Making Strong Parts

Guys what are you recommendation on making prints as strong as possible. I wont to build a swiveling arm wall bracket for my monitors but don’t want them to split and fall to pieces. Monitor Breaking = bad times.

I know infill can be adjusted but what other recommendation do you guys have. Currently using Lulzbot green but I am still getting some splitting of long parts and breaking off of small parts.

Should I use ABS? Should I use PLA? What else can I do to make them stronger?

Thinking about making something like the links below:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:22934
or
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:216329

One immediate thought is to rotate the part when printing so that the layers are set down orthogonal to the force you expect the print to be put under.
Or, print in PLA and do some lost casting. I doubt aluminum will break easily :wink:

I’d recommend ABS and painting the part with acetone. It’ll give you an nice finish, but more importantly it’ll seal the outer plastic layers together and help prevent splitting. Also, adding more perimeters and solid layers will usually help.

go HAM and print polycarbonate

In addition to the acetone bath, for parts you relaly need a huge amount of strength around a hole, you can try inserting a large heatset insert, and then drill out the threading to basically make a bushing. They might just sell heat set bushings like that, I haven’t looked. but basically the melt insert re-glues all the layers immidiatly surrounding the hole, leading to additional strength right there.

What does go HAM mean?

I’m not sure specifically what HAM refers to, but to print polycarbonate you need a high temperature hot end, like an E3D or similar.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+does+go+HAM+mean%3F

Some guys like a small ass…

Some guys like a big ass…

But no one likes a smart ass…


So i am guess you a referring to the Go Crazy usage aka the “Hard as a MF”. Guess I would need a all metal hotend.

Bam, hows the all metal hotend coming along? Do you need any beta testers?

Pretty well!

The cast heatsink wound up not being feasible in the quantities we needed, so I’m currently testing out E3D’s V6 hotend as well as a custom version of the Hexagon hotend from reprap discount. As soon as we choose which of these nozzles will be on the TAZ mini we’ll be releasing a high temp hotend. I’ll keep you in mind if we decide to do a beta test phase :slight_smile:

Cheers
-bam

Apologies – moment of weakness.

ABS with a %80 infill density will be relatively strong. I recommend the x-idler slice http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/Guava/production_parts/printed_parts/TAZ_printers/x_ilder/x_idler-v2.3-6s-t-.50noz.ini
but printing in polycarbonate will be stronger. Most polycarbonates have a high coefficient of thermal expansion which means they will have a tendency to warp. Printing with the bed at 105c will help with this. Printing with a 4mm brim will help, too.

Happy printing,

Kent