Best Guide to 3D Printing Filament!

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Best Guide to 3D Printing Filament! You’re ready Sean? 3D Printing is an amazing, fun hobby, in fact, it’s what powers Matthew’s day job but What about the materials? I know we talk about PLA We talk about ABS, PBA and nylons and stuff We don’t really, I haven’t gotten into it much and so it’s great as Matt knows a lot about the materials And he’s gonna tell us all about them right here on 3D Printing Nerd Welcome back. This is Matt from Printed Solid Hey Matt Hey Joel I have a list of materials here And what’s really great is Because of your knowledge within the material space we’re gonna get off this list.

Best Guide to 3D Printing Filament!

Three good reasons why someone might choose to use this material and then Using your knowledge and your experience you’re gonna tell us one reason why we would not want to use the material Let’s start with one of the most common materials, PLA I mean, I print with that. Everybody does. There are tons of reasons why you’d want to use PLA But PLA is very widely available It’s easy to print It’s got lots of good color choices You can put cool things in it, the fills, the modifications, things like that.

But PLA isn’t gonna have structural integrity overtime right? I think that would be a good reason why someone wouldn’t want to print with That’s probably the biggest problem, yeah PLA is great right out Okay, one that’s shown right here, right? Yeah, this is a good example of that, so you have A square shape here but then this has been clamped for a year And it’s still okay but it’s not square anymore.

And, eventually, it’s gonna get to the point where it cracks Okay, that’s good to know. So, PLA isn’t necessarily the best thing for that sort of application If you want something pretty, something maybe filled with metals or glitter That’s a decent material to try Yeah. Even something that you need to use functionally but is not subject to continuous load Ok, next material though ABS I know this is one of the tried and true. One of the firsts. People look at ABS, historically, as a structural option ABS has a good blend of strength and flexibility if you bend an ABS part it’s going to give a lot before it breaks The other really popular use of ABS is easy post-processing Sanding, vapor polishing Solvent welding.

Things like That are a really great use of ABS But, also, there are some drawbacks What’s one of the reasons why someone wouldn’t want to choose to print with ABS? In ABS we can go on the negatives forever I’m gonna list the number one negative, in my opinion, for ABS That’s the styrene fumes Okay In that it’s potentially harmful There are lots of other negatives you could list but I think that’s the absolute top of the list as far as why you might not wanna use that one So, it requires more heat than PLA, requires a heated bed There is some lifting.

It requires better bed adhesion But, because of the VOCs it puts off I think that’s the biggest problem with ABS A lot of the other stuff you can work around you can mitigate and you can mitigate the VOCs too but a lot of people don’t and I think that’s a problem What about PETG? We were talking earlier and PETG is becoming a more popular material What are three reasons why people are choosing PETG to print with? PETG blends the best of ABS and PLA The challenges to your environment are not as much as they are with ABS You don’t want it to be in a freezing cold room but you don’t need it in 80 deg C chamber either.

It’s also available in a lot of colors now because PETG is more popular than ABS now PLA and PETG are the two main materials that people buy because of that Prices go down There’s a lot of color choices I would also say with PETG that you can modify a lot we mentioned that with PLA right PETG doesn’t just mean one thing it means a lot of different things You can have PETG that’s good at barely above a warm day temperature and then you can get PETG that’s good above 120 and they’re all just called different things Oh, but it’s just that base PET with the glycol Yeah.

Different modifiers Different, you know, “science” things that have been done but it’s all basically the same stuff Okay. It seems really positive Is there a reason why someone wouldn’t want to print with PETG? Yeah, I’d say the worst thing about PETG is it can be kind of “booger” Boogery? That’s a technical term This is why –are you saying like “stringy”? No. Boogery Boogery! Okay That’s why E3D came up with those silicon socks a few years back that went right over the nozzle That was to prevent that PETG from sticking on the nozzle That’s why a number of manufacturers have come up with plated nozzles and things like that So the brass nozzle, the PETG is sticky and will stick to Yes the brass? Ah ok And you can also

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