I need material advice.
I printed a broken part of a chair. With Black PLA I know it won’t hold up to the forces. But It worked for 5 weeks.
Now I want to print it in a stronger material.
I have a Ultimaker original with headed bed and dual extrusion.
This mean my hot-end has a teflon tube. so I can’t print with extreem hi temps.
I was thinking of printing with nylon but what is the best type of nylon or are there better options?
I presume that you printed it at 100% fill correct?
Print hollow and fill with epoxy or resin.
+Griffin P., Yes,
It was perfect en strong, but just not strong enough to use the chair for more than 5 weeks.
So I need a better material. At this moment i only have printed in PLA so its time to try something better.
Now I want to use the experience from the people in this community to find the best material for this job.
You can also think outside the box. You presumably recreated the original part design. Nothing stops you from changing the design to make it stronger and more suited to what you need.
here’s a thought re-create the part as the POSITIVE for a sand cast and have an aluminium one forged for your chair…
Hey it’s just another possible solution. the positive would burn away as the hot metal was applied. much the same way a Wax positive does.
Or, alternatively, get a different chair!
@Michael_Scholtz
I already made al the walls triple the size. And i don’t know how to make it stronger.
@Shachar_Weis I don’t have experience with epoxy or resin, so if i choose your method do you have a link or a other tips were to get it.
Secure your construct with such an item.
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Schlauchschellen-Schlauchschelle-12-mm-breit-W2-Schelle-12-140-mm-Edelstahl-/281452442137?pt=Wasserinstallationen&var=&hash=item4187df7219
Fix it so deep as possible!!!
Also, PLA is brittle. You want something like ABS or or nylon, which is tough.
Nylon will hold a good deal more than pla or abs, but it is always slightly elastic and might be distorted to the point of uselesness. Creating a mold and casting the piece in aluminium is very much the best solution. I dont think resin or epoxy will help since the parts stressed most are to thin. Maybe printing it in abs and securing it with a metal band will do as well.
@Chris_Bigpaws_Chambe Thanks I thought of that a while a go. I might know someone who can do that. I hope i can still find him.
But maybe i need to keep my options open until I know he can do that for me.
@Erich_HaHaOh that was my first solution but it totally failed 
There is that bronze fill stuff by color fabb. It’s about 10x more cost but it is 3x more dense than PLA. There is also PET+ I’ve seen at matter hackers. That is supposed to be easy to work with like PLA but as strong as ABS and no fumes.
If it lasted five weeks, and did not fail immediately, then you are almost there. I would suggest that a number of small improvements together could make this work. First use a tougher material like ABS. Make sure there are as big a rad as possible on all inside stressed corners. Make the unit a bit deeper so that it extends below the metal inserts some more. Finally maybe you could design some sort of cap that can be added to the bottom to give extra strength.
Pet becomes brittle over time, i wouldn’t use it for this. Bronzefill and copperfill don’t have really more strength than pla, since pla is the main ingridient of them that holds everything together. Abs and some additional measures should do the trick.
Use Tritan from Taulman. With your limited heart range you may need to burn a little slower than normal, shouldn’t be too bad.
The epoxy route may be a good one. I would print it with 0 infill make a hole and fill it with epoxy. I used a similar method when I had to strengthen printed parts when I started building 3d printers and my print quality wasn’t great yet. I had to set a bolt at a angle on a mount. I printed it with a bottom and sides used superglue to hold a bolt as needed and then filled it with hot glue. It was rock solid I’ll post some pics in another post.
Or mill it out of steel on a CNC using the cad file that you designed for the 3D printer.
Taulman do a PFTE filament that’s as strong as nylon and prints at 238 which is safe for your hot end. As someone else pointed out, nylon is quite flexible, so make sure that would be acceptable. Also nylon is really fussy about the bed and hard to print large because it also warps.
Definitely look at Nylon, PTFE, or ABS as described.
If you still have issues, you could always get someone else to print your object for you (eg: a friend, a hacker/makerspace or even a 3D printing company).
Note: If you do a cast into metal, note that the metal will SHRINK as it cools, so you need to print the object a certain percentage bigger for the cast object to come out the right size (varies depending on the metal). Best material for printing an object to cast in is tinted PLA (not solid), as it makes it easy to see while leaving little to no residue in the mold.
