I have a quandary for all you fine people. This will seem be counter intuitive, but I’m looking for a good heat resistant filament. We are printing some parts for work to test and in their real application would need to withstand high heat on occasions. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Define high heat? Obviously any thermoplastic FDM cannot withstand heat higher than the print temperature. With hobby printers, that means anything over 200 C or so would be extremely hard to engineer no matter that.
Given that polycarbonate requires close to 260C in order to extrude, I’m guessing that it has excellent thermal properties. Over time I’ve learned that looking at a thermoplastic glass transition temperature means basically almost nothing in regards to workable temps. You look up PEEK plastic, and apparently it has a glass transition temp of around 143C, but obviously J-heads don’t melt down at that temperature. Speaking of which, I’m not sure anyone has tried PEEK as a filament… it’s currently used in a lot of hot end designs specifically for resisting heat (and it doesn’t start deforming until 246C), but an all-metal hot end might actually be able to extrude it (which would be funny as all hell I think). It would be highly experimental, and likely to damage an extruder, but might be worth a try experimentally.
Question then is is where is there a good source for polycarbonate filament. Have an all metal head here so I can hit the temperatures I need to.
And answered my own question. Looks like UltiMachine has some in the 3mm I need.
@David_Tarlau , pc can require up to 300c if you print fast. 260c quoted by me just happens to be the lowest it can be extruded at.
Thanks @ThantiK I found RichRap’s tests of PC and noticed he mentioned up to 305C. So I took my extruder up to 305C earlier with no issues. Just need to order some material.
@Matt_Kraemer1 , there are also thermoplastics which generally do not degrade past their Tg…every plastic we currently use is a thermoplastic.
Polycarbonate filament extruded for best results around 280-310C BUT it can be extruded as low as 220C just requires a lot more force/torque from your extruder motors also at lower temps you can extrude it still but the output will be murky white and bubbly and not clear like glass when you print closer to 300C
What about a ceramic extruder? Extrude your object in clay then kiln fire it and you will have a very high temp resistant vessel?
I need to still have some flexibility to the part, so ceramic is out.
Pretty much anything high heat is out. I don’t know of a single material on this earth that has both flexibility and heat resistance.
The PC will have enough flexibility for what I’m looking for. I’m not looking for nylon levels of flex.
I hopefully have some PEEK and other interesting high temp filaments on the way for testing with the E3D.
I run PC at 300-310C - works nicely.
Other tips:
Use a solution much like ABS juice, but made with PC instead. I used dichloromethane, but google tells me acetone should work too. Standard ABS+Acetone juice works acceptably too.
Also get your bed as hot as you can get it. Mine wont go higher than 120C or so, but hotter would be better I expect. If you can make a heated chamber, or your printer will tolerate being wrapped in something like those clear oven-roasting food bags (PET?) to keep the heat in that is a big help.
I use the ultimachine stuff too, prints beautifully.
Got the material for Ultimachine today. I’ll let you all know how it goes.
So far the biggest issue has been getting it to adhere to the bed. So trying a couple different things. The other issue I’m battling is temperature stability on the head at 300C. At 265C, no issues stabilizing on the temperature, but I think the extra 35C is causing some issues.