I made a few cell phone cases recently out of Ngen which I had heard was pretty durable. Well, my wife dropped her phone as she is known to do from about slightly below waist high, on to our tile floor and the phone was protected, but 2 corners of the cell phone case broke off completely. Not just a tiny chip pretty much the whole corner areas.
Then I went to pull my cell phone out of my case to give her mine as a replacement (my phone had not been dropped or anything ever) and I noticed as I was pulled it out that there was a crack in the upper right corner of mine too! It is a crack that cannot be seen unless you bend the case though.
So I was just wondering if Ngen is known to be this way and if others have had issues with cell phone cases made from it, or if there is a better material (aside from ABS) that I would not have this problem with?
As much as I would love to make a case out of ninjaflex, I can’t afford the flexyextruder right now.
I you’re looking to stay with Colorfabb filaments, here’s a chart from their site that shows their relative strengths.
Of course the thickness of the object has a lot to do with strength too, but I use all three of their co-polyesters in my business and here’s my take on their strength:
nGen- Similar to a PLA but stronger (relative to part thickness) and higher heat tolerance. More brittle than XT or HT.
XT- Similar to PETG and extremely strong and heat resistant.
HT- Similar to ABS but probably stronger and much more heat resistant and easier to print.
Thanks. Looks like HT might be the best for durability. According to this chart though, ABS and ngen has the same strength roughly. I always thought abs was the strongest. I mean, Legos are pretty strong lol. Good stuff to know though. I am new to 3d printing so these are my first filaments… I got a roll of ngen and a roll of esun pla. I’ll prob try the HT next.
Take a glance at my last sentence. If you know of something that doesn’t require that extruder I would love to try it.
I even considered spraying the plastic case with that stuff called flexseal that is a rubber spray but I doubt it would come out smooth so I decided against it.
Hi
nGen is pretty close to ABS in it’s characteristics.
I’ve been printing with nGen on several of my latest projects.
The nGen material appears to be pretty close to PLA as far as stiffness goes.
the nGen material will tolerate warm temps, such as in a car on a sunny day.
BUT
If I drop one of my nGen parts on a concrete floor, I can expect that whatever part hit the floor first, will break.
I don’t think it’s the bond between layers, as the break line never follows the layer height.
The parts just break on impact.
…
I need to make more nGen projects to determine if nGen will fulfil my Holy Grail of Plastic dreams.
…
Just my 2 cents worth
I am having several cell cases breaking in the same spots so I am starting to think it is a design flaw in the model. I think the edges have thin spots that are cracking. It’s just a theory so I’ll do some experimenting and see if I can confirm it.
