Has anyone seen anything on printing either Teflon or PTFE? Obviously, these are both pretty chem resistant polymers and wold be realy useful in printing pumps or things like custom volumetric flasks / beakers and the like.
I assume they would have to be FDM’d but since I haven’t seen a photosensitive version of either.
As much as i can remember from my studies, ptfe and teflon are the same 
but i think it is printable as many other materials as soon as you reach the right temperature (should be no problem with an v2a-hotend). A problem could be to find raw material in the right dimension (1.75mm/3.0mm)
Oh yeh…just a brand name (face palm!). 326.8C melting point according to Google. What kind of printer would use that kind of hotend (FDM is not what I’ve been working with so I have no clue, please pardon my ignorance!).
For find material in the right dimension, could raw material be simply processed using a custom Filastruder or similar?
If I understand right, the decomposition temp of PTFE is lower than melting temp. So you can’t 3D print PTFE… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene
If you’re looking for photosensitive materials, check out SU-8 or PDMS photoresists.
Both are used in microfluidics.
Shame on PTFE 
I’m thinking fluid handling certainly but I’m thinking harsh environments. I know that PDMS doesn’t tolerate many organic solvents well at all - it swells like crazy in most of them.
I’m thinking specifically about interactions with conc. Nitric Acid for a project I’m looking at. Would be great to 3D print some parts for it.
struggling to find compatibility for SU-8 - there’s loads on PDMS. I did read about people trying to make chem resistant PDMS mind.
That is true that PDMS swells.
I tried checking an excellent paper that was done in 2003 that shows etch rates of different micromachining materials, but it doesn’t have anything on SU-8 in Nitric Acid.
The paper is “Etch Rates for Micromachining Processing Part II” by williams et al.
If you ever end up working with chemicals found in a fab, it’s a great paper to have on hand.
A .pdf of the paper can be found here:
oo cheers for the paper - Ill give it a read. I found a great one on PDMS and all the different exposures here:
You could look at FEP, another fluorinated chem resistant polymer, which is FDM-able as far as I know (well, in principle!).
OK - FDM-able on any printer or would I need something specific due to temp / hotend reqs do you know?
you need an all-metal hotend, such as Prusa Nozzle to print FEP because you need to heat it up above 260C. Should work on any 3D printer.
Great! Thanks @Soichiro_Tsuda 
@nathan_burley Check out the E3d nozzle. All metal, active cooling. Should suit your purposes. http://www.e3d-online.com
I have lined up a potential source for some FEP filament. Also some PEEK filament.
I am 100% serious when I say that I am going to try and print a functional hotend with a PEEK body and a FEP liner.
@Sanjay_Mortimer I work for a medical devices company at present and am shifting over to a tech service role in oil/gas upstream analysis - both of which have pretty amazing applications which you could tap into if you could print FEP.
Would you need to do it in PEEK or could you print a hotend with the metal SLS like process Shapeways run? Or are the parts just not smooth enough?
What kind of print resolution are you expecting with it? The ability to print a solid but removable support would be key to a lot of those apps though.