps layers of different colors into the filament machine the filament is actually in a gradient it changes color in this case every about 200 centimeters to maximize the effect in your print use it for really tall items or print small objects one by one instead of filling the plate this stuff isn't just for showing lgbtqia plus solidarity rainbow filament is genuinely useful if you're printing a whole assortment of models or a complex multi-part model and you want to make each piece visually distinct if you're doing a gradient project like the parts rainbow plan really carefully the color progression varies from real to real so you want to nail the entire project in a single spool color changing pla these filaments print at the same temperatures and basically the same settings as regular pla but if you overheat it by accident it might never change color again some filaments darken when exposed to uv light but most lighten like this one when they're exposed to heat color changing materials are really cool for jewelry and other wearables but they're a spicy option for electronics enclosures you'll be able to see the hot spots over the most hard working chips pl active this is a proprietary and extremely expensive blend of pla and copper nanotechnology particles and it prints about the same as regular pla the copper allegedly makes the filament lethal to viruses and bacteria so if it works it's a neat idea for door openers computer peripherals face shields and other stuff that gets exposed to your dirty defeaters and your high velocity snot rockets i don't have these scientific chops to vet their studies but i did go to middle school so let's do the next best thing let the print sit for a few days give them a good swabbing and culture it up in some auger gel i'm also going to make a control plate in case my distilled water and or pipette is contaminated what came in a 10 pack might as well swab my happy enemy ladies keycaps too dirty girls the 3d printer closet is already at a snug 30 celsius which is perfect for incubating bacteria so let's let these fester until the end of the video this is the longest video we've ever done and i understand if you have to dip part way but if you do remember to like the video so that youtube recommends it to you again so you can pick up where you left off now back to the filaments next up composite pla these filaments are a base of pla with a powder fibers metal or some other thing suspended inside your printer probably came with an 0.4 millimeter brass nozzle which is great for everyday printing but those abrasive particles will grind it down in hours and they will clog the tip but they're really cool if you're going to print composites pick up a hardened nozzle preferably 0.5 millimeter or wider marble pla this looks a lot like stone but don't take it for granted there are actually two kinds of marble pla some of them like this ammo landstone or just regular pla with colored flecks that make it look rocky other ones like the next filament actually contain powdered crushed rock this pure plastic marble pla doesn't need a hardened nozzle although the manufacturer recommends one and performs pretty much identically to straight up pla except layer bonds are a bit weaker this filament has a much higher chance of clogging an 0.4 millimeter nozzle so you might want to have a high a wider gauge on hand if you're curious as to what these flex are and why they don't melt in the nozzle they're probably petg fibers which melt at a hotter temperature than pla i've found that the layer height doesn't affect how the flecked finish comes out looking though the manufacturer recommends printing this at 0.2 millimeters i didn't labreck this is a proprietary pla blend made by lay filaments that has authentic sandstone in the mix it makes your prints come out feeling like fired ceramic or smooth river rocks this stuff needs a cooler bed than usual and the manufacturer recommends ejecting the filament right away to prevent sand from clogging up your hot end i hate sand it gets everywhere stone and ceramic filaments don't necessarily need a wider nozzle but they do need a hardened nozzle gritty rock is one of the most abrasive materials you can add to a filament note that marble itself takes on water so this stuff has to live in a dry box we got wood this wood pla is about eighty percent plastic and twenty percent sawdust wood pla takes on water like a sponge but considering how crappily it prints in the first place you're not really gonna notice the main effect this has is making your printer smell warm and comforting until you apply some wood stain the wood grain effect looks the absolute best on curved surfaces especially at thick layer heights but you can vary the layer height part way through the print to play up the effect wood pla is more brittle than pure pla it damages brass nozzles and it clogs the ever loving shape out of fine ones glow-in-the-dark pla yes all glowing plastics are composites this is pla mixed with a glowing powder which makes it much more brittle and gives it a bit of a rough surface some glowing pla is abrasive and does need a hardened nozzle though i've never seen anyone tell me that on a box if you're gonna print this stuff disable retraction equip a wide nozzle and cross every finger you got because this stuff clogs like nothing else i want to make this absolutely clear do not underestimate the glowing filament it's low-key one of the most annoying