3D Filament for FDM printing

[lesthegrngo]

Hi all, I have the Lulzbot Mini FDM 3D that I bought many years ago, and lately I have been using it a bit more when making bits for the sim rigs. I essentially have been using ABS, but that's more because it's what I have rather than it being the best. When printed properly it does have good mechanical properties, but it does tend to warp for larger parts and you can get layer tearing too.

Looking online it seems that ABS has fallen out of favour a bit, so I want to know what you guys use to see if changing the filament makes my parts any better. I am looking for a good all rounder, one that prints easily, is reasonable for strength, good dimensional stability and isn't finicky. If I want a part for strength I generally design it so that it has metal or another material inserts that will take the bulk of the load, and if I want super surface finish I would use the resin printer to provide that, with maybe a sub-frame printed on the FDM printer to give it more strength.

I was (for a short time) looking at carbon fibre filled filament but that's expensive and from what I read seems to not live up to the hype

So what do you guys use?

Cheers

 

Les

Edited March 29, 2023 by lesthegrngo

[Viper1970]

PETG could be the solution. Its a bit between ABS and PLA. Easier to print like ABS but stronger as PLA. Its more like ABS. Only stringing could be a problem. You have to experiment with the right temperature for printing it.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Viper1970

[Hempstead]

I would also highly recommend PETG and PLA.

PLA is my go to filament, all around for pretty much everything. Super easy to print. Very easy to sand and smooth out. For instance, for my bronze castings, I print the plug with PLA, then brush with X3D resin to smooth out, then sand to really very smooth, beautiful surface before casting in RTV mold for casting wax patterns.

 

Tough PLA from Ultimaker is also as easy to print as PLA, but it’s a bit more flexible so not as easy to sand and file as PLA, but manageable.

 

PETG is slightly more expensive, but if you want to print mold or patterns for carbon/glass fiber mold/plug, it’s the go to filament. I never have any stringing problem with it with my Ultimaker 3 printer’s default settings though.

 

These days, I rarely print with ABS because it’s difficult to print. It shrinks and distort quite a bit. Even if I could get it to print larger prints, they often have too much internal stress and would crack after air cooling. For instance, I printed my mod of the F16 control stick base with ABS. But it cracked, on 3 different prints. Although those cracks eventually inspired me to split it into 3 pieces and then bolt them together to make it easier for assembly, reinforced with SS bolts, and easier to print, it tells me that ABS is the wrong filament to use for this situation. I do have a pair of F16 pedals a friend printed for me. I have no idea how he did such large prints without cracking, but if I had God’s eyes, I should be able to see quite a lot of internal stress, probably not a good functional part to begin with, which goes against the whole point of ABS being stronger than PLA. In other words, if you are thinking of printing large parts in ABS, you might want to consider other methods, like changing your design (e.x. 3 pieces bolted together), or say PLA wrapped in Carbon Fiber, or forged Carbon Fiber construction.

[lesthegrngo]

Thanks

One thing I have to be mindful of is the lower availability of 2.85mm filament, but of course that is not something that you guys can comment on. If you have any specific brand that would help too, a lot of the Amazon stuff doesn't have reviews, even if they get five stars so there's no guidance

Cheers

 

Les

[Hempstead]

I stick with Ultimaker filaments, because:

1. I have an Ultimaker 3 printer. All the settings, profiles are fine tuned/verified by Ultimaker on each new version of Cura. Not much tweaking is needed from me. So, I can upgrade to new version of Cura and be relatively sure that my setup is still good without have to tweak it again, and again, and again. My purpose is not playing with 3D printing. It’s a tool for me. I am trying not to fall into that old tinkerers’ trap — working on improving your tools more than you work on what you bought the tools for to begin with.

2. Buying other filaments, I do have a few, is a chore, and a time sink. You often have to experiment quite a bit to get it right for your setup.

3. Yes, Ultimaker filaments are more expensive than others’, but I get consistent quality I can rely on. Peace of mind, you know. I always have a spool of PLA and Breakaway loaded. I can just fire off a print job remotely any time I want from my desktop, and collect the print a few hours later upstairs.

I am not recommending Ultimaker filaments. What I am recommending is avoiding the Tinkerers’ Tool Improvement Trap, which I am guilty of in many occasions. Set up one configuration that works for your printer (requires a lot of tweaking) and stick to it.

 

And, if there is one kind of filaments I recommend against, it’s the no name cheap filaments on Amazon. Consistent quality is not a thing for those. Even if you get one filament from some XiLeader working for you, what about the next batch…? The seller might not even exist anymore, let alone consistent quality! Back to tweaking again?

