Right everyone! There are so many new filaments coming out that I think it

3D Printing
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Right everyone! There are so many new filaments coming out that I think it would be a good hivemend task to try and list them all! I’ll start with mine:

Polycarbonate (Ultimachine) - I have some, I have printed it, needs everything very hot, bed, hotend, etc. But prints absolutely beatifully, and the parts are stronger than I ever expect from printed thermoplastic.

Nylon 618 and 645. (Taulman) - I have both, Printed both. Very hydroscopic, needs some drying out. Hard to print with in my experience, doesn’t stick well to much apart from tufnol/garolite, which it sticks too well to. Nice mechanical properties, quite soft and flexy.

Flexible polyester Shore 40D Black (Plastic2Print) - I have some, printed it. Very flexible, wants to buckle in the extruder especially as it was 1.75mm stuff, needs constraining. Print slowly. Prints really nicely though, sticks to glass and hairspray nicely. Very flexible, like a rubber almost.

Filaflex (Recreus3D) - I have some, have printed it. 3mm this time, a bit easier. Still need to go slow. Produces nice prints, a lot of stringing. Nice colours. Sticks well to plain old glass.

PET (Plastic2Print) - Have some, not printed it yet.
HIPS (Plastic2Print) - Have some, not printed yet.

Laywood - have printed a tiny amount, prints just like PLA.
Laybrick - No experience of this one
Bendlay - No experience of this one

Carbon Fibre PLA (ProtoPasta) - Have some on the way
High temp PLA (ProtoPasta) - Have some on the way
Polycarbonate/ABS blend. (ProtoPasta)- Have some on the way

Ninjaflex - (FennerDrives) - A flexible filament I havent used.

PVA - (Ultimachine) - Have some, not printed it yet.

Makerbot is now shipping Polycapralactone as a “new” reshapable filament. This was in fact the first main polymer used by RepRaps.

Please make additions below!

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The carbon fibre stuff is up on kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375236253/proto-pasta-gourmet-food-for-your-3d-printer

You can get all 3 filaments from protopasta for $60USD, which seems like a steal.

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Nice list! Thanks for the tips!

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I was able to print with the ninja flex with the E3D. As long as it doesn’t kink up in the extruder, prints will come out nicely. Need to print slow and around 220C to get a nice flow. Very stringy and prints come out really tough, shore 85D. Very likely to create watertight prints.

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HIPS (Filaco) - Same temps as ABS, very smooth finish and light weight but is prone to warping.

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Same experience as @Chris_Lau with Ninjaflex. Filaflex (Recreus), OTOH, was totally unprintable. I got two different spools plus a sample of a third color, and all three vary from 3mm to 2.3 over about 150mm of length, and would not stop buckling no matter how slow I went.

Just got samples of the ProtoPasta stuff today, but I’m in crunch time for some PCB design and probably won’t be able to test it until at least this weekend.

Nylon (Taulman) has the best inter-layer adhesion I’ve seen (TPE is probably a close second), which makes it stronger than polycarbonate prints in my experience.

MABS (Methyl Methacrylate Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, say that three times fast) is probably my favorite printing material. It’s usually sold as “transparent ABS”, though it’s actually a hybrid of ABS and acrylic. Prints like ABS, but seems a little harder, stronger inter-later adhesion, lower-warp… It prints really smoothly as long as the filament tolerance is good (which it sometimes isn’t, I’d like to see some higher-quality suppliers extruding it).

Speaking of filament tolerances, don’t buy your HIPS (and probably other stuff) from JET. The spool I got started at 3.0mm and only varied upward from there (3.2, even 3.3mm in spots).

PVA is a really awful printing material. Couldn’t get it to stick reliably to anything, including itself. HIPS is a much better support material.

1.75mm PET is pretty difficult to print with due to buckling, at least with an all-metal hot end. 3mm works better.

Seems like there are some more exotics that I’ve tried, but nothing’s coming to mind.