and difficult plastics of them all if you really insist and you want to max out that glow effect make the walls extra extra thick and use an isotropic infill like gyroid glowing filament doesn't stay bright for very long because there's not actually a lot of powder in here but if you point a black light at it you're going to see some serious photonic emission glowing petg is also available although much rarer and i would recommend that over pla because of how much more transparent glowing petg is glitter pla this pla has been mixed with a heaping helping of sparkly golden glitter these types of filaments are kind of cheap and the glitter flecks are usually not that fine so you will need a wide nozzle or except some clogs thin walls and thick layers make the glitter effect more prominent and to max it out increase your extrusion multiplier and turn off your fan this technique works for any transparent filament and it smushes the layers together to improve the clarity in the case of glitter it makes the light play off the glitter flakes instead of the layer gaps like loose glitter which i've been told is the herpes of craft glitter filament will make a gigantic mess in your hot end and you can run some cleaning filament through it or do a cold pull to try to mop it up but the first few layers your next print are going to be unexpectedly magical sparkly pla wait what didn't we just talk about this no not all sparkly or metallic filaments contain glitter flakes the composition of the plastic and the way it's manufactured can create the sheen sparkly and metallic filaments that don't contain glitter are identical to the regular stuff you can print them just like bog standard pla these filaments are at their best when they're printed at a low layer height so the texture of the filament and the texture of the layer green can play off each other shiny carbon fiber pla now we're getting serious this pla has been reinforced with shredded carbon fibers carbon fiber pla is neither stronger nor lighter than the regular in fact cfpla is even more brittle than pure pla what the fibers do is make the print super stiff and they give it a gorgeous matte surface finish they also act as tiny scaffolds while the plastic solidifies so carbon fiber prints look incredible and uh the dimensions are more accurate even if your printer isn't 100 dialed in cfpla absolutely annihilates brass so a hardened nozzle is mandatory high quality cfpla has longer fibers and that will uh will clog smaller nozzles crappy carbon fiber pla has ground up fiber not chopped fiber that'll give it the matte look but none of the mechanical properties carbon fiber high temperature pla this is proto pasta's flagship temperature resistant pla reinforced with carbon fibers this filament is super stiff and has amazing high temperature performance it's easier to heat treat it because the fiber stabilized the print in the oven this is by far the most brittle filament on this list so keep an eye on it while it prints equip a runout sensor or prepare for disappointment this filament is also intended to be heat treated and printed parts actually come out warped then return to normal in the oven i found this ch i found this printer to be a real i found this filament to be a real challenge to print my guess is that proto plant used the highest quality longest carbon fibers they could get which wedged themselves sideways in the hot end more often than the cheaper filaments on this last conductive pla this pla also made by proto plant has a heaping helping of conductive carbon black that turns your print into giant resistors 10 centimeters of filament is about 2 km so this stuff won't replace your circuit boards or wires it does let you print touch sensors phone accessories styluses and embed leds right into the model no wires or resistors required conductive pla is really expensive it's weaker than standard and it loves to warp so heat that bed and ideally print it in an enclosure there is a truly ridiculous amount of carbon in this filament it's one of the most brittle things on this list and it took like a meter of cleaning filament to keep the leftover carbon black from contaminating the following print as you can see even that didn't work very well i wonder what happened if i plug this into the wall metal these filaments are more than half finely ground metal particles by weight metal bearing filaments are about twice as dense as straight up plastic which is a double-edged sword they make your prints satisfyingly hefty and they give it metal properties but a 500 gram spool has half as much actual filament on it these are unbelievably expensive they're really brittle on the spool and they're no tougher than the regular stuff so caveat emptor a hardened nozzle is absolutely mandatory with any metal filament and i recommend 0.5 millimeter or wider the metal causes pla to heat and cool faster so even though this is the coldest printing filament i have it's really easy to get gorgeous results these filaments are actually proto pasta high temperature pla which lets you heat treat your model this matters because when you buff and polish something it warms it up but maybe you want that patinaed relic aesthetic just give it a spritz with some vinegar peroxide salt solution to rapidly oxidize any of these filaments and get that rusted antique look in a hurry iron pla this filament is mixed with finely ground iron filings they don't make the print conduct