Tips for printing Nylon

I’m printing with the Taulmen 618 3mm nylon filament on my brand new Taz 4 and would love some advice.

I started with the Lulzbot recommended Slic3r profiles and a 238° hot end with a 60° bed as recommend in the Lulzbot filament guide. The first print didn’t stick to the PET bed very well even with a skirt, so I tried blue tape on a cold bed, and it stuck OK.

Here’s the first print of the 50% scale octopus:


As you can see it came out OK, but a bit blobby. Nylon seems to ooze very easily and I wonder if anyone has suggestions about temperature and retraction settings that might help?

RichRap’s blog post (http://richrap.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/3d-printing-with-nylon-618-filament-in.html)was a mine of information, but I need some more specifics to get the quality of the prints under control. Based on his advice, I have a Garolite sheet on order to print onto. It has different branding in the UK and I got a Tufnol Whale Sheet 300 x 300 x 3mm from here: https://www.directplastics.co.uk/tufnol-sheet. Small parts print OK on blue tape, but larger parts tug the tape really hard an pull it off the bed. I’m hoping the Garolite will be better.

Check out https://forum.lulzbot.com/t/taulman-bridge-nylon/845/1

I think nylon likes to be hot. It also likes to ooze and blob. All metal hotends with short melt zones can help with both of these things.