Doing my first prints with Nylon (618).

3D Printing
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Doing my first prints with Nylon (618). Taulman suggests a heated bed is unnecessary and that warping isn’t a problem. I have been trying a part that is 1 inch wide by 5 inches long and it warps enough to lift the tape off the glass. Does anyone have an idea as to the cause ?
a. too many solid layers at the bottom ? tried 3, 6
b. too dense infill ? 20 -40% hexagonal
c . cooling too fast ? bed is ambient 20 C, extruder 245 C

Problem is worst at ends esp. corners.

Suggestions any one ?

2

Hi, i worked on trying print Nylon Taulman. I did a lot of experiments for dont have a lot of warping every time and finally i get print it very well with two different options:
First ir works great printed on a fenolic resin bed, look for tufnol materials and buy a fenolic resin.
However i prove to print it on the normal glass choosing 100 'C and spreading blue stick (i used pritt one).
Both of them works very well for fix the adherence problem of nylon polypropylene polyethylene and others whit similar thermoelastic behaviour.

Prove it and tell me about the results.

3

I had issues with pla on a super cold bed… Raised it from 10c ambient to 35c on the bed and fixed my problem but I can’t vouch for nylon, just a thought… If I was 245 degrees and played down on a 10 deg bed I’d curl up too! :stuck_out_tongue:

4

I am trying it on a heated bed -60 C and it seems better. At the same time I am printing the same part rotated on the Z axis to have a smaller cross section. It is sticking well to the tape but was pulling the tape off the glass ! May also try different layer height for the first layer. Currently 200 micron.

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Would seem that a more rigid surface, ie resin board or garolite may be required for 'long ’ parts. Smaller parts went well without curling but @ 5 " long its too much for the tape adhesive.

6

I messed around with nylon for a week before finally getting it to work (mostly) reliably. I ended up using a sheet of garolite that I roughed up with some rough grit sandpaper, with a thin layer of gluestick applied to it, on a heated bed heated to 80c.

Any single one of those things resulted in decent sticking, but the curling on larger items overcame that. All those things at once resulted in fantastic adhesion. So fantastic that if I let the sheet fully cool before trying to pull the print off I actually have to hold it under running water for a while to dissolve the glue before it’ll finally pop free.

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@William_Frick Most of our users that do not have garolite(LE) are using a PVA glue called “Elmers” regular glue. Not the school kind, but the regular white style. While it’s a PVA, they seem to have recently altered it i.e. “New and Improved”. We tried PVA in the past and did not see the results we are getting now with the White Elmers.
Process for glass or acrylic bed:

  1. Heat bed to 80C if you have one to dry the Elmers.
  2. Apply very thin coat. If no heated bed, just dry with Hair Dryer or heat gun. Drys very quickly.
  3. If you have a heated bed, set it back down to ambient or <50C
  4. Print
  5. Upon completion, use a sharp edge/blade to pry off. Note…This works as well as garolite (le) on some parts.
    If you have a heated bed, heat to 85C to remove part as it will come off easier.
    To remove the Elmers, heat the bed and scrap off or rub off with a wet rag.
    This works best on Glass or Acrylic.
    NOTE: On one of our large printers, where we printed a 14" x 9" flat bottom’d part, we used too much. Removing the part brought part of the glass with it. 6mm thick Pyrex.
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@Tom_Martz I will try your suggestions with Elmers’ glue. I love the nylon with small parts, but I am wondering how my layer height, perimeters, Solid layers and infill ratio type are affecting this particular print.

9

Moisture in nylon can cause serious warping problems. Have you tried drying your filament in the oven?

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@Ray_Tice House is pretty dry these days of -30 C and I store it sealed with dessicant. To dry it can you suggest time/temp for a toaster oven ? Is there a spec for ambient RH ?

11

Sounds like it should keep your filament dry, if it started that way. Unfortunately while the Taulman web mentions drying, the site is pretty vague on how to dry. This reprap page talks a little about it: http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,233826.
Other reprap pages give different suggested temps and suggestions to limit warping.

The injection molding industry has a lot of info on nylons in general. The page below suggests keeping drying temps under 80C to prevent discoloration: http://www.toray.jp/plastics/en/products/amilan/technical/tec_007.html (I had a better link some time ago, but seem to have misplaced it.)

If you haven’t looked through the reprap site yet, try googling “taulman warp site:http://reprap.org” for 360+ hits.

Good luck and please keep us posted on what works for you.