electricity but they do make it magnetic and it can be both polished and rusted iron pla prints look almost exactly like cast iron so you can print some pretty uncanny vintage looking parts the iron easily absorbs and retains heat so this filament has a propensity to melt in your heat break you might need to disable retraction and turn the extruder as low as 180 celsius to keep things flowing which makes this the lowest temperature pla of the batch stainless steel pla this plastic is loaded with a heaping helping of stainless steel powder and it is as heavy as it is expensive unlike iron pla steel pla is not magnetic it won't rust you can polish it to an almost reflective finish it might also attack a hardened steel nozzle not 100 on this one metallurgist hit the comments brass pla this is infused with ultra fine copper zinc particles probably made of recycled chips from musical instrument factories brass is really dense and has a high thermal mass so these prints feel cool to the touch and they got a lot of gravity in them the patina is a beautiful bluish green color and it polishes up bright and shiny it's a really gorgeous filament bronze pla this plastic is loaded with antiquities favorite copper based alloy the best part of this is the patina your 3d print will develop a gorgeous jade green oxide layer that makes it look like a museum artifact print a pokemon and berry in a hillside to confuse the shot of an archaeologist bronze has a richer darker color than brass but is about as dense about as heavy and also polishes up quite nicely copper pla you get the idea it's pla it's full of copper it's heavy last one i promise this is the big chungus metal filament copper is super dense and forms a stunning bright turquoise patina copper pla takes brushing buffing and polishing particularly well and if you add a touch of oil or black paint it'll look straight out of a steam-powered time dirigible you're basically printing a powder to heat sink when you print this stuff so you don't need to turn the heat up very high next up hobbyist filaments these materials have improved properties as well as some relevant downsides but they're cheap enough for weekend warriors to roll the dice let's start with my personal favorite petg ethylene glycol modified polyester terephthalate is cheap it's easy to print it's very recyclable and all in all it's a solid upgrade to pla ptg is tougher it softens at a higher temperature it withstands impacts better and you can glue it sand it weld it and machine it the biggest downside is the petg sags during printing so bridges are impossible overhangs are garbage and supports have to be cut off with a knife this is less of an issue if the model doesn't have any overhangs which is why i design support material out of my project so aggressively petg sticks to pei coated plates blue tape and capton it also sticks to glass but use a glue stick it can actually crack the glass as it cools all in all petg is an awesome general purpose filament for functional prints that have to withstand some rough and tumble real life action i love you petg t glaze generic petg is one of the most transparent filaments around but this proprietary polyester blend is designed for it tallman t-glaze is a brand name for a specially formulated petg designed to make clear watertight prints t-glaze prints at a higher temperature than the regular stuff and it's designed to go directly on bare glass to make the bottom layer crystal clear for maximum clarity with a little bit of blobbiness turn the fan all the way down turn the extruder multiplier up slow things down and lay out the biggest plumpest lines your nozzle can handle this is the only filament in this video that's fda certified food safe but remember that the residue of your previous filament is probably not polysmooth this is a proprietary plastic that prints similar to pla but it's dissolved by alcohol this gives polysmooth its superpower you put your print in a box you spritz on some isopropyl warm it up it watches the layer lines magically bleed together and the surface becomes shiny smooth if you want to make a slick seamless model without any sanding filing polishing sealing or really any effort at all poly smooth was built for it hips high impact polystyrene is one tough material it handles impacts like a champ it's also very cheap this is the same stuff that milk jugs are made of and it is just as easy to recycle hips is often used in multi-material printers to make dissolvable supports for ebs but it's a serious printing filament in its own right hips is stiff it's super light and it has exceptional layer adhesion to the point of being watertight hips does need a heated enclosure since even a minor draft will make it go crazy and it only sticks to kapton tape but otherwise it's actually a surprisingly easy filament to print and it handles overhangs really well hips is great for anything that needs to take a hit storage boxes protective cases and because it flexes without creasing it makes really good living hinges hips is also a perfect choice for costumes and props since it's noticeably lighter than other materials and on top of that you don't need as thick walls or as much infill to get the same level of strength i think this is an underrated material here's a material you will love to get your hands on peepee polypropylene polypropylene shrugs off impacts withstands abrasion resists chemicals handles heat flexes forever without