The Most Underrated 3D Printing Filament!

What's your experience with flexible materials? Want to get your 3D prints to the next level already today? Check out our Heat Set Inserts and Tools at cnckitchen.store/ (Free shipping worldwide starting at €100).

One thing while printing flexible materials i learned the hard way is to also lower your non-print speeds when printing tall models. Bed slingers tend to cause quite a bit of wobbling and models can get misaligned

4:20 What are you printing there Stefan? 👀

Someone in the Rat Rig Facebook group gave me great advice that really works: When the print finishes rather than tear it off the bed pour a little bit of isopropyl alcohol or similar around its edges. I had trouble with phone cases that kept getting deformed when pulled off the bed. This solved it completely. The alcohol gets under the print I think via some capilarry action and almost releases the print from the bed. The force needed to peel it off the bed is reduced to something that feels like 10% of what it was before. I have tried it with several TPUs that before tended to damage my powder coated PEI sheet and it works beautifully. With G10 smooth surface it works too but a bit slower. After getting it off the bed this way I just have to let it dry out the alcohol from its pores.

I legit allways use TPU when possible. It is basically indesctrucable ! And The Layer adhesion is sooo good. I have 2 Waterbottle holders for my bike printed in TPU, every other material cracked after a while cause of the impacts of the full waterbottle but the tpu one still works just fine!!

Man, I wish there was an ultimate filament properties chart. Where all types and brands can be compared to each other.

Misspelled thumbnail ;) "Thremo"

your friction tests...the surface finish of the sample has a huge effect on how "sticky" it is, resistant to forward motion. So then the same material but printed with a smooth vs textured surface will perform quite differently. To add complication they will perform differently in wet vs dry conditions. The supersoft material likely deformed during the test, creating more surface area in contact with the ground surface.

just print it while drying in a food dryer. 20min heating at 60° is enough, saves a lot of energy.

... and Every Bourbon is a whiskey, but definitely not every whiskey is a bourbon! The maximum volumetric speed was one of the best discoveries that I've made in 4 years of printing.

For flexibles, I have so many tiny spots where filaments can grab. So, I have to decrease the retraction distance, but usually increase the retract speed to get it out of the way fast. And otherwise avoid retractions when possible.

4:22 "I can't really wrap my head around what to print with this" Oh I think you already know, judging by what's printing in the background. I'm sure Mrs. Stefan is quite pleased.

I have a Flsun Super Racer, and for those who know it, they will understand that it is difficult to print with TPU (95A shore) because it has a really long bowden tube. However, I managed to create a profile on Cura that allows me to always get "good prints," at the expense of a bit of stringing. The main problem I faced was the retraction speed. I spent days adjusting that value, but nothing seemed to work. So, I solved it simply by removing the retraction. To compensate for the stringing that forms, I raised the Z-hop speed to 200 mm/s and the travel movements to 350 mm/s, thereby reducing the probability of stringing. As for the brand of filament for the TPU, I used ZIRO.

The most important thing I learned after printing with TPU was to take off my 3D printed ski mask when talking to people

I sand some functional flexible parts before using them. This dramatically increases the grip/friction

Hard TPU is my default filament! Probably harder than any in this test, 70D or so.

Even through a bowden tube I find myself using more retraction than is ever recommend for tpu. I like to use the purple glue stick because of the PVA in it. Drying the filament makes the biggest difference! Another really good TPU is the Ninjatek Armadillo. It's tough as shit, and you can print it faster. It has great industrial applications, and I feel it's being slept on.

what works best for me is disabling retractions entirely and designing my parts to not require many gaps to cross. the TPE I have is of unspecified kind, only says TPE, but it doesnt like retractions and leaves gaps after the deretracts, so disabling them entirely gives amazing results and speeds up the print a lot

I built a heated chamber around my super cheap printer. The spool holder is in the chamber. I usually set the temp to the drying temp of the filament as that is usually a good temp to prevent warping. Then I just store the filament in desiccant box. Never have to worry about drying. Just used some cheap parts like a heat gun and some purple foam from HD for the chamber. Put the electronics outside the chamber....flexibles are probably my favorite filaments because the layers bond so well And I never have to worry about the part breaking.

You can also measure the static coefficient of friction by putting the material on an inclined plane, and increasing the inclination angle until it starts sliding. You can easily measure the coefficient of friction from the angle: f = tan(angle).