Ultimaker has been there as my supplier for filaments for the last 7 years. Will yours be there for you in the next 7? The more time you spend on tweaking your setup to reach a stable configuration you can rely on, the more important this question is to you regarding your selection of filaments.

 

Whatever brand of filament you choose, make sure it’s one that you can rely on for years to come. How many years? Up to you. And I am praying the “merger” of MakerBot and Ultimaker won’t mess up my next 7!

[98abaile]

On 3/29/2023 at 12:28 PM, lesthegrngo said:

Hi all, I have the Lulzbot Mini FDM 3D that I bought many years ago, and lately I have been using it a bit more when making bits for the sim rigs. I essentially have been using ABS, but that's more because it's what I have rather than it being the best. When printed properly it does have good mechanical properties, but it does tend to warp for larger parts and you can get layer tearing too.

Looking online it seems that ABS has fallen out of favour a bit, so I want to know what you guys use to see if changing the filament makes my parts any better. I am looking for a good all rounder, one that prints easily, is reasonable for strength, good dimensional stability and isn't finicky. If I want a part for strength I generally design it so that it has metal or another material inserts that will take the bulk of the load, and if I want super surface finish I would use the resin printer to provide that, with maybe a sub-frame printed on the FDM printer to give it more strength.

I was (for a short time) looking at carbon fibre filled filament but that's expensive and from what I read seems to not live up to the hype

So what do you guys use?

Cheers

 

Les

 

ABS used to be the go to simply because it's what was available when consumer 3D printers first started appearing. As for its properties, it has better impact strength, but that's not really an issue for our purposes. It also tends to yield and deform whereas PLA it more brittle. Realistically unless heat is an issue, there's not much advantage to using ABS over PLA. ABS will have better layer adhesion but you can (and where possible) design around that. That's really the crux of the issue here though; how you print matters far more than what you print with. So you should be designing with metal hardware, walls, stress relief and layer orientation in mind, also using tricks like a 0.01mm wide void within a part to trick the slice into creating internal structures with walls (most of a part's strength comes from its walls, infil does very little). Sounds like you already do that though.

As for what material to use, PLA+ is my go to. It's stronger than regular PLA and still very easy to print.

[lesthegrngo]

Thanks, certainly a good point.

Since getting my resin printer, I have to confess that I'd sort of turned away from FDM printing, not least because because of the quality of the resin prints. But as always it was a combination of factors. One was mentioned above,  but another big factor was the build plate size. The Lulzbot Mini was not cheap when I bought it, but the main reason for selecting it was the bed self levelling capability which singled it out amongst its erstwhile peers; unfortunately it also came with a 152 x 152mm build plate which meant anything large was out of the question.  As it predated my sim build it wasn't an issue, but as I went along with stuff I began to run the small part limitation and that anything bigger would be compromised by being made in sections. My answer to that was alternative manufacturing techniques. 

Now I'm looking for some more complicated parts that would be problematic with my CNC machines due to the multi-part nature that would be required, I'm coming full circle back to the FDM method as being the best compromise. But I know my machine is not capable  of it, so I looked today at what may suit. All I can say is that in the intervening 6 years things have moved on immensely,  and I haven't kept up. 

Well, things are really different now. For a third of the price (if not less) I can get a printer that is far far better, but with a 50% bigger build plate in each direction, has auto build levelling, a build plate that you can actually get the #*&%^^£ parts off when finished without breaking the build plate or PEI layer.... plus a load of other advances.

Time I moved forward, I think.....

Les

 

[lesthegrngo]

Hi again, I have ordered the Creality Ender S3 Plus and some reels of Eryone PETG. It's going to take a while to get here (mid May probably) but I will use that time to knock up some designs to print out when it finally gets here. I went for it due to the big build size, and hopefully it will let me make single piece parts for the coaming, and one piece pedal plates to go on my MFG Crosswind pedal base

I'll have to mess around with it to see what works and what doesn't, it will be interesting to see what I am able to do

cheers

Les

[Mapi]

vor 23 Stunden schrieb lesthegrngo:

Hi again, I have ordered the Creality Ender S3 Plus and some reels of Eryone PETG. It's going to take a while to get here (mid May probably) but I will use that time to knock up some designs to print out when it finally gets here. I went for it due to the big build size, and hopefully it will let me make single piece parts for the coaming, and one piece pedal plates to go on my MFG Crosswind pedal base

I'll have to mess around with it to see what works and what doesn't, it will be interesting to see what I am able to do

cheers

Les

Ender-3 S1 Plus  ?

[lesthegrngo]

yeah, that's the one - so many models, so few brain cells.....!

Les