wearing out it's waterproof and layer adhesion is almost perfect in fact polypropylene is the second most common plastic cluttering up our doomed planet downside the peepee is a giant pain in the ass i had more trouble wrangling the peepee than any other filament i bought for this polypropylene only sticks to itself so you have to buy a special build plate a special slurry or packing tape made of polypropylene this particular brand form futura centaur is extremely soft at only 50 durometer it's even softer than the flexible filaments and i had to dial the extruder tension as low as it went to keep it from getting mashed up in the gears if you're going to print with the pp a heated enclosure is mandatory because this stuff warps if a cool person thinks about it it prints at a really wide temperature range and at a lot of different speeds which gives you a lot of control over how you fail polypropylene is great for storage boxes wearables protective cases kitchen gear and lab equipment anything that needs to take a hit resist chemicals or contain liquid it all wants the peepee abs acrylobuterostyrene once jockeyed with pla to be the number one filament but now it's a washed up has been abs is widely used for injection molding toys lego elements nerf blasters etc in a 3d printer it's got problems big one is that it off-gasses acrid toxic styrene fumes that make an enclosure mandatory oh even worse than that is the abs warps like nothing else if you want to get a quality abs print you got to have a heated bed coated with slurry a warm and perfectly draft free enclosure and a whole lot of luck hell i had two of three and the intake fans still cause the first half of the model to shrink by two millimeters boxing mode does include shrouds to prevent this but i'm just lazy and i didn't install them the upside which i'll admit is relevant is that ebs is attacked by acetone which is really the only safe-ish plastic solvent you can put your print in a warm box with some acetone and it'll vapor polish the surface and you can use a few drops with some abs ground up in it to permanently weld parts together you can identify ebs by giving it a crease if it turns white it's probably abs it snaps off it's probably garbage but if you're thinking of using this stuff don't instead you should use asa acrylonitrile styrene acrylate abs's lunch drink abs's milkshake convinced the crew abs was the imposter bolted its bird pineappled its home portal and its wife asa is strictly better than abs in all respects and it adds some unique properties of its own you still need a heated bed and you need a ventilated enclosure but it's not a coin toss if your print self-destructs anyways like abs asa is super tough it's recyclable it's temperature resistant and you can polish and weld it with acetone vapor unlike abs or really most other materials asa resists ultraviolet light so you can leave prints outdoors without them turning yellow or splitting apart i found it super easy to print in an enclosure and i'm impressed by the quality of this asa prusament i'm still a little sketched out printing larger things out of it because it does warp but you know acrylic i didn't even know you could print acrylic till i researched this episode but it does make sense sheets of acrylic aka pmma aka polymethyl methacrylate aka plexiglas are shielding the service sector from anti-maskers worldwide even though a lot of that acrylic stock is extruded you don't really see it too often as a 3d printing filament most acrylic filaments print at much higher temperatures than pla but this blend by kodak of all things prints are about the same as abs acrylic emits toxic fumes and it's very sensitive to drafts so it needs an enclosure there's really only one reason to print in acrylic the filament is crystal clear and it can be vapor polished with acetone to make it even more transparent otherwise in this guy's opinion you're better off using another filament that's easier to print more widely available and less toxic i guess it was cool though let's take a quick detour into special purpose filaments that aren't intended for printing boats this is purge filament and you've probably seen the spool skulking around the background of some of the b-roll because this stuff is an all-star the problem is that when you switch from a low temperature material to a high temperature filament anything trapped in the nozzle is going to burn when you go in the opposite direction switching from high temperature to low temperature the old filament can solidify and the new filament might not be able to push it out this filament melts at 190 degrees and burns above 275 celsius so whenever i switch materials i just run some of this stuff through the system eject it and then load in the new stuff purge filament is usually nylon but this filament here is high density polyethylene either way i can't make you a squeaky clean purge filament boat because purge filaments have additives they're necessary to you know keep it from sticking in the inside of the system it's supposed to fight the crud not join it you think people get the reference this is cleaning filament which i thought was the same thing as purge filament but it's not cleaning filament is a special polymer designed to scrub injection molds it bonds more strongly to the burnt on crap than the crap bonds to the metal so as you run this through your system it actively yanks the crap off the inside this stuff isn't a