A polymer from the Teflon family which is melt processable. First prints were really stunningly good, with amazingly strong layer adhesion and clean accurate deposition.
I think this is the first time a fluoropolymer has been printed?
Eventually ended up printing at 415C at the nozzle with 220C on the bed. Bed coated in a a layer of self-adhesive FEP tape. The prints weld to the tape very well. The tape is sacrificial and becomes part of the print. We aren’t experiencing warp, but our test objects are small.
The filament was supplied by Plastic2Print and I thank them for their input! They sell some really cool filaments so do check them out.
@Mike_Miller being able to print a material takes a lot more than heating it to its melting point. You have to heat it significantly above melting, push it through a nozzle (without eroding the nozzle, as the metals that have been tried did), and you have to keep it in a temperature range where it will exhibit acceptable stiffness and shrinkage characteristics while you print on top of it. I’m very skeptical that pushing molten metal out of a nozzle will ever be a viable technique, regardless of the temperatures we can heat the nozzle to. Sintering a spray of powder makes a lot more sense (though it is messier).
@Steve_B_Thomas_delbr@denix
I don’t have anything particularly interesting to show you at present! The prints look just like Nylon objects really, once I have some more interesting demo objects i’ll post them up, but showing a picture of a novelty egg-cup that looks unremarkable would be a little pointless.
@Whosa_whatsis
I’ve already had a go at PEI, and have some here. First tests were disappointing due to it having some moisture in it that resulted in very foamy extrudate. I need to cook it before having another go. I also hoped that it would stick to Kapton due to the molecules being superficially similar (Polyimide~Polyetherimide). That didn’t seem to be the case in my minimal testing.
@Jason_Ray
The platform heater is a piece of 100x150x10mm aluminium plate that has 4x heater cartridges inserted into it. Heats up quickly, but slightly uneven temp with 10C difference across the platform when settled at 220C. I might add more heaters into the cool spots.
@Eddy_Castro
It’s a normal E3Dv5 with a thermocouple instead of a thermistor. (Thermistors die over 300C) I am aware that fluoropolymers are likely to degrade my brass nozzles over time, but I have plenty of them to hand and just wanted to prove a concept.
@Whosa_whatsis Interesting, I’m wondering if a powdered metal printing solution could be made to be ‘desireable’ in an average consumer home environment, though. The stuff I’ve seen requires firing (like Precious Metal Clay http://pmcguild.com/) or not-insignificant protocols to filter and contain the powder.
Erosion of the tip wasn’t something I’d considered, I was just commenting that the temperature is in shouting distance of metal.
The material properties of metal shure would make the possibility desireable… both from a conductivity and strength standpoint.
ETA:Conductivity begs the question: wonder if inductive heating could be used? There’s the possibility of not using a nozzle at all. (sure, yeah, pumping argon gas and needing three phase 220v kinda knocks it out of the consumer realm, too.)
@Mike_Miller A printer using a MIG welder instead of an extruder was posted a few months ago. The results weren’t pretty or precise enough to be very useful.
yeah, I wouldn’t expect MIG/TIG to produce…they’re more for connecting things together, rather than making a shape. More to the point ‘Filling with excessive weld’ is not the sign of a good mechanic. Using an ARC to instantly melt metal is kinda splashy. Still, the ability to cleanly print using metal would be a killer app for home printing .
One would think that someone attempting to print such a revolutionary material “It has never been done before!” would video the process or at least take pictures.
