TAZ Pro Ninjaflex+PETG

Filament Print Advice
1

Hi all,

I have been diving into 3D printing for about 18 months now. My primary printer is a TAZ Pro with the dual extruder. Generally, love it. I am running the latest release version of Cura LE 3 on MacOS.

After a lot of work with PETG and some with Ninjaflex alone, I am attempting to print some dual material parts.

  • The Cura profiles for IC3D PETG have worked well for me
  • The Cura profiles for Ninjaflex have had very poor adhesion between Ninjaflex layers and walls to infill. Those profiles use a print temp of 215C. After some experimentation I got reasonable prints at 230-235C.

I then attempted a basic dual material design. It has both materials on every layer. Given what I have read , I tried printing on the glass bed surface with some Elmer’s glue to assist with PETG adhesion. My main issues are:

  • After purging both extruders, the Ninjaflex does not get knocked off of the nozzle and becomes a string getting dragged around the build plate.
  • The Ninjaflex seems to ooze and create a lot of stringing while the PETG is printing.
  • The priming tower in the back of the print bed becomes covered in the Ninjaflex strings which eventually seem to pull the priming tower off the bed which obviously leads to a seriously failed print.

I would seriously appreciate any advice on tackling this new challenge. Just a note, I am actually completely blind. So, I do not have any pics at the moment.

2

For bonding dual-material prints, you might want to look into moving to mainline Cura. Version 5.3 adds multi-material interlocking within the slicer, so your PETG to flex bond will be interlocked, rather than relying on material-to-material adhesion.

There’s a video that describes it fairly well here, even if you can’t see it: NEW Cura 5.3 - Now with FREE GLUE! "Material Interlocking"...let's take a look - YouTube

For the priming tower issue, try using an ooze shield instead of the priming tower. In Cura 3.6.37, try using the ooze shield instead of a prime tower. The dual extruder on the Pro shouldn’t require any priming at all, but the ooze shield should be helpful with the problem you’re describing.

3

Thanks. Have thought about trying mainline. Been hesitant to dig into what it takes to get it running well with the TAZ Pro. One challenge is that Cura is only barely blind accessible. Making settings changes is really only possible by editing config files (under ~/Library/Application Support/cura on MacOS). Any chance you have links/info on getting mainline working with the TAZ Pro? Will investigate the ooze shield as well.

4

I’ve done a good amount of work getting PrusaSlicer to work well with the Pro, but not mainline Cura.

Before trying to tackle dual with mainline Cura, put some good effort into the ooze shield and see if that works well enough for you. You can manually do some physical interlocking of the flex and PETG in the design process, which may be about as good as what Cura 5.3 can do.

5

For fun, I installed PrusaSlicer. Appears to have a more accessible UI than others I have looked at so far. Any tips/references/resources for experimenting with it on the TAZ Pro would be awesome.

6

There’s a couple profiles to start with on the facebook group LulzBot Official User Group | Facebook