panacea it can't cure a total blockage if you can't break up the roadblock with the needle you're going to have to do a cold pull with pla or nylon let's move on to flexible materials the key property here is they flex forever without wearing out and the key metric is shore hardness this uses a series of probes to quantify how springy the material is look up a table to compare the filament with other materials and remember your parts actual stiffness will depend on how thick the walls are the density and pattern of the infill and the model's geometry tpe thermoplastic elastomer also known as ninjaflex this is why people are afraid of flexible filaments technically all fully flexible filaments are tpes but when folks talk about tpe they're talking about a material like this that's designed to stretch the stretchiness and snappiness are truly unique among filaments tbe has very low shore hardness usually 84a which makes it the second most difficult filament to print on this video after polypropylene the challenge with tpe is maintaining the right pressure in the hot end too much pressure and the filament will scrunch up and instantly jam or wind itself around the drive gear too little pressure and nothing will come out except strings and dribbles back in the day tpe was a notorious printer killer especially in makerbot replicators that had the worst of a direct drive and a bowden in modern machines with short filament paths double gear direct drives and non-stick coated hot ends it's merely extremely difficult but tpu thermoplastic polyurethane usually sold at 90 to 98 shore is not just springy it's also very tough and as long as your extruder supports it and you prepare properly you'll be amazed how easy it is to print i've heard of people printing tpu through bowden tubes but i think they're both you can't you can't you can't push this come on it also aggressively absorbs water and even a tiny bit of hydration will make it foam spit beat up and generally misbehave if you spend a few tries dialing in your settings and you take care of the spool you'll be rewarded with a glossy finish effortless supports unbreakable geometry and the highest layer layer strength of any filament don't be too closed-minded high-shore tpu isn't that flexible if you want to print solid objects that resist anything tpu is actually a really rock-solid choice even if it's not really rock solid cheetah tpu this is ninjaflex's special blend of tpu with similar physical properties to the regular stuff but the ability to be printed almost as fast as abs ninjaflex sells their cheeto filament a number of different hardnesses so read that fine print i thought this stuff was going to be really soft but it ended up being 98 shore like a 29 year old incel all tpus and tpes will desperately stick to the nearest hot object and be impossible to remove no matter what kind of bed you have slather it with a thick layer of glue stick so if worse comes to worst all you have to do is splash it with water to melt the glue and release the stuff but even with retraction turned on stringing is inevitable it's really easy to deal with just hit the print with a blow torch or a lighter to make those strings ball up shave them off of the razor don't worry about melting the print tpu's heat resistance is really really good the last boats on our list are serious business the engineering filaments these don't come in cutesy colors they're not easy to print and they're definitely not cheap but when you need the highest levels of performance out of your printer nothing else will do let's start with polycarbonate pc not that pc and not that pc either is what folks think of when they think engineering material if you can think of a number polycarbonate makes that number really big tensile strength shear strength temperature resistance pc's got the stats downside number one is that this filament super duper hygroscopic and the effects are catastrophic humidity controlled storage is mandatory and a heated dispenser is also worth considering downside number two and this is the big one this filament needs to be printed ludicrously hot pure polycarbonate needs a hot end at least 275 celsius and a bed over 110 an enclosure is mandatory preferably a heated enclosure and you only turn on your cooling fan if you feel like ruining everything note how the smoke stack of this boat is blobby and deformed high temperature filaments like polycarbonate need really long minimum layer times to allow the material to set up most printers including mine cannot actually sustain a temperature of 275 so the most common so-called polycarbonates are alloys these pc blends can actually be more asa or petg than polycarbonate so check those specs important note the lexan polycarbonate sheets you're used to buying at a hardware store are really rigid and tough but printed polycarbonate is actually quite flexible it's not watch strap level bendy but it's not exactly hard either carbon fiber pc this polycarbonate filament is infused with chopped carbon fibers light carbon fiber pla the composite is somewhat weaker and it's no lighter than straight up plastic but those fibers stiffen the material which is really important for a semi-flexible material like polycarbonate it turns that sort of floppy mix into a rock-hard juggernaut you thought it could be the fibers also stabilize the plastic during its long and droopy cooling time which makes overhangs and short bridges much more manageable