Polycarbonate! I have a kg spool from ultimachine that I’m going to try out today or tomorrow. Anyone have any settings to share for use with an e3D hotend / mendel 90? I think I’ll start at around 280C with 60 C bed temp & abs juice, and go from there…
When I tried it, it stuck best to ABS juice, but still not great. Anyone have surfaces that work better?
PLA? Well I’d say first go down to about 220, that is way hot enough … And their stuff is decent … Not great but decent meaning it should not have to go above
230. As for the bed, keep the temp low and your feed rate at a decent speed.
@Hal_Gottfried_Hal900 The OP was discussing polycarbonate or PC not PLA. Running PC at 220 would be a bad thing.
Polycarbonate prints well for me at 290, however it needs a high minimum print speed or the plastic will degrade in the nozzle and get all brittle and not adhere well to the layer below it. I did not find a good print surface yet, but I expect Kapton at 140 to stick pretty well. At 120 it somewhat sticks but peels off way too easily. It might need a heated chamber to not curl off.
Ah … thank you Brian!
I have not experienced it yet, but I was told CD-Roms would do.
You might want to check these pages:
http://www.protoparadigm.com/blog/2011/12/printing-polycarbonate/, http://richrap.blogspot.com/2011/09/indestructamendel-polycarbonate-3d.html?m=1 and http://reprap.org/wiki/Polycarbonate
@Matteo_De_Donatis CDs are Polycarbonate as well, so it might even create a bond that is too strong to peel the print off.
Indeed they are, @Thomas_Sanladerer , which brings me to the idea that PC sheets would do as well.
Unfortunately I haven’t tried it personally, so won’t be able to validate your - sensible - consideration.
Thinking aloud, I’d suggest tempering the strong bond by spraying or painting the PC surface would help reducing the alleged overbinding effect: hair-spray or a thinner ABS slurry deposition should work.
I wouldn’t want to have to put a spray or spread over my surface to reduce the bond to the platform. If you forget once, instead of a failed print because the part comes loose, you have a print that completes but is unusable because it won’t come off the platform AND the platform is ruined and has to be replaced.
I agree. I also reckon no such trick like spraying or painting should be necessary if precautions are taken. What if first layer is printed at lower temperatures (building bed should be off)? Or what if the component is 1, 2 or even 3 layers away from the surface of the platform? I chose this solution on cold-bed printing processes to reduce warping of small ABS and PA parts. Once the object is done, you just strip away external supports et vois-la.
What I mean is: I have no straightforward solution, haha
I’ll try and get hold of some PC sheet, but try it on abs glue coated glass first, and maybe even kapton tape
I’ve printed PC from Ultimachine on a Mendel90 and used an E3Dv4!
Kapton and ABS juice works acceptably for small objects.
You can make polycarbonate juice too. I used Dichloromethane as the solvent - no idea if acetone would work.
Get the bed as hot as it will go - I set mine to 200, but it only hit 125-130 or so. Hotend at 300C (which is as high as the thermistor I provided you with the hotend is rated to - i’ve gone hotter, but you’re in uncharted waters past 300)
If you can insulate the build area to make a improvised heated chamber that helps too - those clear PET roasting bags are good.
I printed a bunch of small high load parts - hinges that experience shock loads. The parts were REALLY strong.
Let me know how it goes!
Ended up using abs glue and a heated bed at 130C. Had some trouble initially with the PID loop not able to have a successful M109 temperature achieved. Tuned it with M303 S190 a few times, then again from cold, and only got it to work by changing the firmware to decrease the margin of error countdown timer from a minute to 30 seconds…no noticeable affect on print quality that I could detect.
The prints came out great! Sort of. First up was a little servo arm for a Hi-Tech miniature digital servo - .stl generated with the thingiverse library. Quite strong, and noticeably less flex then identical ABS version. Clear print, with white only at smaller diameter portion where the increased residency and heat addition frequency made things stay hotter longer, and cool to a white, opaque state. Next up was a mounting point designed to use a stainless steel 1/2" hose clamp to attach to 4" pipe. It was a fairly large print, and I noticed the pointed areas peeling up. I waited for it to complete a bridge point in the part before canceling to check my settings for it (same as ABS, but wow! much better bridging!) I was quite impressed by the rigidity of the part, and even seem to be getting great layer bonding despite the splitting Finally, I printed a large, more flat part, with a bit of a brim turned on and a fresh piece of glass + abs juice. No peeling - although this was less likely because of the shape of the parts more than anything.
Overall conclusion: Need to print with a higher ambient temperature - this means getting the box & the webcam out…
tl;dr
Printed stuff, better then ABS so far, but requires heated build chamber and is more expensive. Likely appropriate over PLA or ABS when extremely high impact resistance or strength is required in a part.