Results from printing Nylon, PETG and ABS on PlastiDip. Works with Nylon!
Hi guys,
So I recently had an idea to try printing on PlastiDip. I have tried Nylon, PETG and ABS. I chose these plastics because ABS and Nylon give me the most trouble to get perfect printed parts. PETG was only used in my test as a kind of benchmark being so easy to print with. All the test were tested printing a 20x20mm cube
My Setup.
Prusa I3
E3D v6 direct drive hotend,
Alloy heated bed.
The results:
PETG
22c (ambient temperature) - Insane bond, wouldn't accidentally come off in 100 years! (Hard to remove)
40c - Insane bond
60c - Insane bond
80c - Insane bond
ABS
22c (ambient temperature) - Bond held for duration of print, but edges lifted
40c - Edges lifted, though not as bad as the above test.
60c - Really good bond, edges stayed firmly stuck to bed (Recommended)
80c - Edges curled and was hard to remove
Nylon
22c (ambient temperature) - Worked really good. Nylon is inherently hard to get a good bond without going to something extreme like garalite. The print held firmly to the bed and was pretty easy to remove after the print was finished (Recommended)
40c - Print curled on edges, but held for duration of the print
60c - Failed to bond to the bed, complete fail.
80c - I felt no need to test due to the fact that 22c worked so well, and at this point its obvious the hotter the bed, the worse the bond with nylon.
The summery
At 80c or above the plastidip was easy to tear off when removing a part, So I feel 60c is the butter zone and treat 80c as a max. This isnt an issue with the plastics I tried, all worked best at 60c or lower.
Plastidip will definitely be in my 'bag of tricks' when it comes to getting a tricky print's to stick when using ABS or Nylon, As a surface for everyday printing I cant recommend it. Its very easy to damage the layer of plastidip and render that section of the bed unusable until another coat of plastidip applied.
Keep in mind that if you try plastidip your results may vary, with different sources of filament, different climates and printers no doubt it wont be exactly the same as my tests.
Tips: Make sure to apply at least 3 good layers of plastidip to make removal easy, if they are too thin or not enough coats applied it will be harder to peel off and will tear easy.