and it makes those short layers less likely to blob up cfpc is almost always a blend of plastics because hardened steel nozzles struggle to stay hot enough to print pure polycarbonate this blend here prints at a hot but reasonable 250 celsius and it has a really good balance of stiffness and strength cfpc is great for drones and other vehicles because it's stiff it's strong and it stands up to both abrasion and heat nylon this is a really common material in high-end professional prototyping because it rules nylon is a little flexible extremely tough it handles abrasion it has awesome temperature stability and it's super easy to post-process nylon requires a heated bed but it sticks to most surfaces you will need an enclosure preheated to at least 40 celsius but otherwise it's actually pretty well behaved filament and pretty easy to print the biggest downside the material has is that nylon is almost comically hygroscopic it aggressively slurps up water and mere hours of exposure can turn a brand new fresh spool into a sputtering spitting unprintable mess i loaded this filament straight from its vacuum packed bag and it still had enough moisture in it to fire steam out of the hot end a dry box is an absolute necessity for nylon in fact if you regularly print models longer than a couple hours you should feed the filament straight out of a dry box that's right if you start a six hour print in 30 humidity the filament might be ruined by the time the top layers are done but don't let me talk you out of this if you can afford a nice enclosure and the equipment to control the humidity nothing beats nylon's shear performance per dollar tallman alloy 910 this proprietary nylon mix has absolutely bonker stats it has record-setting tensile strength phenomenal durability amazing abrasion and chemical resistance it prints crazy hot it needs a heated bed and a heated enclosure is eye-popping expensive but alloy 910 makes some of the strongest parts possible with additive manufacturing like pure nylon this filament sucks up moisture like a sponge and if you want to get those incredible mechanical properties in your print you're gonna have to keep that water content near zero the extreme temperature is really rough you can see that my printer struggled to keep up with those crazy temperatures in this retraction heavy column area and you could see that too much heat built up in the smoke stack and made it deform it's not the easiest to print and it also has a bit of a weird quirk that tallmad910 really wants to unwind and fly off the spool carbon fiber nylon you know the jam it's polymer and chopped fibers it ruins brass nozzles etc etc but stiffening nylon matters more than other materials the only undesirable property of nylon is that it's flexible adding solid fibers means that you add great rigidity to complement that extreme strength you need all the toys to print carbon fiber nylon hardened nozzle heated enclosure humidity controlled storage and a heated dispenser but this stuff is the ultimate high strength filament below 100 bucks a kilo you can also get glass filled nylon which is even stronger even stiffer even more punishing on your nozzle and even more expensive i think this is total overkill for nearly every project the final boss delrin acetyl aka palm aka polyoxymethylene is a machine shop staple because it's tough super stiff resist chemicals it has a very very very low coefficient of friction this is all awesome on paper but any one of these properties on their own stiff stable or slippery would make this stuff nearly impossible to print in other words delrin is the dark souls of filament many extruders have a delrin idler wheel and delrin filament will destroy it even if you're all metal you're going to need a bontec style gear drive because this stuff is too slippery for a single toothed wheeled handle palm prints at pla temperatures but it's super particular about its settings and it will not stick to anything it completely ignores adhesives it disregards all kinds of tape it slips right off pei and glass and you can't make a slurry because nothing dissolves it you need to print delrin on wood or heavy paper to make a mechanical connection see what happens is the bottom layer fuses into the paper and it curls with all its might so a raft is mandatory and you have to glue not clamp the wood product right onto the bed but we're not out of the woods yet this material is even stiff when it's melted so you have to print super slowly to mash it down onto the previous layer but not too slowly or heat will build up and the layers will split apart a heated enclosure is absolutely necessary and it has to be airtight both to stabilize the temperature perfectly and to contain the formaldehyde i forgot to mention that palm releases carcinogenic formaldehyde gas so you absolutely need an airtight enclosure with a ventilation system never under any circumstances allow delrin to hit 230 celsius or it'll burn and release a lot of formaldehyde why put up with all this bull well once you throw it in a sealed enclosure you find the perfect paper you dial in every parameter perfectly and you evacuate the toxic cancer gas delrin's durability stiffness and hyper slick finish are unparalleled it's extremely low friction and has exceptional chemical resistance making it one of the few printable plastics that can handle or even stand in for lubricants palm is the ultimate material for gears cams and other