What are all these Filaments for? Filament Guide!

Filament
1

Just wrote up a quick and snappy filament guide that explains the uses of pretty much all the new exotic materials coming on the market, as well as the temperatures and recommended settings for using them. If you never knew what TPE or HIPS was, now you know!

Here’s the link https://thre3d.com/how-it-works/desktop-printers/filament-guide

Please let me know if any of the information is incorrect, or if I left something out.

Thanks :smiley:

2

Awesome, cool.

We’re just wrapping up our own filament PDF too. We’ll upload when finished.

Thanks!

-Jeff

3

Kenjinp,
Thanks for the great guide.

Jebba,
Will you filament guide have a section for which filaments work with which nozzles?

4

Thanks Theycallmejohn, I’m hope you find it useful!

Jebba, I can’t wait to check it out :smiley:

Also, I noticed that I left out PET! What a tragedy, considering all it’s handy uses! I made a new section for it in the filament guide.

5

Our new filament guide is out! It is available on our site here: http://www.lulzbot.com/sites/all/themes/lulzbot/images//LulzBot_3D_Printing_Filament_Guide.pdf

To answer the earlier question, yes the filament guide does clarify when special extruders and/or modifications need to be made. In this case, it’s only Ninjaflex (for now) that needs the Flexystruder and Polycarbonate that needs the modifications.

We will be adding more, there are currently nine (9) filaments in the guide, but we envision more content around how to use different materials, as well as adding new materials in the next few months depending on how quickly we can test the materials and find reliable, high quality suppliers.

6

Kenjinp and Jebba, thank you very much for your great guides!

I am wondering, PLA and ABS are the dominant materials today, and Kenjinp you say in your guide that PLA is THE material of choice for most 3D printers.
Do you think that it will remain that way for a long time (2020 and beyond) or do you think that other materials (Nylon, PC or PET) will replace PLA soon? (for example because the 3D printers which allow new materials will become cheaper and cheaper)

Thanks!
Ronan

7

ABS & PLA according to market reports are going to be the leading two for a number more years. But so many new materials are showing up. There are going to be a lot of “alternatives” too.

8

I agree with Tom at Taulman when he states that eventually we will mostly be using real engineering plastics instead of PLA and ABS. I have many customers that specify his Nylons both for tensile strength and also for their flexibility. I will be really happy when I can start printing in PC, Ultem, PVDM, and Noryl.

9

If you can get us materials, we’d be more than happy to test them. We try to print everything we can. :slight_smile: Or just point us at other materials to buy on the 'net and if they look good, we’ll get them and print. R&D runs 4 machines or so printing different materials all day long.

Have you tried the Flexystruder yet? It is awesome. Very very strong printed flexible material.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM-4bibQFZc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1abQwCeT6gg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnJZTwrQcQI

Joshua Pearce at Michigan Tech wrote a paper on the strength of printed parts. One of the test models was a LulzBot Prusa (very first printer we did!). There is a link to it here, but it’s not free. I think there is a free one out there somewhere.

Mechanical properties of components fabricated with open-source 3-D printers under realistic environmental conditions

Thanks,

-Jeff