mechanical parts it lets you print bushings and bearings and you can cnc mill the end result to tighten up the dimensions in this guy's opinion delrin is the ultimate test of a 3d printer nerd and the juice is worth the squeeze but there are some engineering filaments that are too far beyond my power level the super polymers peak polyether ether ketone is one of the strongest plastics ever invented it has almost unmatched chemical resistance excellent dimensional stability and total flame resistance this stuff is strong enough to make gun parts and i'm not talking about like grips or stocks i'm talking about the parts with explosions in them then there's peck polyether ketone ketone is slightly worse than peak but it's known as one of the most easy to print filaments it's still better than almost everything at almost everything then there's pei filament yes the same stuff that my printer's bed is coated in the trade name is ultem and it's basically indestructible it also adds some crazy temperature stability and is very flexible all of these filaments cost hundreds of dollars per kilo and print around 400 celsius which neither my budget nor my printer can withstand sorry folks it looks like the title was clickbait after all we have emboldened every filament and there's one more task to do three days are up and our anti-bacterial pla experiment is nice and ripe let's discover whether pl active's copper nanotechnology beat back the bacteria or whether it's just one percent snake oil the control plate is pristine i use distilled water separate swabs and sterile pre-poured petri dishes so this is as dead as the former president's twitter the regular plate is a bit of a surprise this culture came off of plain old red silk pla but there are barely any signs of bacteria action the pl active plate looks like a war zone the scare quotes nanotechnology seems to have been ineffective to say the least now void star lab isn't really a lab and a sample size of one makes this conclusion irrelevant but this wasn't a mix-up i recorded myself labeling these samples it wasn't the growth medium and it wasn't the lab conditions either just take a look at the wildlife that was lurking on my happy anime ladies verdict my skepticism about pl active is not assuaged i would repeat the experiment but if i need to look at one more cheerfully proportioned benchmark boat i will do things that would get mr rogers cancelled and that ladies gentlemen in cyborgs is how to print every single filament that my prusa could handle that i could get in a week i hope i helped you find the perfect polymer for your prospective project if you want to buy any of these i picked almost all of them up from amazon and one of them from micro center and a very long list of links are all in the description thanks to boximo for sponsoring this episode and providing this fancy pants enclosure if you need to print sensitive materials or you just want to keep your family safe from nasty byproducts check the description to grab your own and support voidstar lab speaking of support material allow me to extrude my thanks all over our astounding patrons your support makes it possible for me to drop a grand on squirty plastic without getting fellated by the wife expect to see these filaments in a lot of future projects like forever because my closet is completely full of filament actually if you're not supporting the channel head to patreon.com friedman i blew 75 of the project fund on filament and i need more abrasion resistant super thanks to our collaborators cmd i'm not bettacore and introducing and i quote chuck fedux smalldong i've hidden their names somewhere in this episode and oh boy you have a lot of ground to cover if you want to find them our high tensile strength lab assistants are anthony mccarelli paul rector the antifa my dog is a bear sir derpington of derptopia powerful cch roger pingham robert breeze daniel cadwell victor vaughn acalia michael dunn 360 no scope lord 9000 deluxe pro 69 sniper 360 quickscope supreme 420. the world's greatest drone pilot bock grinder fpv gregory jones c harris taranak andrew patton varka dinkle unfinisher of projects buyer of unnecessary parts michael roche brian glaser james berry brian santero asundo rusty fruit rusty flute frantic fanatic jonathan holland good suck sanfordian cyrus traeger joe harp olivia yiptong bill schooler and brad cox special thanks to brooke the lady who's had to deal with 80 more pounds of plastic garbage and our discord mods technique billy rubin and my fair julie i mean those are separate brook doesn't have to deal with the mods if you're still watching this you're just the right kind of obsessive nerd to join our club discord dot g void star lab may your boats be buoyant your dimensions accurate your layers unwarped and your hot end pristine forevermore i'll see you in the future

Channel: Zack Freedman

Views: 110,629

Rating: 4.9705539 out of 5

Keywords: 3d printing, filament, 3d filament, which filament is best for 3d printing, best filament for 3d printing, best filament for ender 3 pro, best filament for ender 3 v2, how to 3d print, 3d filament roundup, 3d filament review, 3d printer roundup, 3d printer for beginners, 3d printer in action, zach freedman, zack friedman, zach friedman, zak freedman, voidstar lab, voidstar labs, do it yourself, diy projects, diy activities

Id: vSwumoSlZTo

Length: 42min 15sec (2535 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021